Page 147 of Commander’s Mate

Harper had never known old Farseek.

That made her dangerous to nostalgia.

Useful too.

She had no reason to rebuild our mistakes simply because we missed them.

I looked at Meya’s carving.

If she was alive, I wanted her back.

Every part of me wanted to drag her out of whatever place held her and bring her home.

But which home?

The one that burned?

The dreadnought?

A Haloran district?

Some future settlement none of us had built yet?

I had spent weeks learning that wanting Harper did not decide Harper.

I would have to learn the same lesson with my own people.

The thought irritated me.

Growth was irritating that way.

I picked up my mother’s broken ceramic.

One day, perhaps, there would be a new kitchen.

Not hers.

That hurt.

It was also the point.

We were not preserving a corpse.

We were building something that had survived it.

The shelf could remember.

The registry could search.

The future would have to become something else.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Harper

I did not know how to walk back into a room full of women who had been stolen from their lives when I had spent the night in the arms of the man who had rescued us.

Going back was harder than I expected.