"You know I can't, Kim."
"That's not what I asked."
"Do I want to go to China? Of course not. But I don't get a say in these matters. That's the problem. It's always going to be like this. They're always going to send me away."
She turned and faced him. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying this is a moment of decision. I know we've never discussed marriage, but you and I both know that's where this relationship is headed. We dance around the word, but we're both thinking about it."
"Of course I think about it," she said. "That's what people our age do, Mazer. They look for someone with whom to spend the rest of their life."
"And is this the kind of marriage you want?" Mazer asked. "Do you want a husband who goes off for six months or years at a time? Is that the kind of father you want for your children? One who's absent most of the time? People don't get married to live apart, Kim."
"No, people get married because they love each other and want to make babies together, Mazer. People get married because they see happiness ahead of them with someone."
"Yes, but you don't see that with me," said Mazer. "You see a world of lonely, sleepless nights, worrying about whether or not I'm bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere."
"Don't say that."
"You're proving my point, Kim. Whenever I leave on assignment, you're near crazy with worry. At first I thought it was endearing because it meant you deeply cared for me. Now it makes me sick to think about it. I can't stand that I make you feel that way."
She turned away, back to the window.
"I've always been afraid to start a family for this reason, Kim. When I joined up I resigned myself to being single. I wasn't going to be an absent father and husband. Then I met you, and I convinced myself that I could make it work. I told myself that our commitment to each other and to our children would be strong enough to endure any separation. But now I see that I was only being selfish. I was thinking about my happiness, not yours. You deserve someone who can be with you and share the load every day of your life."
She didn't turn around.
"I can't leave the military," he said. "I'm in for at least five more years. I don't have a choice on that. Asking you to wait until I get back from China is the same as asking you to wait five years, which I won't do. That's not fair to you."
He waited for her to move, to look at him, to say something. She didn't.
"Marriage to me wouldn't be marriage, Kim. You'd be committed to someone who wasn't there. You'd be raising children by yourself. I saw my father do that when my mother died and he moved us to London. He was not a happy man, Kim. Without my mother, he was a shell of who he was. He tried to stamp out all the Maori culture my mother had ingrained into me as a kid because it reminded him of her and it pained him too much to see it. The songs, the stories, the dances, he outlawed them all. I was to be a proper Englishman like him. An Anglo. As if Mother had never existed. Only, he couldn't change the color of my skin. That stayed dark no matter how many boarding schools he put me in."
He crossed the room and stood behind her.
"You don't want your children to have only one parent, Kim. I know that life. I don't want it for my kids, either."
She turned to him. She was crying but her voice was steady. "I'd like to believe that you're being noble and self-sacrificing, Mazer, but all I'm hearing is that you don't want a life with me."
He didn't know how to respond. Of course he wanted a life with her. Didn't she see that? The issue was it wasn't a life they could have. It would be a life without each other.
But before he could form a response, she went to her shelf, pulled down a Med-Assist device, and handed it to him. "One of the American versions," she said. "With my voice. You said you wanted one, so there you are. Something to remember me by."
It was a dismissal. Everything they had built between them was brushed aside in that one gesture.
It was what he had come to do, what he knew he needed to do for her sake, but now that it was done, now that the business was over, a sick empty feeling sank in his gut like a dead weight. He had to explain himself better.
He di
dn't get a chance.
She walked out and left him there. He waited twenty minutes but she never returned. When employees started showing up and turning on the lights to the offices all around him, he tucked the Med-Assist under his arm and made his way to the lifts.
It was the right thing to do, he kept telling himself. For her happiness, long-term, it was the right thing to do.
CHAPTER 6
China