"You've been back for at least four months," she says. She is quiet and without admonition; this is a statement of fact, and that more than anything is what makes me ashamed.

"Yes," I reply, for what else do I have to say?

"It's nice to see you." She pauses. Her hair -- she looks nothing like our father; she must look like her mother. She is beautiful. "I wish you'd come by last month; I could have used your help taking down that smuggler."

"I'm sure you did an admirable job." She brings me a mug full of steaming tea. It smells wonderful. I take a small sip and burn my tongue -- it tastes better than it smells. I feel as though I am home; I feel as though I never left Canada.

"I could've used an extra pair of hands." And she sits across from me, in the chair furthest from the fire. She has her own mug of tea that she sips from periodically. We stare at each other; there is nothing else to say.

And then she speaks -- "Where is Ray?"

"Ray?" I repeat. Which Ray? How could she think I'd --

"Yes. Ray. Your partner. I thought..." She trails off and shakes her head. "I don't know what I thought."

"Ray would never be happy here." I don't like to think about our ill-fated, aborted journey. Ray wanted an adventure; he was finished with having an adventure almost before it began. I drained the last of my tea, almost too cold now. "But --"

"But you are."

"But I am." I set the mug on the floor next to my chair.

She nods her head, and her hair falls forward, curves under her chin. It's paler than my own, but dark enough that I must wonder -- perhaps what I love about her is what I see of myself in her; we are all so narcissistic, in the end. Perhaps what she loves about me is the same -- if she loves me at all, for reasons other than that of blood.

"I am too," she says quietly, and it is my turn to nod my head.