Attack of the Clones Read Free Page A

face.
    “Thinking of your boy again,” Cliegg Lars stated, instead of asked.
    Shmi looked at him, her expression a mixture of joy and sadness, a single dark cloud crossing a sunny blue sky. “Yes, but it’s okay this time,” she said. “He’s safe, I know, and doing great things.”
    “But when we have such fun, you wish he could be here.”
    Shmi smiled again. “I do, and in all other times, as well. I wish Anakin had been here from the beginning, since you and I first met.”
    “Five years ago,” Cliegg remarked.
    “He would love you as I do, and he and Owen …” Her voice weakened and trailed away.
    “You think that Anakin and Owen would be friends?” Cliegg asked. “Bah! Of course they would!”
    “You’ve never even met my Annie!” Shmi scolded.
    “They’d be the best of friends,” Cliegg assured her, tightening his hug once again. “How could they not be, with you as that one’s mother?”
    Shmi accepted the compliment gracefully, looked back and gave Cliegg a deep and appreciative kiss. She was thinking of Owen, of the young man’s flowering romance with the lovely Beru. How Shmi loved them both!
    But that thought brought with it some level of discomfort. Shmi had often wondered if Owen had been part of the reason she had so readily agreed to marry Cliegg. She looked back at her husband, rubbing her hand over his broad shoulder. Yes, she loved him, and deeply, and she certainly couldn’t deny her joy at finally being relieved of her slave bonds. But despite all of that, what part had the presence of Owen played in her decisions? It had been a question that had stayed with her all these years. Had there been a need in her heart that Owen had filled? A mother’s need to cover the hole left by Anakin’s departure?
    In truth, the two boys were very different in temperament. Owen was solid and staid, the rock who would gladly take over the farm from Cliegg when the time came, as this moisture farm had been passed down in the Lars family from generation to generation. Owen was ready, and even thrilled, to be the logical and rightfulheir to the place, more than able to accept the often difficult lifestyle in exchange for the pride and sense of honest accomplishment that came with running the place correctly.
    But Annie …
    Shmi nearly laughed aloud as she considered her impetuous and wanderlust-filled son put in a similar situation. She had no doubts that Anakin would give Cliegg the same fits he had always given Watto. Anakin’s adventurous spirit would not be tamed by any sense of generational responsibility, Shmi knew. His need to leap out for adventure, to race the Pods, to fly among the stars, would not have been diminished, and it surely would have driven Cliegg crazy.
    Now Shmi did giggle, picturing Cliegg turning red-faced with exasperation when Anakin had let his duties slide once again.
    Cliegg hugged her all the tighter at the sound, obviously having no clue of the mental images fluttering through her brain.
    Shmi melted into that hug, knowing that she was where she belonged, and taking comfort in the hope that Anakin, too, was where he truly belonged.
    She wasn’t wearing one of the grand gowns that had marked the station of her life for the last decade and more. Her hair was not done up in wondrous fashion, with some glittering accessory woven into the thick brown strands. And in that plainness, Padmé Amidala only appeared more beautiful and more shining.
    The woman sitting beside her on the bench swing, so obviously a relation, was a bit older, a bit more matronly, perhaps, with clothes even more plain than Padmé’s and with her hair a bit more out of place. But she was no less beautiful, shining with an inner glow equally strong.
    “Did you finish your meetings with Queen Jamillia?” Sola asked. It was obvious from her tone that the meetings to which she had referred were not high on her personal wish list.
    Padmé looked over at her, then looked back to the playhouse where