She might have seen Theo staring, because she smiled suddenly – a real smile, tired as it was. "So, we will take up the professorial lifestyle, as our mothers and grandmothers have done before us. It will be an adventure, won't it, Theo?"

Applying Father's definition of an adventure being a series of unlooked-for and uncomfortable events, Theo guessed that it would be.

She cleared her throat, suddenly wanting to be by herself to think, even in that nasty little den of a room. Pushing back from the table, she barely remembered to say, "Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Kamele."

"Of course," her mother said. "You're not a child anymore, Theo. It's time you began to ask these questions and to plan how you'll manage your own career." She waved an unsteady hand.

"I'll deal with the clean-up. Go and get your rest. Tomorrow's a school day."

Like she didn't know that, Theo thought, but she slid off the stool without any other comment than, "Good-night, Kamele."

"Good-night, daughter," her mother murmured, but she was looking down at the tabletop, her brows drawn together in a frown.

* * * *

"Who knew that two people could make such a noise," Jen Sar Kiladi murmured, "that the house is so silent in their absence?"

He put his palm against the door to Theo's room, and paused on the threshold as the lights came up.

"Thorough," he noted. "We can hope that she spent most of her angst in turning off her room, and has none left over for her mother."

She is, the voice that only he could hear commented, right to be upset. And she will ask questions.

"Agreed," he murmured, crossing the room to pick up a fallen book. "Only they might, might they not, be gentle questions?"

He sighed down at the book: Sam Tim's Ugly Day. An unfortunate translation, but a useful conceit that had delighted a much-younger Theo. Though she appeared, he thought, stretching to put the book up with its fellows, to have outgrown the conceit, yet she might still recall the lesson.