Lone Eagle

by Danielle Steel

  But on Sunday night, she dressed and went back to Radcliffe, and never even said goodbye to them. She was like a disembodied soul. She spoke to no one in the house, and when Beverly came to say hello to her and ask if she'd been sick over the weekend, Kate never told her that Joe's plane had been shot down. She couldn't bring herself to say the words, and she cried herself to sleep every night.

  Everyone in the house at Radcliffe knew something had happened to her, and it was several days later that someone saw a small article in the newspaper that he had been shot down. Military Intelligence had decided to keep it as low key as they could, so as not to demoralize people at home. They said he was missing in action, and the newspaper was noticeably vague. But it told them all they needed to know. All the girls in her house knew that Joe Allbright had visited Kate.

  “I'm sorry…,” some of them whispered as they passed her in the hall. And all she could do was nod and look away. She looked terrible, lost weight, and she looked tired and ill when she went home for the Christmas break. And all her mother's efforts to comfort her were in vain. All Kate wanted was to be left alone, as she waited for news of Joe.

  She asked her father to call his contact in Washington again before the holidays, but there was no further news. There had been no sign of Joe, and no word through underground sources. The Germans had not reported capturing him, and in fact had denied it when they were asked. No one identified by the name on his papers had surfaced anywhere. And if they knew they had captured Joe Allbright, they would have said so and counted it as a real victory against the Allies. And no one had seen him escape, or alive since he'd gone down. There was no sign of him anywhere.

  There was no Christmas for any of them that year. Kate hardly did any Christmas shopping, didn't want any gifts from them, took forever to open the ones she got, and spent most of her time in her room. All she could do was think of him, where he was, what had happened to him, if he was still alive, if she would ever see him again. She thought constantly of the times they had, and she regretted even more bitterly now having lost the baby they had conceived the year before. She was inconsolable and unreachable, she hardly ever slept anymore, and she was rail thin.

  She scoured the newspapers for some word of him, but her father had already assured her that they would be called before anything more appeared in the press. And he suspected that there would never be. He had probably been dead for weeks by then, and was lying somewhere in Germany in a shallow grave. To Kate, the thought of it nearly drove her insane. It was as though part of her very being had been cut away, or some deep internal piece of her that she didn't even know was there had been gouged out. She either lay on her bed, staring at the wall, or paced her room at night, feeling like she was about to explode out of her own skin, and nothing helped. She even got drunk one night, and her parents said nothing to her about it the next day. They were desperate, and had never seen anyone as grief-stricken. She was keening for him, and nothing was going to help her now except time.

  When she went back to school, she failed an exam for the first time. Her advisor called her in, and asked if something had happened over the holidays. Kate looked terrible, and in a strangled voice she explained that a close friend of hers had been shot down on a mission over Germany. At least it explained her grades. The woman expressed her sympathy, and hoped that Kate would feel better soon. She was very kind and very sweet, she had lost her own son in Salerno the previous year. But nothing anyone said to her offered any solace to Kate. And when she wasn't feeling devastated, she was consumed with rage, at the Germans, at the fates, at the man who had shot him down, at him for letting it happen to him, at herself for loving him so much. She wanted to be free of it, but she knew nothing would ever free her of him. It was too late.

  And when Andy saw her after she got back from Christmas break, at first he felt sorry for her, and then he scolded her. He told her she was feeling sorry for herself, that she always knew it could happen to him. And in Joe's case it could have happened anytime, anywhere, while he did death-defying stunts in planes, aerobatics, or raced. Thousands of other women were in the same boat she was in. She and Joe weren't married, they didn't have kids, she wasn't even engaged. But what Andy said to her only made her furious with him.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? You sound like my mother. Do you think a ring on my finger would make any difference to me? It wouldn't mean a goddamn thing to me, Andy Scott, and it wouldn't change what happened to him. Why is everyone so obsessed with social rituals? Who gives a damn? He's probably in some goddamn awful prison camp being tortured for what he knows. Do you think a ring on my finger would make a difference to them? Of course not. And it wouldn't to Joe. It wouldn't have made him love me more, or me love him more. I don't care about the ring,” she started to sob, “I just want him to come home.” She folded into Andy's arms like a broken doll.

  “He's not going to, Kate,” Andy said as he held her, while she sobbed. “You know that. The chances that he'll come home are a million to one.” If that.

  “It could happen. Maybe he'll escape.” She refused to let hope die.

  “Maybe he's dead,” Andy said, trying to force her to face the truth. More likely than not, he was. Kate knew it too, but she didn't want to hear it from anyone. She couldn't face it yet. “Kate, I can only imagine how hard it is, but you have to get over this. You can't let it tear you apart.” The worst thing was she had no choice. She was doing the best she could, but she was drowning in her fears for him, her own sense of panic and loss. She had no idea how she was going to exist if he was gone. And yet, even at her worst, she had an inexplicable sense that he was still alive. It was as though there were a part of her that hadn't let go of him yet, and she wondered if she ever would. She felt bound to him for life.

