Lone eagle

She lay beside him and cried quietly all night. She stroked his hair, and looked at him as he slept. If he had been anyone else, she would have thought he was insane. But there was something very cold and calculating about what he had said. It was the only way he knew to save himself, and it reminded her of their ending in New Jersey years before. Not knowing what else to do, Joe shut down emotionally and ran away. She had been dispensed with, dismissed, as she understood it, he didn't want her anymore. It was the cruelest thing anyone had ever done to her. In some ways, even crueler than her father's suicide. In Kate's eyes, the reasons Joe had offered weren't adequate to justify his leaving her, although they were to him. Gouging her out of his heart, no matter how painful to him or her, was all he knew how to do.

She never slept all night, and at first light she got up, washed her face, and then went back to bed. He lay close to her, as he always did, when he woke up. But this time, he said nothing, he simply rolled over and got out of bed.

And when he left the apartment for his flight to London, he said goodbye to her very carefully. He didn't want to raise any false hopes that he'd change his mind. He was leaving her forever, and she knew it to her very soul.

“I love you, Joe,” she said, and for an instant he saw the girl he had once met, in her pale blue satin evening gown, with the dark auburn hair. He remembered her eyes that night, and they were the same ones he saw now. But as he looked into them he saw immeasurable pain. But she looked scarcely different than she had sixteen years before. “I'll always love you,” she whispered, as she realized she was seeing him for the last time. They would never be together this way again. He had purposely not made love to her during his entire stay in New York. He hadn't wanted to mislead her and he didn't want to now. He was sending her back to her own life, so he could reclaim his.

“Take care of yourself,” he said softly, taking one last long look at her. It was hard to let her go, in his own way he had loved her as best he could. Not the way she had loved him, but in the best ways he knew how. It would have been enough for her, but not for him. The funny thing was, he wanted less and not more. “I was right, you know,” he said, as she stood looking up at him, engraving him in her memory, the face she loved so much, the eyes, the cheekbones, the cleft chin. “It was an impossible dream. It always was.”

“It didn't have to be,” she said, her blue eyes blazing at him. Even now, in so much pain, she was more beautiful than he wanted to see. More beautiful than he needed her to be. “We could still have this, Joe. We could have it all.” What she said was true, he knew, but he didn't want it anymore. He told himself he had enough without her.

“I don't want it, Kate,” he said cruelly, but he wanted her to understand, he couldn't hurt her anymore. He couldn't stand the guilt or the pain.

She watched him without saying another word as he walked out and closed the door.

23

AFTER LEAVING KATE, Joe went to California for six months, and moved to London for five months after that. He offered her a huge settlement, which she gracefully declined. She had her own money, and she didn't want anything from him. All she had ever wanted for sixteen years was to be his wife. She had been that for four, which was all Joe Allbright had to give, or so he believed when he left.

Kate had caused him so much pain, and inflicted such intense guilt on him, that all Joe wanted was to flee. He had wanted her more than anything, loved her more than he had ever dared, given more than he had known he was capable of. And in spite of everything, it hadn't been enough for her. For all the years of their marriage, he felt she had wanted more and more and more of him. It had terrified him, and brought up all of his old wounds. Every time he listened to her, he could hear his cousin's voice telling him what a rotten kid he was, and how disappointed she was in him. Just seeing Kate, whenever he came home, reminded him of how inadequate he had felt as a child, and what a failure he believed he was as a human being and a man. It was a demon he'd been fleeing all his life. And even the vast empire he had built couldn't protect him from it. The pain he saw in Kate's eyes catapulted him back to the worst of his boyhood again and conjured up all his guilts. In the end, it was easier for him to be alone than to be tormented by her, or cause her pain. Every time he knew he hurt or disappointed her, it was agony for him. And there was a selfish side to him as well. He didn't want to meet anyone's needs but his own.