Kaldarren’s head moved in a curt nod. “Fine,” he said, barely moving his lips. Kaldarren had all the animation of a piece of stone, and the dark eyes that had once burned for her were hard and flinty. “Jason is fine. My mother’s fine. Now that’s out of the way, what happened to you?”

“Well, yes,” Garrett tried a smile, “I guess I missed you on Betazed. You’re calling from a ship, right? Right. So you and Jase have already left…”

“Oh, were you really planning on coming?” Kaldarren’s black eyes went wide with mock astonishment. “Forgive me, Rachel, I guess I misinterpreted. When Jason’s birthday came and went and we didn’t hear from you, I assumed that, after a week, we were free to leave the planet. Or were you planning on surprising us by dropping by in another month?”

Garrett was stung, and then angry. What the hell did Kaldarren know about what she was going through, anyway? They hadn’t talked in months, really, and so he didn’t have a clue about what it was like to lose a perfectly good officer, a friend, and all because she was stupid enough to…

Stop.That damn little voice again, but Garrett held back long enough to swallow the retort pushing against her lips. Listen to what he’s saying. You let them down,again. He’s right to be angry.

“You’re right to be angry,” she said. It seemed as good a line as any, and the little voice, for once, was dead on. “I said I would come to Betazed, and I didn’t. I didn’t even call. That was wrong of me, and you’re right.”

“Yes,” said Kaldarren, clearly not mollified. “I wasangry, and I’m stillangry. Do you want to know why?”

No.“I have a pretty good idea, but, sure, tell me.” Let her rip; I deserve it.

“It’s not because of me, my feelings, though I doubt very much that they enter into your equations these days. There’s nothing between us anymore, and we know that.”

Garrett knew that this was where Kaldarren was wrong. Hatred and love: They were intense emotions, and a person didn’t waste emotions on anything that was unimportant. So their hatred—and was it hate, or just plain hurt?—was important to him, and maybe to her. Garrett’s mind drifted to the words of an ancient poet who’d once written that our worst monsters are the people we’ve loved the most intensely. Ovid, she thought.

“I’m angry because of what you’re doing to our son.” Kaldarren’s face was taut with emotion, and Garrett saw then that his eyes were sadder than she remembered, more deeply set, the circles beneath them more pronounced, as if Kaldarren wasn’t sleeping well. A tracery of fine wrinkles splayed like wings from the corners of his eyes, and the black hair, which he still wore loose, was shot through with silver at the temples. “I’m angry because every time you let him down is one more wound that won’t heal, and believe me, I know how much that…”

Kaldarren broke off then turned his face from his viewscreen, but not before Garrett saw the pain. How many days and nights had Kaldarren waited for her? Too many, she knew.

“How much that hurts,” she said. “How much it hurts to hope, and then have your hopes destroyed and not be able to do a damn thing about it.”

“Yes.” Kaldarren’s voice was a hiss. “Yes.Every time you don’t keep your word, I see how Jase suffers. I remember how much Isuffered.”

She saw that his fists bunched, and though they were too far apart—and she was no telepath—she felt his anger and hurt and frustration.

“You had your own work,” said Garrett. There was more defensiveness in her tone than she wanted, and she felt her migraine knife its way into the space behind her eyeballs. “You made sure you weren’t around.”

“What was I supposed to do? Wait until my wife decided it was convenient for her to happen by my little corner of the galaxy? Sit around in an empty house, hoping that the next call would be from the woman who said she loved me but who could never seem to find the time to actually bewith me?”

“Please.” Garrett closed her eyes. Her brain felt bruised, and she was suddenly nauseated. She’d been standing, but now she sagged into her chair, licked her lips. “Please, Ven.”

“Please what? Please pretend that I didn’t hurt? Please make believe that we can be civilized about this?”

“No. I know we can’t. But we’ve been over this. What purpose does it serve to keep…?”

“Don’t tellme what we’ve been over!” Kaldarren paused, took some deep breaths then continued, his tone more controlled, “If I want to go over it a thousandtimes, you willlisten. You owe me the courtesy, at least.”

“Oh?” She sounded spiteful, even to herself. But she couldn’t help it. “I do?”

“Yes. Oh. You do. Because you’re doing it again, only this time you’re doing it to a little boy who loves you. A little boy who worships his mother, thinks she’s the greatest woman alive because she commands a starship.” Kaldarren said this with a sort of flourish, a flash of bravura. “The Great Captain Rachel Garrett. Commander of the illustrious Enterprise,the flagship of Starfleet.”

Garrett felt the heat rise in her neck and, my God, her head was killing her. The lights in her ready room were too damn bright. She narrowed her eyes to cut down on the glare. “I’m not after Jase’s worship. I’m not out to be anyone’shero.”

And that little voice: Liar, liar, liar.

“Don’t,” Kaldarren said. “Don’t lie to me, and don’t lie to yourself. This is what you’ve always wanted, Rachel. More than you ever wanted love or family, you’ve wanted command. Well, now you have it. But you still have responsibilities.”

Garrett flared, the blinding jabs of pain in her temples making her even angrier. “I know that.Damn you, Ven, you try sitting in this chair day after day, making the really hard decisions and knowing that the lives of your crew…”

“Stop.” Kaldarren scrubbed away her words with the flat of his hand. “Rachel, to be very frank, I couldn’t care less about your duties, or your really hard decisions. They’re no more real or harder than the ones I face, every day, as Jason’s father. So I don’t care about your crew, or your starship. I don’t even know if I care about you.”

He let that hang in the air between them for a moment. “You’ll never understand how that feels: not to know if I care about the woman I held in my arms, who gave birth to my son. But one thing I do know. I do care, verydeeply, about our son, and I will not let you hurt him. Nothingis more important than how you treat your son—not your work, not your ship, not your crew. You simply cannot keep doing this.”

“Or?” Garrett stared into Kaldarren’s unflinching eyes. She knew there was something he hadn’t spoken, a final piece he hadn’t divulged. “Or?”

Kaldarren looked away then, as if collecting his thoughts. Or maybe he simply hated what he felt forced to say. “Or I will make sure that you don’t see him.” He looked back, and those eyes of his locked onto hers and wouldn’t let go. “I have full custody.”

“Because we both knew that I couldn’t take Jase on a starship,” said Garrett, a little desperate now, her heart doing a little trip-hammer stutter-step against her ribs. “The only reason you got custody was we agreed…”

“And,” said Kaldarren, talking over her, “and I will go back to court if I have to and make sure that you are not allowed visitation. At. All.”

Stunned, Garrett could only stare. “I’m,” she said, hating that the words came out in panicked little hesitations, like a subspace transmission awash with interference, “you…Ven, you…can’t… wouldn’t.”

“I can. I would. I will.Rachel,” said Kaldarren, and the way he said her name, Garrett could almost believe, for a fraction of a second, that he didn’t hate her at all but was still, very desperately, in love. “Rachel, you can’t keep doing this. Please try to understand. I know you’re not a monster. I wouldn’t have loved a monster. At least, I don’t think I would, though we do seem to bring out the worst in each other. But what you do when you don’t keep a promise, that’smonstrous. That’s wrong. It’s not even humane. You have to make a choice. You chose against me once, against…us.”