Forty-two hours had passed since they left New Lafayette, and everything felt different. A strange atmosphere had fallen over the crew. By God, sometimes it felt like even Serenity herself was under the influence of it. Mal had spent the better part of that time trying to pinpoint exactly what the difference was. It was not like people were sad or anything (with the possible exception of Kaylee), they were just… No, he couldn't really describe it.

The trip to Aphrodite had been strangely uneventful. They'd had no trouble with the Alliance or any rival crews, they'd delivered the goods and they'd been paid the agreed-upon fee, and it was good money too. Things should have been looking bright at this point.

Life onboard had been peaceful and quiet, there had been no bickering among the crew, no yelling or fighting. Except for River's fits and rantings, which truth be told had been a little more frequent and intense than usual, nothing particularly noisy had happened. And now, finally, as everybody, except precisely River, were sitting in the kitchen, it suddenly dawned on Mal what was wrong.

Everybody was so gorram polite all the time.

It was like they were all walking on eggshells around each other, afraid to address the real issues, to talk about the unpleasant things, and Mal realized now what had possibly been Jayne's most important contribution to this crew: He always spoke his mind, he cleared the air, got things out in the open.

He recalled something that River had once told him, just before Inara left. Something about a ball of yarn and that if you pulled one string, you pulled them all. He hadn't understood it then.

He did now.

They hadn't talked much about Jayne in these forty-two hours, but now as they were all sitting around the table he eventually became the topic of the conversation.

"Where do you think he went?" Wash asked. "You figure somebody offered him a job?"

"Most like," Zoë said. "Guy like him sh