Chapter Twelve
FOR THE FIRST TIME in her life, Anna knew insomnia firsthand. Despite her busy existence some commonly overscheduled combination of school, music, friends, art, dance, and sports crowded every day or maybe because of it, she’d always managed to fall asleep within five minutes of crawling into bed.
Sleeping wasn’t something you thought about. It was just something you did, as automatic as breathing.
Until tonight. Fighting off familiar drowsiness, she slipped on her favorite flannel nightgown and opened her windows a crack to let in both the cool night air and nature’s music, the sounds of the wind in the trees and the insects and birds calling across the woods and fields around the mansion. She curled up on her right side, as usual, and expected to be asleep before she knew it.
However, sleep fluttered just out of reach, like an
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evasive butterfly. After fifteen minutes of unaccustomed wakefulness, she felt the mattress pressing against her ribs, something she’d never noticed be-fore. She had to change position, something else that was new.
With more than a little dismay, she discovered that no other position felt right. She tried the mirror image, lying on her left side instead of her right. She tried lying on her back, then her stomach. She tried fluffing her pillow, then tossing it aside.
Nothing worked. By the time an hour had passed, Anna realized she was no longer drowsy at all. Fully awake at an hour when she should have been fast asleep, she found herself distracted by outdoor noises she’d always found soothing. The irregular rhythms of the night birds’ chatters and hoots, the staccato chirps of the crickets all the voices of the darkness clashed like an orchestra trying vainly to get in tune.
She got out of bed and went to the kitchen, taking care to be as silent as possible. She didn’t want to wake the household help or her mother. She just wanted a snack to quiet her grumbling stomach. Then she planned to try falling asleep again.
After another hour of tossing and turning, she switched her bedside lamp on and read for an hour, hoping the concentration would make her sleepy.
That didn’t work either. Her mind raced in a way she’d never experienced before, flitting from one recollection of the day’s events to another. There were McCoy and Rousseau and her mother and her friends. There was Ethan and Eleni. Like scenes from a play, she repeated key snippets of the most important conversations over and over, then over again.
She could understand that. The things she’d learned that day about Dr. McCoy and her mother, about Ethan’s feelings for her had changed forever who she thought she was and who she might yet become. 115
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There were momentous decisions to be made, and the ripples from those decisions would churn not only her life but those of loved ones and friends as well. After this day, nothing would or could ever be the way it had been yesterday, before the Starship Enterprise had arrived.
But with all those crucial concerns to occupy her and keep her awake, why was there a song, a popular trifle she’d heard on the music channel, running through her head like some out-of-synch soundtrack? Why was she thinking about and unable to remember what she’d had for breakfast? Why was she thinking about how many strokes of her hairbrush it took to get out all the tangles each morning?
Why was she thinking about trivia?
Eventually, she gave up both trying to sleep and controlling her thoughts. She curled up in the overstuffed chair near her bedroom window, opened the delicate wood blinds, and watched the first thin line of dawn glowing on the horizon. Then she got up, got dressed, and tiptoed into the kitchen. There, she stopped to wrap a few of yesterday’s muffins in a cloth napkin, bundled them into a tote bag, and left the house.
Anna wasn’t sure if her choice of paths through the countryside was intentional or simply unconscious. But she found herself on the hill overlooking Ethan’s family pasture. The animals were all in the barns. The morning mist hung low, droplets clinging to the dark green grass twinkling in the first rays of the sun. She thought about the childhood afternoons she and Ethan and their friends had spent on this hill, rolling down in summer, racing down on sleds and skis when the snows came.
Now she stood there alone in the quiet of dawn. Until it was shattered by one sharp, explosive clap of sound ringing out across the pasture. Though she’d
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only heard that sound a few times before, Anna recognized it as a gunshot. Probably from the target pistol Ethan had asked for as a boy and had been using more and more often lately. He liked to set wooden blocks up as targets on a rotting section of old fence in the north corner of the pasture. It was far enough away from houses and barns that the noise didn’t bother people or animals.
She headed that way, down the hill and across the field, then through the old stand of trees that bordered the pasture. Three more shots rang out, each louder than the last, confirming that she was getting closer.
She found Ethan where she expected him to be, reloading the black steel gun with its pearl handle. “Hi,” she said as she came up behind him.
He turned, then grinned when he realized it was Anna. “Hi. How’d you know I’d be out here?”
