Homecoming - Christie Golden [16]
The way he was staring at her told her that she, too, had changed. Probably more than he. But children grew up, and parents grew old, and that was the way of the universe, wasn’t it? What did the universe care that one little half-Klingon woman grieved the death of her mother, and the aging of her father, and mourned even more deeply the opportunities for joy that the ill-fated triangle had missed?
Cradled in her mother’s arms, Miral made a soft, squawking noise. It broke the uncomfortable pause that had ensued after the first stiff round of greetings had been exchanged. At once, B’Elanna’s attention was diverted from father to child.
“May I hold her?” John Torres asked.
Not trusting her voice, B’Elanna nodded. As she placed Miral in her grandfather’s arms, B’Elanna’s body briefly touched her father’s. It was the first touch they had exchanged in years, and it felt like a shock passed through them.
Daddy.
And then the instant of physical warmth was gone, and John Torres was smiling down at his granddaughter. “She’s beautiful,” he said softly. “I am so sorry her namesake couldn’t be here.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tom open his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything, and before she could lose her courage, B’Elanna blurted, “How did my mother die?”
“So much for small talk,” Tom muttered.
[46] Torres’s eyes flickered from the baby to his daughter. He looked dreadfully uncomfortable. For a moment, the thought flared in B’Elanna’s mind: Good. He should be uncomfortable.
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him. All the warmth that she had been feeling for him turned to ice.
“How the hell can you not—”
“B’Elanna,” John said softly but firmly, “they never found the body. Your mother went on some sort of, I don’t know, some Klingon ritual. She never came back and was declared dead a year ago per Klingon law. I only learned about it myself quite recently. We—we weren’t in close contact.”
Shame washed over B’Elanna and she felt her cheeks grow hot. She was acutely aware of the Parises standing awkwardly by, trying to be present and yet not intervene. Tom had been right. Small talk would have been better.
There was not even a word in the Klingon language for “small talk.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that—”
“B’Elanna, dear,” said Mrs. Paris, “it’s all right. Everyone understands. You’ve had quite an adjustment to make and there’s so much that’s changed. Of course you’re going to be off-balance for a little while.”
The human woman reached as if to take her daughter-in-law’s hand, then seemed to think better of it. Before Julia could withdraw, B’Elanna reached out and clasped the other woman’s extended hand. A smile spread across Julia’s still-lovely face.
“B’Elanna received a message from someone named [47] Commander Logt,” Tom said. “It was pretty cryptic. She said she needed to talk to B’Elanna about her mother, and that it was kind of urgent.”
John Torres frowned. “That name rings a bell,” he said. “Though I can’t imagine why she’d want to talk about Miral as if it was urgent.”
B’Elanna dropped Julia’s hand. “I have to talk to her,” said B’Elanna. She surged forward to leave, but Tom’s hand closed about her upper arm.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “the banquet is only going to be a couple of hours. I promise, we’ll send a message to this Logt the minute it’s over.”
She turned angrily, a sharp retort on her lips, but it died when she saw the pleading in his blue eyes. It’s my mother we’re talking about! she wanted to scream.
But it was also her father they were talking about, and he was right here, warm and alive. And it was Tom’s mother, and Tom’s father. The strange experience—she couldn’t call it a dream—about encountering her mother on the Barge of the Dead was always in her mind. But she was not the child John Torres remembered, willful and headstrong and rash. B’Elanna Torres still had her Klingon passion and pride embedded in her genes, but she had learned patience.
Well, she amended with a rueful smile, she was at least learning patience.
She nodded at Tom. She would stay for the banquet.