For Darkness Shows the Stars

relationship with your father.”
    “He wouldn’t have to know where you were.” But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Elliot understood. This was just like with Thom. No one could know. Certainly not Elliot. “Dee—”
    The older woman wiped her hands off on her skirt and stood. “This conversation is over, Elliot. I’m under your father’s authority, not yours. My choices are to follow his rules or leave.”
    “You know that’s not true. We’ve been breaking his rules for years, you and I.”
    But Dee ignored that. “If I leave, I endanger Jef.”
    “If you stay in the birthing house, how can you protect him?”
    “If you disobey your father’s direct orders, you can’t protect him if something goes wrong.” Dee sighed, and when she spoke again, her voice had a hitch in it. “And I need you to be able to do that, Elliot. Can’t you understand?”
    “I’m not a child anymore,” Elliot cried. “I can protect you both.”
    “We’re done talking about this. I’ve made up my mind.” Dee smacked the cow on the rump and it moved back into its stall.
    “So you make up your mind and that’s it? It’s done?” Elliot lifted her chin.
    “Don’t you give me that look, Elliot North. That haughty, Luddite look of yours. Kai wasn’t wrong about everything, you know. I know I can leave if I want. I knew that three years ago. I chose not to then, and I make the same choice now.”
    Elliot swallowed until her eyes stopped burning. “But why ?”
    “I just gave you half a dozen reasons.” Dee sighed again. “Fine. I’m willing to compromise. If this doesn’t blow over by the time I have this baby, you are free to break me out of the birthing house. I’ll leave, and I’ll take my family, and you won’t have to worry about us anymore.”
    That wasn’t true. She’d worried about Kai for four years. And with more Posts leaving the estate, she’d worry about the fate of the farm as well. But it was all she would get from Dee.
    “Enough of this,” Dee said. “Shift change is coming. Let’s go see if Gill and the young captain have made any progress on that tractor. I want to be there when he apologizes to you.”
    “Don’t hold your breath,” Elliot replied. “It’s not good for the baby.”
    KAI AND GILL WERE finished by the time Dee and Elliot arrived, and judging from their moods, they’d completely forgotten their argument the previous evening. Gill was laughing and slapping Kai on the back as the tractor hummed and sputtered away. Kai wore his sleeves pulled up and a grin Elliot hadn’t seen in four years. It stopped her in her tracks. She feared coming closer, dreaded being the reason for the smile to vanish from his face.
    Despite the previous night’s frost, the morning had turned unseasonably warm for winter, helped along somewhat by the bright sun and the deep blue of the cloudless sky. Much of the barnyard had turned to mud as the heat softened the frost, but Kai looked as if he’d escaped the worst of it, even if he had been on the ground beneath the machine.
    “Ladies!” Gill called. “The mechanic’s triumphant return!” He affected a flourished bow worthy of any Luddite lord, and Dee laughed and clapped. Kai still grinned, though once again he was not looking at Elliot.
    “Thank you,” she said to him nevertheless. “I’m afraid I never had the skill you did with this old hunk of junk.”
    He turned to grab his velvet jacket off a hook. “Yes, well. It was the least I could do.”
    “After . . . ?” Dee prompted, as Elliot wondered anew why there was no convenient sinkhole in the barnyard she could vanish into.
    “After my rudeness last night,” said Kai, doing up the buttons on his jacket. His hair covered his eyes as he spoke. “I never should have interrupted the festivities in that way.”
    “Really?” Dee crossed her arms. “That’s all you’re sorry about?”
    “Dee—” Elliot murmured.
    “Not all.” Kai lifted his head and looked at Elliot at last.

Twenty-one
     
    HIS EYES SEEMED TO bore right through her again, and Elliot had to ball her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. Had she been wrong last night, at the party? Had they always been like this? In her myriad memories of Kai, why could she not recall the strangeness in his clear black eyes? Was it the stark comparison between the handsome captain he was now and the grimy mechanic she’d once loved? Or was it that now she feared meeting his eyes and seeing