“I told you you’re predictable,” she said with a sly look in her eye, knowing he’d remember their teasing from the night before. She glanced at the top fence rail. Nothing standing on it. “Did they fall off, or did you shoot them off?”
“I shot them.”
“Getting pretty good at this.”
“I guess.”
“I can understand target shooting in a range with an energy-pulse weapon, but why do you like shooting with that old replica? It’s so noisy.”
“So?”
“Didn’t those things go out of style a couple of centuries ago?”
“Why do you play old music?”
“Is there an analogy there?”
Ethan gave her a goofy shrug. “Maybe not. I just think it’s more of a challenge this way. The weapon’s not as exact, the conditions aren’t so perfect, like in a range.”
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“Sounds old-fashioned.”
He bristled, taking the observation like a personal insult. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” she said hastily, startled by his reaction.
“Sometimes I think we’re too quick to say all the old stuff is bad. Sometimes we’re so busy rushing to where we’re going, we forget where we’ve been.”
Anna came closer to him with a reassuring smile. “I know what you mean.”
Then the closeness seemed to make them both uncomfortable, and she backed a couple of steps away. He finished reloading, then went to the fence to set up five new target blocks, each about four inches square.
Anna stood where the dirt was scuffed, guessing that to be Ethan’s finug line. Raising her hands as if holding the gun, she squinted toward the fence. The targets looked awfully small from here. Ethan watched her with amusement.
“You want to try?”
“Me? I’ve never shot an old-style gun. And I was never very good with pulse weapons either.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t try.”
“I guess not. Okay. What do I do?”
He placed the gun in her hands, then showed her how to hold it in a two-handed grip, with his own hands on top of hers. The touch of their skin had the same distracting effect on each of them. Glances flitted with an intentional randomness, as if neither wanted to be caught looking at the other’s face. Ethan stuttered uncharacteristically as he explained how to aim and pull the trigger, warning about the recoil when the gun fired.
“You got all that?”
She continued looking blankly at the targets, as if she didn’t hear his question.
“I said, did you get all that?”
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“Umm, yeah.”
He released her hands and stepped back. “Try it.”
Steadying the gun, Anna aimed and squeezed the trigger. Despite his coaching, the blast and kick caught her by surprise and she let out a sharp, reflexive shriek. To nobody’s surprise, the targets survived her one-shot assault unscathed. She and Ethan both stared at the blocks, then at each other, and they started to laugh.
She handed the weapon back to him more abruptly than was necessary.
He looked a little disappointed. “Don’t you want to try again?”
“No, thanks. You hungry?”
“Sure. What’ve you got?”
She unwrapped the muffins and handed him one. “Were you going to shoot some more?”
Ethan shrugged. “That’s enough for this morning.”
“Want to walk?”
“Where?”
“No place in particular.”
“Okay. Just let me pack up.”
Munching down the rest of the muffin, he gathered the remaining target blocks and put them and his gun into an old backpack. He rejoined her, and she gave him another muffin. Then they walked across the pasture without speaking, side by side close, but not too close. They seemed determined to avoid looking directly at each other.
“How do you feel about loose ends?” Anna asked after a while.
“Never liked ‘em much.”
“Me neither.”
“Ethan.” She exhaled slowly. “I know how you feel about me.”
“You do?” he asked as if in peril.
In that one briefly eloquent question, he seemed to
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Anna simultaneously relieved and afraid. It wasn’t hard to understand his ambivalence. As long as his feelings had been a secret at least from her he’d been free to fantasise or suffer in private. Free to do nothing. But now that they were bringing everything out in the open, she had no idea what might come next and no idea what she wanted to come next.
“I wondered if you knew,” he said
“Until yesterday, it seems like I was the only one who didn’t,” she admitted. “I’m kind of thick sometimes.”
“That’s true.”
She frowned at him in mock annoyance. “You didn’t have to agree so quickly.”
“Who told you? Eleni?”
“Miss Busybody,” Anna said with a ironic curl of her lips.
“So now that you know …” He swallowed, unsure of what to ask or how to ask it.
Anna saved him. “Do I feel the same way?”
“Yeah.”
She stopped walking, closed her eyes, and tipped her head back, letting the sun warm her face. Then she looked right into his eyes for the first time this morning. “I never really thought about this before.”