  She and Andy went to dinner at the cafeteria, and he forced her to eat. And that weekend he insisted that she come to watch him at a swimming meet against MIT. She actually had a good time, in spite of herself, and forgot her miseries for a short while. And everyone was excited when Harvard won.

  She waited for him afterward, and they went out to eat, and then he took her back to the house. She looked better than she had a few days before, and he felt sorry for her when she told him that she'd had a dream about Joe. She was convinced he was still alive, and Andy was sure her mind was playing tricks on her. She wasn't willing to accept the possibility that he had died when he was shot down.

  Eventually, it became a sore subject with her, whenever the topic came up with family or friends. People would tell her how sorry they were to have heard about Joe, and then she would insist that he was probably in a German prisoner of war camp somewhere. In time, people stopped mentioning it to her at all.

  By the time summer rolled around, Joe had been gone for seven months. His last letters to her had come a month after he had been shot down, and she still read them at night, and lay in bed for hours, thinking of him. Everyone said she had to let go of him, that he was gone, but her heart refused to open and release him like a bird from a cage. She kept him deep within her, in a secret place in her heart. She knew it was a place where no one would ever go again, and she knew they were right when people said she had to get over the tragedy, but she had no idea how. He was like a color she had become, a vision she had seen, a dream she had had, and there was no way to separate herself from him now.

  Her parents urged her to go on a trip that summer, and after much arguing, Kate finally agreed to go. She went to visit her godmother in Chicago, and from there on to California to see a girl she knew who was going to Stanford. It was an interesting trip, and she had a good time, but she always felt now as though she were only making the motions, and not living her life anymore. It was a relief finally when she came home on the train. She had three days to herself to stare out the window and think about him, all that he had been, and hopefully still was. But even she was beginning to think now that he was no longer alive. By the time she returned to Boston at the end of
August, he'd been gone for nine months. And no one had heard anything about him, or seen him in any of the prisoner of war camps. Both Washington and the RAF had finally agreed that he was dead.

  Kate didn't go to Cape Cod that summer. It had too many memories for her, even though she had only seen him there twice. She came home from California just in time to start her senior year at Radcliffe. She was majoring in history and art, and had no idea what she was going to do with it. Teaching didn't appeal to her, and there was no other career path that held any particular lure for her, nor did anything else.

  She saw Andy a few weeks after they got back, he was starting his third year of law school, and had almost no time to see her anymore. He loved it, and was working too hard. Several of her friends hadn't come back to school that fall, two of them had gotten married over the summer, and another girl had moved to the West Coast. Another had gone to work to support her mother, her father and both her brothers had been killed in the Pacific the previous year. It seemed to be a world supported and staffed by women, bus drivers, mailmen, all the jobs that had previously been done by men were being performed by women. Everyone had gotten used to it, and Kate teased her parents and told them she was going to be a bus driver when she grew up. Unfortunately, there was nothing else she wanted to do more.

  She was twenty-one years old, and soon to become a graduate of Radcliffe. She was intelligent, beautiful, interesting, fun to be with, and well-informed. By all rights, her mother insisted, if there hadn't been a war on, she would have been married and had kids by then, if not with Joe, then with someone else. But she hadn't even been on a date since he died. Several of the boys from Harvard had asked her out, a couple of the excessively brainy ones from MIT, and even a nice boy from Boston College, but she turned all of them down. She had no interest in anyone, and she still expected to get a call from Washington, telling her that Joe was still alive, or even from the visiting room downstairs that there was someone waiting for her. She expected to see him as she got on buses, walked around corners and crossed streets. It was impossible to adjust to the idea that he had vanished into thin air, that he no longer existed anywhere on the planet, and no matter how much she loved him, would never come back to her. The whole concept of death was incomprehensible to her.

  The holidays meant very little to her that year, although they were less painful than they had been the year before. She had calmed down a lot, and was warm and kind to her parents, but when her mother urged her to go out, Kate would either change the subject or leave the room. Her parents were beginning to give up hope, and her mother had confided to Kate's father that she was afraid Kate would be an old maid.

  “I hardly think so,” he laughed at Elizabeth. “She's twenty-one years old and there's a war on, for God's sake. Wait till the boys come home.”

  “And when will that be?” Elizabeth asked with a mournful look.

  “Soon, I hope.” But there was no sign of it yet.

  Paris had been liberated finally in August. Russia had prevailed against the Germans, and Russian troops had moved into Poland. But the Germans had increased their bombing raids over England since September. And their offensive in the Ardennes Forest was going badly for the Allies. And the Battle of the Bulge over Christmas had cost a vast number of lives and disheartened everyone on the home front.

  It was the last day of the Christmas vacation when Andy Scott dropped by the house with a group of friends, and convinced Kate to go skating with them. They were driving to a nearby lake, and her mother was relieved when she saw her leave with them. She was still hoping that Kate would pay more attention to Andy one day, but Kate always insisted that she had no romantic interest in him, he was just a friend. But they had gotten noticeably closer year by year, and Elizabeth hadn't entirely given up hope. She thought he would have been the perfect husband for Kate, and Kate's father didn't disagree, but he thought that was best left up to Kate.

