It took some time before Kaylee made much sense. At first she just spluttered out a whole lot of incoherent words and sentences, most of which was completely unintelligible because of all the crying, and every time Mal tried to probe a little deeper he only made it worse. Eventually Inara took charge of the situation. She made the girl sit down on a chair, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and poured her a cup of tea, soothed her and – for some unknown reason – threw a scowl in his and Jayne's direction.

It did the trick, though, and finally they got the story.

"It happened while we was growin' up here," Kaylee told them. "Carlos Ryan was my junior by a couple a years, and he was madly in love with me, or at least that's what they's sayin'. The girls thought it was funny. We…" She hesitated. "We had some fun on his account."

She drew in a deep breath before she continued, "And this one day, almost seven years ago, we're all down by the lake outside of town swimming. See, there's this little island, well it ain't much more than a rock really, pokin' out of the water, called the Devil's Tooth. It's sort of a venture for the boys 'round here to swim out and carve the name of their loved one. So I told Carlos that if he did that and carved my name, I'd go with 'im to the Friday night dance."

She paused again, but Mal could already see where this was going. "Lemme guess, he didn't get there?"

She shook her head. "No, he cramped. One of the older boys had to swim out and help him back." She closed her eyes, shamefully. "Boy, did we laugh."

As if on cue, Jayne snorted with laughter and earned himself a string of strict looks from the others. He threw his arms up. "Hey, I think it's funny!"

Kaylee ignored him and swallowed hard. "The next morning he don't show up and no one's seen 'im all day, and people went out lookin', and in the