Deep Waters

unforeseen consequences occur. It means that I failed to use Tal Kek Chara correctly."
    "Hey, nobody's perfect."
    "That is no excuse," he shot back. "Elias, it's not your fault that Keyworth tried to commit suicide. But if it's going to eat at you like this, I suggest you do something about it."
    "Such as?"
    She hesitated, thinking quickly. "You could go see him, I suppose. That would be a start. Talk to him. Make your peace with him."
    "And just how the hell do you suggest that I do that, Madam Therapist? What am I supposed to say to a man who tried to kill himself because of me?"
    "I don't know. I've never been in a situation like this. Maybe you need to tell him that you don't want the past to repeat itself. Does he have children?"
    "A son who hates his guts."
    Charity nodded. "Tell Keyworth not to do to his kid what your parents did to you."
    "My parents." Elias looked thunderstruck.
    "Tell Keyworth he's got no right to abandon his son. That if he really wants to atone for what happened all those years ago on Nihili, he must fulfill his responsibilities in the present."
    Elias stared at her. Charity could almost see him gathering himself, searching for the center, summoning his power. She thought she caught another fleeting glimpse of the beast of loneliness prowling within him just before the barriers solidified and shut her out.
    "You don't know enough about the situation to make a suggestion like that," Elias said in a voice that was more remote than the moon. "Forget about Keyworth. I'll deal with it."
    "Sure."
    "About us," he began deliberately. "I told you a few minutes ago that you were half right when you said that I regret that you came into my garden last night and that we spent the night together."
    "I think I can guess which half I got right. You wish I hadn't seen you acting like a normal human being with your defenses down, but, what the hell, the sex was okay."
    "The sex was a lot better than okay."
    She managed a cool smile. "Yes, it was, wasn't it?"
    He pushed his uneaten muesli aside and folded his arms on the low table. "It might have been better if we had waited to begin our relationship under more auspicious circumstances. But what's done is done."
    "That's certainly a charmingly romantic view of our little night of passion."
    "What I'm trying to say is that, while I wish it had happened at a different time, I don't regret that we've moved to the next stage of our relationship."
    Charity looked at her watch. "Good grief, it's nearly eight o'clock. I've got to run home, change, and get ready to open the shop at ten."
    "Charity—"
    "I'll see you at the pier." She leaped to her feet, scooped up her bowl and spoon, and dashed across the room to dump them into the sink.
    "Damn it, Charity, wait a minute."
    "Don't forget, dinner at my place this evening." She stepped into her sandals and yanked open the front door. "This is the big night for the Voyagers and their spaceships. Better bring a jacket. It'll probably be chilly out on the bluff at midnight."
    She fled into the early-morning fog.

8

    The currents shift without warning yet the surface of the water appears to be the same to the observer. In such a situation there is great danger,

    —"On the Way of Water," from the journal of Hayden Stone

    Charity pounced on the perfectly shaped red bell pepper in the grocery store vegetable bin. "Gotcha."
    She slipped several more plump peppers into a plastic bag and placed her booty in the shopping cart.
    Seizing the handlebar of the cart, she leaned into the task of forcing it down another aisle. It took considerable effort to keep the vehicle tracking in a reasonably straight line. One wheel kept veering off at a crazy angle.
    She breathed a sigh of relief when she found the packages of dried seaweed next to the seasoned rice wine vinegar. She grabbed two envelopes full of the glistening, dark green sheets of nori and a bottle of the vinegar and dumped it all into the cart.
    It hadn't been easy selecting a menu for tonight's dinner. Her main concern had been choosing recipes that called for ingredients she could count on finding at the Whispering Waters Cove Grocery. A year ago when she first moved into town, tonight's menu would have been an impossible dream. But her intensive efforts to cultivate the store manager had paid off.
    The real problem, she decided as she did battle with the recalcitrant cart, was not locating the ingredients for tonight's dinner. The more critical issue was, why was