That niggling little voice of conscience? Or was it her, accepting herself? Maybe, she conceded, it was both.
Jase traced the angle of his father’s jaw with one gray-smudged finger. “Do you remember what he looks like?”
Garrett inhaled the scent of wet earth and damp leaves. “Sometimes…no. And then sometimes, like here,” she nodded at the pond, the flowers, the blueglows, “I’ll smell something and then I’ll remember a picnic by Lake Cataria, what I wore, how your father made a joke and I spilled a glass of Potroian punch all over his shirt because I was laughing so hard.” And, so, why do I feel like crying?
“I can’t do that,” said Jase miserably. “I can’t think about him much without remembering what happened and how he looked when those things…”
Jase’s eyes pooled, but no tears came. “Why? Why didn’t they take me? Why Pahl and Dad? I felt them; I sawthem.”
Acting on impulse, Garrett put her arm around her son. She felt him stiffen, and for an insane moment, she thought that he was going to scream at her to get away; that she could never be like his father; that she’d left them both behind for her ship and people she loved better. She almost pulled away.
Stop running. You ran from Ven, and now you’re trying to run from him. You’re so ready to be rejected you’ll do the rejecting first.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. She thought back to the mind-cry she’d heard—Ven, calling—how strong that momentary connection had been. Fading now. Receding into memory.
“All I doknow is that, for a brief instant, I heard your dad calling. Up here.” She tapped her left temple. “Inside.”
“Yeah,” said Jase. “Me, too. Only it went both ways. Dad never talked to me that way. Said I needed my privacy. But sometimes he leaked.”
“Leaked. Thoughts?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I could hear him and Nan yelling, only not in words. You know? The air got,” he cupped his hands, “heavy. So I figured out how to make my head go gray. Like the way the sky looks just before it rains.”
An empath…or something more.Garrett felt an electric thrill tingle through her limbs. She wasn’t sure if it was from apprehension or excitement, and then decided it was a little of both. She’d always known Jase might inherit some of his father’s abilities. But what Jase described was so eerily close to telepathy, she wondered if she should have Stern, or maybe Tyvan, spend some time with Jase, maybe test him.
No. She reined in her natural desire to try to find an answer, close a loop. She had to let this go for now. The important thing now was to be here for her son, to be with him, and to let him talk about his father, and what would happen next.
“What’s going to happen next?” asked Jase, suddenly.
“What?” Garrett felt the way she had when her mother caught her climbing on the roof when Garrett was a little girl (and wasn’t thata whole other story). “Well, I’ve talked to your Nan on Betazed. We all think it would be better for you to live there.”
Jase looked solemn. “Does it matter what I think?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d like to stay here. I know I can’t,” he added quickly, “but I’d like to. I love you, Mom.”
Garrett put both arms around her son. No resistance this time. She felt the tension melt from his limbs as if he were flowing into her and becoming one. It was the way she remembered he’d been as a baby: a little ball of fury until she’d taken him in her arms and soothed him back to sleep.
“Oh, Mom.” He pressed his hot face against her neck and she felt the wet of his tears on her skin. “Mom, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m…”
“No, quiet,” she whispered, tears burning on her cheeks. “It’s all right; it’s all right for you to have been angry. I understand. I love you, Jase. I’ll always love you. And who knows? Maybe, someday, I’ll be able to take you with me, and we’ll live together on a starship and travel to places so far away that the light of where we’ve been won’t have time to catch up.”
She hugged him close. “Someday,” she said, and believed it.
In the turbolift, Castillo glanced at his chronometer, saw the time, and knew that Garrett was going to eat him for breakfast. He was going to be so late it wasn’t even funny. (Not that Castillo understood the origin of that expression. Where was the humor in being late? Maybe Glemoor could explain it.) It wasn’t his fault, either: the people over at transfer, the ones from Starfleet Command, theywere the ones insisting on forms being voice-printed three times over. Chain of custody, they called it. Figured. The first time the captain wanted Castillo at an official function—had specifically requestedhe show up, in dress uniform, on time—and here he was going to be late, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Other than a few pleasantries, they’d exchanged not two paragraphs on the ride over in the shuttlecraft. And now the turbolift seemed to be taking forever. Castillo fidgeted, staring in that blank, abstracted way at the flashing indicators just above the doors that he always did when riding in a turbolift with a complete stranger. Only he wasn’t with a stranger. They simply didn’t know to what to say to one another.
Then Halak spoke. “Any idea why they wanted the inquiry on Starbase 12 rather than the Enterprise?”
Careful. He’d been briefed on what to say. Castillo spoke to the indicator lights. “They don’t tell me why they do anything.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” A pause. “But you’ll be there.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re in dress. So I figured you were going to sit in. Observe?”
Castillo hiked one shoulder. “Maybe.” Then because he couldn’t stand the feeling he was having—the way he heard Tyvan’s voice in his head, telling him he couldn’t keep running from himself forever and would have to have more courage than he thought he possessed—Castillo said, “Stop.”
The turbolift jerked to a halt.
Halak turned, eyebrows raised. “Ensign? Is there something wrong?”
“No,” said Castillo. He licked his lips. Tyvan’s voice again: Getting started will be the hard part.“Yes.”
He filled his lungs, blew out. “Commander, I have to tell you something.”
“About what?”
Castillo was already regretting this (go away, Tyvan, just go away!),but he pushed on. “About what happened with Ani. Everything that happened, it was my fault.”
Halak’s brow creased. “Yourfault. How?”
“I…well, you know, we were close. Before you came.” When Halak just nodded, he continued, “And then you showed up and I could tell that Ani, she’d fallen hard. I was jealous, but I got over that. At least, I thought I had. People change their minds all the time, and…”
Castillo looked away for a moment, dreading what he knew he had to say. Sucked in a breath and continued. “Anyway, I would watch the two of you, and she looked so damned happy, I couldn’t stand it. I thought all kinds of things. Crazy stuff now that I look back on it, but pretty awful stuff.”
“I can imagine.” Halak’s voice was quiet. “You’re not the only one who’s ever been jealous.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I’d gotten past that. And then Ani came to talk to me. This was about a week before she died. We were still close after she took up with you, and we’d talk. We were friends.” Castillo wondered if he sounded too defensive then thought to hell with it.
“I know that. I never held it against you.” Halak paused. “What did she say?”
“She said she was having second thoughts. I wasn’t sure what about; she’d gone to see Stern. She wouldn’t tell me what Stern said, but whatever it was, she was pretty upset.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, Ensign. Ani’s dead, and…we’ll just never know. Dr. Stern won’t tell us, and it’s more than likely that, after the inquiry today…”