1999

"Who was it?" Irina asked Arkady as he hung up. She was trying to get six-month-old Lydia to eat her strained peas while three-year-old Julia bit into her grilled cheese sandwich.

"The Russian embassy in Havana," he told her. "They found a body in Havana Bay and think it's Pribluda. They want me to investigate."

"How long will you be gone?"

Arkady heard the unhappiness in his wife's voice and smiled. "We will be gone for as long as it takes to solve the case."

"You mean you're taking us with you?" Irina cried out in joy.

"I think we're entitled to a vacation in the sunshine, don't you?"

"I've never been to Cuba before!" Irina exclaimed.

"What's Cuba, Mommy?" asked Julia.

"It's an island far away from here where it's warm and sunny all the time," her mother told her.

"And are we gonna fly there on an airplane?"

"That's right!"

After a couple days of hurried packing, the Renko family boarded the airplane. Julia, clad in a light pink shirt with mint green overalls, sat strapped into her seat between her parents, and Irina held the baby, who wore a lavender onesie with ruffles at the neck.

Too excited to sit still, the little girl squirmed in her seat, asking her parents a million questions.

"You look happy." Arkady reached over and brushed a strand of hair back from his wife's face, which he was glad to see looked relaxed and calm. She'd been so stressed out with caring for the girls lately he'd become worried about her. Julia, who'd been potty trained months before, had started having accidents again, and Lydia was now teething.

"I'm always happy when I'm with you," Irina replied. Lydia began to whine, and her mother offered her a teething ring.

"Enjoying yourself?" Drink in hand, Will sat on the large beach towel beside his wife. Starling and Stone were taking turns sprinkling sand on her belly, while Storm, Scarlet, and Season built a sand castle nearby. Sierra and Sienna walked hand and hand beside the shore, looking for pretty seashells, while Summer, September, Silver, and Shyanne played ring-around-the-rosy.

Will and Deanna had selected a beach scene program for the holodeck.

"Oh, I'm having loads of fun," Deanna told her husband. "You?"

"It''s great to have a day off." Will gazed out over the gently swirling waves.

"I wonder what Arkady and Irina are up to now?" mused Deanna.

"They've been dead several hundred years, Imzadi," Will replied.

"You know what I mean," said Deanna. "I've considering asking whether it would be possible for us to return to the space/time continuum we visited before. I know Irina's had her baby by now. We never even found out what she had."

"Or if there's been any more trouble with the Russian mafia," added Will. "Perhaps another visit would be in order."

From the expression on her husband's face, Irina knew the news wasn't good.

"So it was him?" she asked.

Arkady nodded. "Not much left of him to autopsy after all this time." He grimaced. Irina could only guess the awfulness of the gruesome scene he'd just had to endure. She went to him, and he held her.

"What happened to him?" she asked.

"They think it was an accidental drowning, but I'm not so sure."

"So what happens now?"

"Sergei was a true friend. I'm not leaving until I find out for sure whether or not he was murdered."

For many days afterwards, Arkady was away from home almost all the time, leaving Irina to care for their daughters alone. Although she enjoyed taking the girls to the beach, the open air market, or the park to listen to rumba or salsa bands, she missed her husband and wished they could be spending this time together.

One morning, she'd spread the quilt on the sand, laid Lydia down on it, and was unpacking the graham crackers and juice boxes when Julia spoke.

"Look who's coming, Mommy! Two grown-ups and a whole bunch of little kids that all look just alike!"

Irina looked up to see Will and Deanna approaching with their entire brood. As usual, Storm, Season, and Scarlet were in the lead, followed by their eight siblings.

"Hello! It's good to see you again!"Irina exclaimed, remembering this man was her own distant descendant. "Looks like you brought your own small army this time!"

Will and Deanna laughed. "Meet the undecaplets," said Deanna. "Sierra, Sienna, Scarlet, Season, Starling, Stone, Storm, September, Shyanne, Silver, and Summer."

"All the girls look just alike, and so do all the boys! How do you tell them apart?"

"They each wear a different color bracelet," Deanna replied.

"Where's Arkady?" asked Will.

Irina sighed. "Investigating the death of his friend, Sergei Pribluda. He was found dead in Havana Bay. Arkady thinks foul play was involved. Typical of him." She rolled her eyes. "There's a young Cuban detective helping him investigate the mystery. Her name's Ofelia Osorio. She's very pretty, and intelligent as well."

"Don't worry." Deanna sensed the other woman's anxiety and gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. "Arkady will never love any other woman but you."

The body was that of a naked male, a blond European who'd been hacked to death by a machete. The girl was lying on the bed, also naked, arms and legs splayed, head chopped nearly off. Blood had soaked into the carpet and splattered the wall above the headboard of the bed. Both bodies were hard with rigor mortis and had been dead for at least four hours.

Ofelia felt her stomach lurch and made it to the toilet just in time. After emptying her stomach, she flushed, but the toilet began to overflow. She stuck her hand as far as she could into its throat and pulled out a bloody ball of toilet paper. Still heaving, she unrolled it on a towel. It contained a wadded German passport for a Hans Lohmann, 40, of Hamburg, Cuban papers for a Teresa Guiteras Marin, 15, of Havana, and a photo of Arkady Renko that had been torn in half.