*Mish*

MEYA CAME TO ME IN THE STUDY, INTERRUPTING my conversation with Hetch, but before I could reprimand her she put her hand on my shoulder.

"Come," she said, and I came with her.

The first sunset of the spring. The first time the clouds had broken since winter, and the sky lit with brief glory, pink, red, violet, dark blue, turquoise, pale gray. The end of the rains. I put my hands on the rail and felt the colors moving through me, felt myself part of the sky, the budding trees, the land waiting for plow and seed. A vast and peaceful glory. The sun fell below the horizon, and the colors faded from the sky, leaving their ghosts settled within me.

"Jason should have seen that," I said, and realized that Jason had. It was Jason's peace, Jason's heart beating in the sunset, that I had felt.

Jason's gift.

Meya put her hand on my shoulder, and I smiled at her, and had turned away before I understood her expression. A little wistful, somewhat lost. A yearning. She looked like an orphan, and it struck me that in many ways she was. Always Jason's child, never mine. And that was no one's fault but my own.

I didn't have the words for that, didn't even have it clearly in my mind, but I turned and patted her arm, and hoped that she would understand the promise.

I was halfway to the stairs before I realized that I didn't have to go there, that I had things to do that evening. Not talking with Hetch, not the manic activity that had sustained me since my return. Tables to set. Dinner to help with. A meal to eat, people to talk with. People to learn all over again.

The thought frightened me, then I felt Jason's gift again, still warm, still comforting. I went into the dining room, into the kitchen, into life again.

Jes didn't come in to dinner. Not surprising; he'd been cold and sharp all winter, an angry, distant man. After dinner Ozchan left the house. Meya bit her lip and continued clearing the table, and instead of going into the living room, I stayed to help her. We still didn't have the right words for each other, but working together seemed to help. Tabor's music floated into the room, and the voices of the twins at play. Hetch in the midst of some tall story. For a moment I listened for Jason's voice, for Laur scolding the children; for a moment the world seemed turned on itself, confused.

"Mish?" Meya said.

I shook my head. She came around the table and put her arms around me.

Tall daughter, warm daughter. I put my head on her shoulder and she put her head on my head, and we stood like that. Then I pulled away. She dropped her arms and began to step back, but I leaned forward and kissed her.

"Come on," I said. "There are still the counters to scrub."

"Tabor and Ozchan did them yesterday," she said, smiling at my smile.

"We can just wipe them off and put them away, Mim will never notice."

And that's what we did, giggling like conspiratorial children.

It seemed a night for reconciliations. When Jes and Ozchan came in, long after the children and Mim had gone to bed, we heard their steps and voices raised in the hallway, and we hushed. Meya looked at the door apprehensively.

"You've got your head in your ass," Jes said.

"And you've got yours in a vacuum," Ozchan retorted.

The front door slapped shut. Meya put her hand on her stomach.

"Prove it, medicine man," Jes said.

Ozchan marched into the room, followed by my son. They both ignored us.

"Here," Jes said, and grabbed the West Wing Directory. Ozchan took it from him and paged through it.

"Second section," Jes said, "under H, in case you've forgotten."

Ozchan glared at him and turned to another section of the book.

"There!" he said. "Forty-two two, forty-four five, seventeen."

"Let me see that." Jes took the book away and looked at the page.

"Shit."

Ozchan assumed a look of superiority and stuck out his hand, palm up.

Jes swore and dug three fremarks from his pocket. Ozchan took two of them.

"Never bet," he said, "against a man with a permastick brain."

"Right. What's Meya's due date?"

Ozchan looked at him, frowned, and Jes laughed and hit his shoulder.

"Big retentive mind," he said. "Permastick nonsense. You want a drink?"

He nodded, still frowning. "Meya, what's the due date?"

"Fen Tov Biant Bols," she said.

"That's the reason. I can't remember those damned kasiri names," Ozchan muttered, then laughed. Meya looked from husband to brother in bafflement.

Jes had a bandage on his shoulder and a piece of plaster on his forehead. Ozchan's arm was bruised, and he walked favoring his right leg.

That, I decided, was the reason for the sudden camaraderie. They'd tried to kill each other, and the experience had done them good. Children, I thought, then remembered that Jes was twenty-seven that year, and Ozchan twenty-six.

And Quilla thirty-two. Tabor near forty, the twins eleven, and I fifty-five. How things had changed while I was gone. And I'd been gone for far too long a time.

Instead of leaving with Hetch, as I had planned, I told Jes that he was now the Kennerin head of Aerie-Kennerin Shipping, and sent him off into space.

He did an odd thing before he left -- he kissed Meya, then Ozchan, and the kisses seemed identical to me.

And he promised to look for Hart.

We received reports throughout that summer, while Meya's stomach grew and I learned my family over again. Jes followed the trail to the Gregory/Acanthus Main Grab, and lost it there. The grab served as a nexus for lines to twenty-five different planets and four sub-grabs; it would take time to find out where Hart had gone, and Jes could only fit the search in among his other duties. It became a process of elimination, and each month his report to us contained more names to cross off the list.

Someone out there had remembered the botany of Terra. We crossed off Philodendron, Acacia, Ceropegia, Lilium, and Rhus the first month, Euphorbia, Dracenea, and Opuntia the second, Jasmine and Tillandsia the third. During Biant Meir, the fourth month of Jes' absence, we crossed off Augustine and Holt's World, and Quilla claimed relief at the end of the flora.

