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you.”
    Keane paused with the fork halfway to his mouth, an eyebrow raised. “Sorry?”
    Marrin tensed, her gut twisting. It wasn’t the first time their apparent age difference had been brought up in casual conversation, but it had been quite a while. Anyone who knew them knew Keane wasn’t as young as his Seveeran genetics made him appear.
    â€œMy son,” Arlene said patiently, as though Keane were an idiot. “He graduated today with your girlfriend.”
    â€œMy girlfriend?” Keane’s face showed an amusement Marrin envied, but didn’t feel. He looked around the room, clearly biting back a laugh.
    â€œWell, yes…you’re Sarai’s boyfriend, aren’t you? I just guessed you—”
    â€œYou guessed because I was here with Marrin and behaving in such a familiar manner that I must somehow be related to her, and you assumed for some reason I was here because of her daughter, who graduated today with your son.” His smile remained pleasant, his voice light, but he’d set down his plate and put an arm around Marrin’s shoulders.
    Arlene looked confused, from Keane to Marrin and back again. “Well, yes.”
    â€œMarrin is my wife,” said Keane without changing his tone.
    If the woman’s face could have blushed any more crimson, Marrin didn’t see how. Arlene Simpson stammered and stuttered and backed away like Keane had somehow insulted her when really, she was the one who’d put her foot in her mouth.
    It made Marrin feel no better to watch the other woman’s distress. Much of the time she could forget her husband was of a different race that didn’t age the same way Earthers did. She aged every day. Keane did not.
    â€œDon’t let her bother you,” he murmured in her ear, his arm tightening around her waist that she was proud hadn’t thickened in their years together. “She didn’t know.”
    â€œI know.”
    Marrin put on a smile, talking with the rest of the parents and well-wishers, but by the time the day was over she had a pounding headache from gritting her jaw. Tears stung her eyes as she sought the privacy of her bath chamber and splashed cold water on her temples. Sarai had gone to a graduation celebration, taking her sisters with her, and the quiet house was a balm to her strained nerves.
    The sound of a whistling teakettle caught her attention and she lifted her head. She was too far from the kitchen to smell the udeji blossom tea, but she knew that’s what he’d be preparing. She went to the kitchen and found her husband. He’d set the table with her favorite mug, the teapot with steam curling from the ceramic top, and a plate of cookies. He’d included a vase with a flower plucked from Sarai’s congratulations bouquet.
    This simple act of caring moved her to tears. More emotion after a long, emotional day. The best part of it was she didn’t need to explain herself to him. All she had to do was look into his eyes, and Keane knew just what to do to make it all better.
    Or if not better, at least bearable. He took her in his arms and pressed his lips to her temple as he stroked her back. His fingers tangled in the hair falling over her shoulders—which she now noted with some distress was streaked even further with white. That the bleaching came from the sun and not just her age didn’t help. They might all live on Lujawed, but most of them had come from Earth originally, and standards of beauty were the same.
    â€œI thought it didn’t bother me anymore.”
    His lips curved against her. “It shouldn’t. It’s only misconception.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI’m seven rotations older than you.”
    â€œI know that,” she said, swatting him. “But you don’t look it.”
    â€œAnd I never will,” Keane said gently. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Did you fall in love with me because of what