Star Wars - Kenobi

followed. “You know, my offer still stands if you want to save yourself a walk. My guest room’s empty tonight. I’d love to have you—”
    “No!” Then, seemingly embarrassed, he adopted a calmer expression. “I mean, I’m sure your family and store will need all your attention after today. You don’t need company underfoot.”
    “I’ll have it, whether I want it or not,” she said, remembering the usual after-action routine of the vigilantes. Would they really expect to party in a Tusken-ravaged store?
    Yeah, probably, she thought.
    “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Ben said. He began walking toward his house. “I hope your patron is doing better.”
    Annileen blanched as she recalled the sight of the injured Rodian. “Poor Bohmer,” she said. “I was thinking about him earlier, too. He always sat there, staring. I never knew why. But I just imagined such sadness in his life, to make him sit there. For him to get hurt like that—”
    Ben stopped and looked back. “It wasn’t sadness.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I saw him today—and on my first trip, there, as well.” Ben clasped his hands together. “I could tell. That wasn’t sadness. That was contentment .”
    Annileen stared. “How do you know?”
    “It’s just a feeling,” he said, blue eyes looking off into the setting suns. “But I’ve seen sadness before, in all kinds of faces. Bohmer was content. The drink you brought him in the morning, the table he sat at—it was his place in the universe.”
    “But he got hurt there—”
    “Protecting the place he loved. I think he’ll be okay with that.” Ben turned and began walking again up the hill in silence.
    Annileen thought back to Ben talking about loss, earlier in the day. He was struggling with something, she could tell—something pretty bad. But at the same time, he seemed so centered. Centered, in the middle of nowhere.
    She fumbled for words before finally settling on three. “Who are you?”
    Ben laughed. “Ben. We’ve been over this.”
    No joke. Annileen shook her head. “Freelance philosopher of the desert, doctoring and rescuing!”
    “I don’t think it happened that way. You’ll remember it differently, later.”
    Annileen stood at the foot of the hill and put her hands on her hips. “Well, you’re wasting your talent out here. Someone like you—you ought to be doing something.” She paused, before going ahead with the impetuous addition: “Or you ought to have a family to watch over.”
    Ben paused. He looked over his shoulder at her, the little smile back on his face. “Well, you never know. Perhaps I already have a family to watch over.”
    Annileen rolled her eyes. She turned and climbed onto her speeder bike.
    “Oh,” Ben called suddenly. He reached into the folds of his cloak and retrieved something rectangular from his pocket. “I just realized, in the commotion—I still have your datapad.”
    “Keep it,” Annileen said, grinding the throttle. “Souvenir of a crazy day.”
    “But the safari. Your application—”
    “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “There’s a new species to study right here.” She released the brake and soared away.
    As stressful days for Annileen went, this one already ranked only behind Jabe’s difficult breech birth. And it wasn’t over.
    After Ben’s, she stopped by Doc Mell’s place. Learning that Bohmer was sedated and resting in Bestine, she returned home, anticipating a mess of a store—and another war, when she found Jabe. He’d skipped out on work, taken up with trashy friends, and defied her by going after Tuskens. Twice! It was one thing to arrive butt-first into the world, but Jabe was going for the endurance record.
    She wasn’t surprised to see lights on inside the Claim, with landspeeders scattered about. What did surprise her was the Claim itself, once she stepped through the door.
    Yes, there were drunkards celebrating; more than she’d ever seen in the place before. But the store itself was spotless. The gun counter and shelves had been repaired, the nasty smears on the floor were gone, and products were back on their shelves reasonably close to where they belonged. The smell was even gone.
    Raising a drink from within a gathering of mostly male revelers, Leelee smiled at her. “Everyone who didn’t go with the posse pitched in,” she said. “It gave us something to do.”
    Annileen looked around, suspicious. She didn’t trust anyone to be in her store without a