  They spent a wonderful afternoon skating on the lake, falling down, skating backward, pushing each other over. The boys organized a mock hockey game, and Kate skated in graceful circles in the middle of the lake. She had loved figure skating as a child, and was fairly good. And afterward, they all went out for hot toddies, and then went for a long walk in the crisp night air. Kate fell back from the group after a while, and Andy joined her. He was happy to see her looking better and finally having some fun. She said Christmas vacation had been okay, although she admitted that she hadn't done much, and he noticed that for once, she hadn't mentioned Joe. He hoped it was a turning point for her.

  “What are you doing next summer?” he asked her calmly, as he tucked her mittened hand into the crook of his arm. He had shining dark hair, and deep brown eyes, and he was wearing earmuffs and a warm scarf from their outing to the lake.

  “I don't know, I haven't thought about it,” she said vaguely, as the vapor from their breath swirled ahead of them in the cold night air. “What about you?”

  “I had kind of a fun idea,” he said as they followed the others, “we're both going to graduate in June,” she from Radcliffe and he from law school. “My father says I don't have to start work till September at the law firm. I was thinking it might be fun to go on a honeymoon.” She was nodding as she listened, and then frowned as she looked at him.

  “With who?” Her breath caught for a minute. There was a funny look in his eyes as they stopped walking, and he looked down at her.

  “I was thinking maybe you,” he said softly, as Kate let out a long sigh. She had thought they had put all that behind them. She had treated him like a brother for years. But Andy had always had a crush on her. And like her parents, and his own, he thought it would be a good match for both of them.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked hopefully, but he shook his head, and she leaned her own against him.

  “I can't do that, Andy, you know that. I love you like a brother.” And then she smiled up at him sadly. “It would be incest to marry you.”

  “I know you've been in love with Joe,” he said honestly, “but he's gone now. And I've always loved you. I think I could make you happy, Kate.” But not the way Joe had. Joe had been passion and excitement and danger. Andy was hot chocolate and ice skates. They were both important to her, but in different ways, and she felt certain that she would never feel for him what she had for Joe. They had stopped walking by then, and the others were far ahead, with no idea of what was happening behind them.

  “I don't think it would be fair to you,” she said honestly, snuggling close to him as they started to walk again. He had been wanting to ask her all day, and hadn't had the opportunity he wanted at the lake. He'd gotten too busy playing hockey with their friends. And she had gone off to skate by herself. She was very solitary these days. “I still can't believe that he's gone and never coming back,” although she had begun to try the idea on for size recently, and it didn't feel good, and probably never would.

  “You weren't even engaged to him, Kate. Lots of people have romances with other people before they get married. Some people even break engagements when they meet someone else,” he grew more serious then, as he looked at her. “There are going to be a lot of women in your position after the war. There are widows even younger than you, and some of them have kids. They can't just lock themselves away for the rest of their lives. They're going to have to live again, and so are you. You can't hide forever, Kate.”

  “Yes, I can.” She was beginning to think that what she'd had with Joe had been so unusual and so special that it would sustain her for the rest of her life, and there would be no one else.

  “It's not good for you. You need a husband and kids and a good life, and someone who loves you to take care of you.” What he was saying would have been music to her mother's ears, but not to Kate's. She wasn't ready to think about anyone else. She was still in love with Joe.

  “You deserve better than someone who's in love with a ghost.” It was the first time she had admitted to anyone that Joe might be dead, and A
ndy thought it was a first step.

  “Maybe there's room in our life for a ghost.” Andy felt certain that Kate would eventually let go of Joe one day.

  “I don't know,” she answered, sounding vague. But so far, she hadn't actually said no.

  “We don't have to get married next summer, Kate. I just said that to see what you'd say. We can take as long as you want. Maybe we could just date for a while.”

  “Like real people?” she asked, as she looked at him, but she couldn't imagine being in love with him. To her, even at twenty-three, he still seemed like a kid. Joe was exactly ten years older than he. And they were very different men. Kate had been drawn to Joe from the moment she met him, he was like an explosion of light in her heart. Andy had always seemed like a cuddly person and a good friend. It was what her mother said husbands were supposed to be.

  “So what do you think?” he asked hopefully, and she laughed. It was like having a boy ask you if you wanted to see his tree house, or go on a first date. She couldn't take him seriously.

  “I think you're crazy to even want me,” she said honestly.

  “And?” he asked expectantly, “what about you?”

  “I don't know. I can't imagine what it would be like going out with you. Let me think about it.” She had been trying to fix him up with her housemates for the past three and a half years, but Andy had always been more interested in her. “It sounds like a crazy idea to me,” she said most unromantically, but he wasn't discouraged. Things had gone better than he expected, and he looked pleased. He had been trying to get up the courage to ask her for months, but he'd been afraid it was too soon. But now it had been over a year since Joe had disappeared.

  “Maybe not as crazy as you think,” Andy said softly. “Why don't we just see how things go for the next few months?” he suggested, and she nodded. She had always liked him, and maybe her mother was right.