10
A week. For seven whole days Trisha had been avoiding him, and Bill wasn’t sure why.
She hadn’t been obvious about it, so it had taken him a while to notice. She’d take the last open seat at a mostly occupied table at meals. Or be finishing a run on the hangar deck just as he was starting. She’d go straight from briefings to maintaining her machine, often conferring closely with a mechanic.
He’d found her more than once sitting out in the morning sun, discussing the aerodynamics of dragons with the Air Mission Commander’s kid. It was as if the girl had acquired a second mother. Kee doted on the girl but was terribly adult about it all. Trisha was different, maybe more like a big sister than a mother. She and Dilya were always laughing together, a wondrous sound that no sane man would
