Dara’s arrival at Incheon International Airport was traditional. She would have preferred to melt through the crowd, but it appeared traveling tourist class categorized her as just that. Dara wove through the milling crowd and searched for an information desk. The girth of a fellow passenger hampered her journey. His yellow and orange flowered shirt and the twin cameras around his neck attested to his desire to enjoy his vacation. Under different circumstances, his appearance would have nudged at her humor, but the tension in Dara’s stomach stifled any amusement. She had not stood on Korean soil in fifteen years.

Dara felt a quiet desperation that the address she had found among her mother’s papers would lead to emptiness. The age of the small, creased piece of paper was unknown to her. Neither did she know if Captain Yang Hyung Suk still lived in Korea. There had only been the address tossed in among her mother’s bills. There had been no correspondence, nothing to indicate the address was still a vital one. To write to her father was the practical thing to do, and Dara had struggled with indecision for nearly a week. Ultimately, she had rejected a letter in favor of a personal meeting. Her hoard of money would barely see her through a week of food and lodging, and though she knew the trip was reckless, she had not been able to prevent herself. Threading through her doubts was the shimmering strand of fear that rejection waited for her at the end of her journey.

There was no reason to expect anything else, she lectured herself. Why should the man who had left me fatherless during her growing-up years care about the woman she had become? Relaxing her grip on the handle of her handbag, Dara reasserted her vow to accept whatever waited at her journey’s end. She had learned long ago to adjust to whatever life offered. She concealed her feeling with the habit developed during her adolescence.

Quickly, she adjusted the white, soft-brimmed hat over her halo of brown curls. She lifted her chin. No one would have guessed her underlying anxiety as she moved with unconscious grace through the crowds. She looked elegantly aloof in her white dress that hugs her slight figure and strap-in sandals.

The girl at the information desk was deep in enjoyable conversation with a man. Standing to one side, Dara watched the encounter with detached interest. The man was fair-skinned and intimidatingly tall. Her pupils would have undoubtedly called him séduisant. His beautiful features were surrounded by his styled blonde hair. There was something devil-may-care kind in his