“Never?”
“Well, I thought about it, but not about any one specific person.”
“Oh.” He looked down. “So I guess that means you don’t feel the same way.”
She bent forward so she could look up at his face. “I didn’t say that.”
“Then you do?” he asked, straightening up.
“I didn’t say that either.” Exasperation edged into her voice. “Why are men so di.icult?”
“Why are women so difficult?”
Without warning, she started walking again. It took him a couple of strides to catch up.
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“We really are old enough to think about a future together, Ethan.”
“So? You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not bad. I just don’t know if I’m ready for it. Are you?”
“I don’t know. But thinking about it doesn’t mean we have to get married tomorrow.”
“This isn’t just fantasising. I don’t want to say anything to hurt you, and I definitely don’t want to get hurt.” She shut her eyes and sighed. “Why is this so hard?”
“Why is what so hard?”
“Thinking about love, and about having a future with someone when I don’t even know if I have a future…” The instant she’d said those last few words, she regretted it. She’d let slip far more than she wanted to. Or had she?
His eyes had taken on a glaze at the sound of the word love coming from Anna’s lips. It wasn’t until a few moments later that the rest of what she’d said registered in his brain. His frown combined concern and confusion. “What do you mean?”
She waved off the question. “Never mind.”
“Never mind.?! You sound like you’ve got a death sentence hanging over your head.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Anna, you meant something “
“It’s just all this stuff with the Federation outpost, that’s all. It’s just one little treaty, but it’s everything.”
They came to a fence and leaned their elbows on the top rail. A dock of sheep grazed on the other side, and Anna and Ethan watched them as a welcome excuse to avoid looking at each other again.
“Ethan, how would you feel if you got married and didn’t have children?”
“Why wouldn’t I have children?”
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“Well, say, your wife couldn’t for some reason.”
After a moment, he said softly, “I kind of always assumed I’d be a father, have a family.”
Her questioning became more insistent. “But what if you couldn’t?”
He had to look at her now, and he did. “I guess if I was with someone I really loved, it wouldn’t matter. Why are you asking me this? Are we talking about you?”
“No. “
“Is there something wrong? Are you sick?”
“No,” she whispered. She rested her folded arms flat on the fence rail, then leaned her head forward, her eyes downcast. Should she tell him? She felt like she had to tell someone or she’d explode. Ethan was her best friend. And he loved her. Maybe she even loved him. Maybe if she told him, she’d know for certain. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Ethan, you have to swear you’ll never tell another living soul.”
“Tell ‘em what?”
“What I’m about to tell you. No matter what happens, no matter how you feel, no matter what happens to me. Do you promise?”
His mouth felt like dust and his stomach went queasy. He began to regret having those muffins. “I promise.”
Then, with a calmness that astonished her, she told him. Everything. Once she began, the words came more easily than she could ever have imagined. Ethan listened in silence, his face a blank mask. As she spoke, she wondered what he was thinking. Whatever it was, there was no going back now.
“So, those are my choices,” she said as she finished the story. “I can leave with Dr. McCoy, or I can stay and face punishment and ruin my mother’s career … I can stay and go into hiding … or I can stay, skip the genetic scan, and just pretend I can’t
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have children for some private medical reason. So…” Her voice trailed off. Essentially, she’d run out of things to say. And she desperately wanted to know what was going through Ethan’s mind now that he knew.
“If you leave,” he said simply, “I’m going with you.”
“Ethan, you can’t do that.”
“Try and stop me.”
“The captain of the Enterprise may stop you.”
“Then if I can’t go with you now, sooner or later I wid leave this planet, somehow, and I’ll find you.”
“Is that a threat?” she teased.
“Of course not!”
She smiled and brushed her fingers through his hair. “That’s very sweet, Ethan. But I think you might change your mind about that after I’ve been gone awhile.”
“I don’t think so.” He stood quietly, looking at her face. “What about Dr. McCoy? You said he was going to try and find a way to get you past the genetic scan.”
Her shoulders slumped in a disheartened shrug. “Trying and succeeding aren’t the same thing.”
“I made you a promise. Now you have to make me one.”
“What?”
“Tell me what happens. Tell me what you decide. I don’t want to wake up one day and find out you’ve just disappeared.”
She nodded. They hugged and held each other for a long time, sealing a bond made of equal parts hope and despair.