At the end of Biant Meir, Hoku died.

Ozchan came home one afternoon and told us that we were needed in Haven, at Hoku's house, not at the hospital. She had refused to be moved, and lay in her small living room staring out the window at the marketplace. It was a market day, but the stalls were closed, the area silent. People gathered before her house, but she had us chase them away. She didn't intend to die in the middle of a circus, she said.

She didn't seem ill to me, until I said something and she looked beyond me, over my right shoulder. She couldn't see.

Her hands, always slim and strong, lay bent on her lap. Lined. Spotted.

They, more than anything else, reminded me that Hoku was an old woman. Older than Laur when Laur had died. Dying of being old.

She gave her practice to Ozchan and said he'd be sure to screw it up, but it was his anyway, and God help the people of Haven. And she told him that love shared was better than love separated. He looked both uncomfortable and surprised. I suppose he'd never gotten used to Hoku's soul-peering. Perhaps none of us ever had.

She told Quilla that she approved.

"Of what?" I said.

"That's her business, not yours," Hoku said.

She said something to Meya which I didn't hear, but which caused Meya to look at Ozchan, startled, then walk to him and hold his hand.

She told Tabor that if you've wanted something long enough and you still don't have it, you're a fool to keep wanting it. He thanked her.

All she said to me was, "Tell Hart I was wrong. Tell Hart that I apologize."

Then she told the twins to hold her hands, that she had something important to teach them. They stood on either side of her, unsmiling, and she closed her eyes and died.

They put her hands down, before we realized what had happened, and turned to Quilla.

"That was very good," Decca said.

Then we did the things that had to be done and went away.

I asked Jared what it was that Hoku had taught them.

"Emptying quietly," he said. I didn't understand.

Two weeks after Hoku's death, three men came to the Tor and sat in the living room, their hands folded in their laps, asking me questions about Drake. We had known that this had to happen, that Drake could not disappear without leaving bubbles of questions in his wake. I kept my hands thrust into the pockets of my skirt, and smiled, and told them somewhat lies.

"I wasn't here when Drake and my son came," I said to them. "I had business to attend to on Althing Green. You understand."

They nodded, short motions of head accompanied by cold glances.

"My daughters told me that he left a few weeks before my ... my husband's death." I took my hands out of my pockets and twisted my fingers together. "I'm afraid I didn't worry about Quia Drake much. It was an upsetting time. For all of us."

"Perhaps," one of them said, "we could talk to your daughters. Since they were here, they might be able to help us."

I rose to call Quilla, but Meya came into the room and leaned against the mantel, her hand resting on her swollen belly.

"I was here," she said. "I'm Meya M'Kale Kennerin."

The men looked at her. One averted his eyes and spent the remainder of the session staring at the fireplace. Embarrassed, I realized, by my daughter's pregnancy. The absurdity of it calmed my nervousness, and I smiled.

"Yes, of course I remember when he left," Meya said. "I didn't see him go, but one morning he'd left. Taken a shuttle out." She paused and looked at them. "We were quite happy to see him go. Drake was a very unpleasant man."

"Did he mention where he was going? To you? To your brother, perhaps?"

Meya shrugged. "He didn't say anything to me about it. His conversations concerned other intentions."

I put my hands back in my pockets. They felt suddenly clammy, and I wanted to tell Meya to be quiet, not to take such chances; felt a twinge of my old dislike of her, and put it away.

"It took you quite a while to worry about him," I said. To my relief, they looked away from my daughter to me. "Nine months, is it? Ten, since he's been here?"

"He often takes extended trips," the embarrassed one said. "But generally he checks in, if only to collect his profits."

"Profits," I said.

"Tev Drake is the major shareholder of Albion-Drake. Surely you know that."

I looked at Meya.

"I think he mentioned that to Quilla," she said. "It didn't seem very important."

"It 'is' very important," the embarrassed one said to the fireplace.

The other two nodded. "Drake's absence is a very serious problem for the company."

"How serious?"

"Serious enough."

Meya shrugged again and stood away from the mantel. "You might check the passenger lists of 'Rhani-ka's Falcon'," she said. "That was the only ship in port the day he left; he was probably on it."

"What about your port records?"

"We're too small to keep entry records," I said. "We depend on the passenger lists. I think that would be your best try now. You can use the com shack at the port to reach the 'Falcon'." I stood. "Now, if you'll excuse us, we have work to do."

They stood, their eyes still unfriendly. Meya went to the door.

"I hope you find him," I lied politely.

"So do we, Quia Kennerin."

"If you do," Meya said, "would you give him a message from me?"

"Quia?"

"Tell him that if he ever comes back to this planet, I'll have him shot." She left the room.

The men looked at each other without expression, and went down the hill. I never saw them again, but a month later we had word that Tev Drake could not be found, and was presumed dead in the Gregory/Acanthus sector. Meya greeted the news with relief.

But I thought about Albion-Drake with increasing frequency. We had the plantation, we had the shipping line. If we could acquire the processing factory our profits would double, and we'd be paying nothing to outside concerns. The thought excited me, and I felt alive and enthusiastic for the first time since Jason's accident. I talked it over with Quilla and Jes, and began laying plans. It would take time, effort, and money, but it would be worth it.