"You what?" Neil shouted, jumping to his feet, shocked by Rio's announcement.

"Wh-wh-what did you say?" Vaughn stammered, his face draining to white. He scrambled up and back from the table, getting tangled up in his chair and falling to the floor in the process. Sitting in a jumbled heap, he stared up at her, stunned and speechless.

"The morning you left," she resumed, looking calmly down at Vaughn, "I took a test. I was late, you see, but I wasn't sure—so I hadn't said anything to you. I didn't want to upset you with a false alarm. When the test came up positive, I took off and ran for the boat, trying to get there in time to catch you... but I didn't get there in time.

Neil sat back down again, watching Rio with a peculiar expression. He wasn't sure how he felt about this new revelation—and he wondered why she hadn't said anything to him. He didn't have much experience with women and relationships, but wasn't having a kid the sort of thing you'd mention to your boyfriend? Still, he'd give her a chance to finish telling her story. He wanted to be fair, to not rush to the wrong conclusion. She must have had her reasons.

Meanwhile, Vaughn extricated himself from the chair, righted it, and once again sat down. His hand was shaking slightly as he reached for his iced tea, and from the look on his face, he was almost certainly wishing he had something a lot more potent in his glass right then.

Rio picked up a half of her sandwich from her plate. She didn't take a bite, though, just picked a little at it, tearing off little bits of lettuce that stuck out, poking tomato slices back in, breaking off a tiny crumb of cheese. She set it back down on the plate and just sat silently, her hands on her lap, staring blankly at the table.

After a few minutes, Vaughn coughed slightly, then asked, "Well, so... what happened after that? You, uh, you found out you were pregnant, discovered I'd been messing around, fixed to hand your property over to Mark, said your goodbyes to everyone else, packed up, and left. What then? Where did you go? What... what happened to the, uh... to our baby?"

She didn't answer right away, just speared a chunk of peach with her fork and popped it into her mouth, slowly chewing as she stared at nothing with a far-away look in her eyes. Then she snapped back to the present.

 "I had some money saved, you know. Before I left, I bought a bunch of feed for Mark, since I knew he wouldn't be able to afford much for a while—not until the crops were ready to harvest, anyway—and I wanted to be sure he'd be able to care for the animals in the meantime. But even after that, I had enough to pay my medical bills and living expenses, at least until after the baby was due. So when I got off the boat there on the mainland, I just went to the inn across the street from the dock. I decided to stay there until the baby was born, then make up my mind what to do next."

Vaughn gaped at her. "You mean... all that time, you were right there within sight of the boat?"

Rio gave him a wry look. "Yep. I saw you several times, coming and going, you know. So I know you didn't set off looking for me right away. And if you'd just looked up, instead of staring at the ground like you usually do, you might even have caught a glimpse of me at my window."

"I didn't look for you right away because I didn't know where to look!" he exclaimed, defensively. "It took me a while to figure out your note. I guessed it was a quote, but I didn't recognize it. Not my kind of music, I guess. But wherever I went, I'd show it to people, asking if they recognized it. Finally, almost a year after you'd left, I ran into someone on the mainland who knew it. She was even able to tell me the rest of the lyrics. But there was still no real hint where you might have gone. So that's when I decided I had to just knuckle down and start looking, hoping I'd catch up to you one day."

"I see. Yes, it was one of my mother's favorite songs when she was young—that's where she got my name. So it's kind of nostalgic for me on that account. Anyway, it happened that shortly before the baby was born, I saw an ad in the back of one of those little weekly community newspapers that another guest had left behind in the breakfast room, looking for someone to take over an old farm in the mountains. I decided that sounded like a good place to go, but I was worried about trying to manage the work of starting all over from scratch on a farm with a new baby.

"Then in mid-winter, the baby was born—a little girl, perfectly healthy, weighing a little over seven pounds. But while I was waiting to be admitted, still in the early stages of labor, I overheard a couple talking nearby. She'd recently miscarried, apparently not for the first time, and they were just beside themselves. They were discussing all the trouble they'd had trying to have a baby, and how they wished that more babies were available to be adopted locally. They just wanted a child so badly.

