Alex’s experience of real family – of blood relations – was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it. He’d loved his parents when they were alive, and he still loved his memory of them. His cousins were always happy to see him, and he was glad of their welcome and their company. Seeing Bobbie and her brother together and feeling even in that brief moment the deep and unbridgeable mismatch of character between them drove something home to Alex.

A mother could love her daughter more than life itself the way the stories told, or she could hate the girl’s guts. Or both. A sister and brother could get along or fight each other or pass by in a kind of uncomfortable indifference.

And if real relationship-by-blood shared descent could mean any of those things, maybe family was always a metaphor.

He was still thinking about it when he got to Min’s hole. Her boys and the girl that she and her husband had adopted were all there, sharing a meal of fish and noodles when he arrived, and they all greeted him like they knew him, like his injuries were important to them, like they cared. He sat at the table for a little bit, making jokes and minimizing the assault and its aftermath, but what he wanted to do – what he did as soon as his sense of etiquette allowed – was excuse himself and head back to the guest room they’d set aside for him.

A message was waiting for him from the Roci. From Holden. Seeing the familiar blue eyes and tousled brown hair was weirdly displacing. Alex felt like part of him was already on the way back to the Rocinante, and he was a little surprised not to be there already.

“Alex. Hey, hope things are going well out there, and that Bobbie is good.”

“Yeah,” Alex said to the playback. “Funny you’d ask.”

“So, I’ve been looking into this thing with missing ships? And there’s a suspicious hit out at 434 Hungaria. Any chance you have access to a ship? If you need to rent one, feel free to pull the funds from my account. I’d like you to go see if a ship named the Pau Kant is sitting out there parked and dark. Specs on the transponder code attached to this message.”