At the Lars kitchen table, after the recording plays, there is a painful silence. The occasional giggle or coo from the playpen in the next room does nothing to break it. I could reach out to feel how Owen and Beru are feeling, but I don't dare. All three of us are avoiding eye contact. Beru is staring at the recorder, Owen is glowering at the ceiling, and I'm counting my fingers very slowly.

An eternity later, I say, "Believe me, I would never have risked coming here with Luke if I had suspected that Anakin wasn't dead."

"He is dead," Owen says abruptly. "As dead as Obi-Wan Kenobi is. They both died the day the Jedi got massacred. I don't know what that, that thing is," he says with a wave at the holorecorder. "But it was not my stepbrother. Anakin is dead." He pushes back from the table and whirls away towards the door.

Over his shoulder, he gruffly adds, "Beru, wipe that recording. I don't want my son to see it. Ever."

A few moments later, I hear Luke squeal, "Own!" and then giggle. As the minutes pass, I hear Owen's voice softly murmuring and the baby squealing in delight. They must be playing some kind of game.

Beru slowly raises her eyes to mine, and they're so full of pain that they burn. "You should stay with us tonight," she says, her voice choked. "You don't want to be alone after seeing that." Then she stands up and looks away at a wall.

It breaks my heart to see her fighting back the tears. I instinctively stand up to embrace her, then lose my nerve. She's someone else's wife. I settle for laying a hand on her arm.

Abruptly she pulls me to her and hugs me. "You poor man. He was your best friend and now he's gone forever." For a long moment we stand like that. I don't know what to say or how to respond. I only know that her arms around me are soothing, and I hope mine are comforting her.

Releasing me and pulling back, she looks me in the eyes and says, "Ben, tell me the truth. Do you think that monster is coming for my son?"

There's the thing none of us has dared to say yet. The three-ton Bantha in the room. "I don't know," I say with a sigh. "I don't know what he's thinking, or what he knows. He might suspect something if he goes looking for his wife. But my allies and I fixed it up so that Padmé's death was reported as complications from an infection. There were no formal records of her pregnancy. The best we can hope for is that he assumes the childr—the baby died, too."

Beru bites her lip while she thinks about that. "Can't a Jedi read minds? What if he scans the galaxy for people who might know what happened?"

I wish it was that simple. We could have found Darth Sidious in an instant if I hadn't had to spend so much time combing creation for clues. "That talent is . . . limited, at best. Mostly it works short-range. And it's possible that Darth Vader doesn't know what to look for. As far as he knows, Luke's was never born alive.

"Think about it," I continue, more to reassure myself than her. "It's been eighteen standard months. Look around. There's no cyborgs snatching Luke from his cradle. No stormtroopers kicking in the door, no bounty hunters hanging around, no probe droids following you home when you do the shopping. If the Empire knew Luke was here, and wanted him, what would they be waiting for?"

She gives a stiff little nod, but I'm not sure she really believes me. "We can take precautions," she says, her jaw set tight. "Owen and Cliegg built a few surprises into this place after Shmi got carried off. There's perimeter alarms, blasters hidden in every room, and a hiding place I'll retreat to if the raiders ever get bold." She starts tapping on the walls as she speaks, reminding herself of every secret panel. "And I'll make sure Luke goes to survival school as soon as he's old enough. Flight school, too, if we can arrange it. He'll grow up tough, you've my word. You'll train him with those laser swords too, right?" I nod.

"Anyway, we can't fight the Imperials until they come. So let's slay that dragon when it threatens our herds." This is a Beru I've seen, but not often: Beru the warrior. Despite everything that's happened, the sight warms my heart.

With a tense smile, she adds, "Meanwhile, I have to get supper started if I'm going to feed all three of you tonight. Could you take Luke for an hour while Owen finishes up outside?"

As I'm leaving, I see out of the corner of my eye that Beru has the recorder in her hand and is standing on a chair, stashing it up somewhere out of sight.

(I did finally see that holorecorder again, but not until about two standard years later. Beru had wiped the horrifying images and recorded something beautiful in their place. I watched the images of Luke and another little boy as they played together for fifteen minutes. The two were pretending to be star pilots, zooming as they jumped over cracks in the floor. The recording ended with Beru asking, "Luke, Biggs, who are you right now?"

Luke answered, "We're two shooting stars," and Biggs finished the thought: "And they'll NEVER stop us!"

When she showed me, I said, "You missed your calling, Beru Lars. You should have been a poet.")