"That started me thinking. I couldn't be sure of giving my baby a good home—I didn't even have a home right then, or even the prospect of a home. All I had to offer was love... but someone else might be able to offer love and a good, stable home. So I talked to the nurse and asked about giving the baby up for adoption. She brought in a social worker, and we talked for a long while. Then I signed some papers, and three days after she was born, I... I let her go. It hadn't taken any time at all to find an adoptive family—and by some weird coincidence, it was that same couple who'd lost their baby shortly before mine was born. I was able to meet them, and they write to me once a year to let me know how she's doing. They're good people, and she's doing well. She's... she's happy, and healthy, and really bright. She's two and a half years old now. Hold on, I have some pictures of her."

Rio stood and walked over to the sideboard by the front door. Opening a drawer, she dug through a collection of papers, envelopes, photographs, and assorted bits and bobs. She pulled out an envelope, and after glancing through its contents, she returned to the table and sat back down. "Here, you can take a look," she said, removing a few photographs and setting them before Vaughn. He sat for a moment, hesitating, then lifted the top photograph to look at it.

"That was right after she was born," Rio explained. "She had so much thick, black hair, and the nurses just couldn't tame it for anything." She smiled faintly, watching her former lover as he stared at the picture. Then, wordlessly, he set it down and picked up the next photo.

Rio picked up the first picture and, after a moment's hesitation, offered it to Neil, uncertain how he was handling everything. But he picked up the proffered snapshot and stared at it, almost as intently as Vaughn had.

Turning back to Vaughn, she said, "That's her on her first birthday. I guess all that hair she was born with was eventually replaced with those dark brown curls."

"She looks so much like you," Vaughn commented as he drank in every detail of the photo, depicting a lively, dark-haired infant, grinning toothily for the camera with a huge pink-frosted cupcake on a plate before her, a smiling woman holding her chubby little hands away from the single candle stuck in the top.

Rio nodded as he passed the picture back to her, then she passed it on to Neil as she said, "She has my hair and complexion, but she inherited your eyes. I think you can see better in that next picture."

Vaughn picked it up, and she said, "That's from her second birthday, just last winter. Her parents send me a photograph of her taken on her birthday when they write."

As she had said, he could see her eyes more clearly here, and he stared at the dainty little girl with Rio's sunny smile, dark brown hair, and bronzed skin. But instead of her cornflower blue eyes, the eyes that shone up at him from the photograph were the exact same shade of amethyst as his own. Rattled, he handed the picture back to Rio.

Rio put the photographs away once they had finished looking at them, then returned to her seat. She sipped her tea, looking first at Vaughn, then at Neil. The room was silent, uncomfortably so. Finally, Vaughn looked over at her, his eyes bleary. "What, uh... what's her name?"

"They named her Violet, because of her eyes."

"Violet...." he repeated in a soft voice, looking down at his hands as they gripped his glass. Then he again looked at her. "I... I honestly don't know what to say, Rio."

She stood up quickly at that, and carried her dishes into the kitchen, her lunch still virtually untouched. "There's not a lot to say, Vaughn, is there? You blew it, I left, and I started over here: new home, new job, new friends, and a new love. A whole new life," she replied, a note of bitterness in her voice, as she leaned against the counter and looked at him.

Vaughn shook his head, then he stood and walked over to her. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he said, "I'm not ready to give up on you. I've spent more than two years searching for you. After you left, I realized... you mean more to me than anything. I was an idiot for not seeing it before, for not giving our relationship—for not giving you—the attention you deserved."

Sighing and rubbing her head again, she said in a tired voice, "Vaughn... you know, two years is a long time to spend looking for me just to ask me why I left, when it should be obvious that I didn't want you to find me. I'd have written to you if I did. So why are you here, really?"

Without any warning, Vaughn scooped her off her feet, cradling her snugly against his chest as she stared, stunned, up at him. As Neil exploded from his seat in anger behind him, he leaned down to her and said, in a low, hoarse voice, "I came for more than just an answer to a question, Rio. I came for you—to bring you back home, where you belong."