Lone eagle

“I love you,” she whispered to him again, and he looked pained. This wasn't what he'd had in mind when he came to spend the day with her. He had somehow felt that they had a silent pact not to say those kinds of things to each other, but she wasn't sticking to it. She just couldn't. She could not let him go without telling him she loved him. In her opinion, he had a right to know. What she didn't understand was how much harder it was for him once she said the words. Until then, whatever his feelings for her, or how powerful his attraction to her, he had been able to delude himself that they were just good friends. But now there was no hiding from the fact that they weren't. They were far more than that, no matter how strenuously he tried to pretend it wasn't so.

Her words were her final gift to him, the only thing she had to give him of any real value. And they brought reality to both of them. For just a fraction of an instant, he sensed his own vulnerability, and glimpsed the possibility that he might never come this way again. Suddenly, as he looked at her, he was grateful for every instant they had shared. He knew that he would never meet another woman like her, with as much fire and joy and excitement, and no matter where he went, or what happened to him, he would always remember her. All they had before they left each other were these last moments to share.

And as they called his flight for the last time, he bent and kissed her, standing in the airport with his arms around her. It was too late to stop the tides. He had been kidding himself, he knew, if he thought he could reverse them or even hold them back. Their feelings for each other were as inevitable as the passing of time. Whatever it was that had happened between them, they both knew without promises or words, that it was very rare, and not something that either of them would have changed, or would ever find again.

“Take care of yourself,” he said hoarsely, in a whisper.

“I love you,” she said again. She looked him right in the eye as she said it, and he nodded, unable to say the words, despite all that he felt for her. They were words to describe feelings that he had fled for thirty years.

He held her close and kissed her again, and then he knew he had to leave her. He had to get on the flight. With every ounce of strength he had, he walked away from her, and paused for a last instant at the gate. She was still looking at him, and there were tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. He started to turn away then, paused, and looked back at her for a last instant. And then, just before it was too late, he shouted back to her, “I love you, Kate.” She heard him, and saw him wave, and as she laughed through her tears, he disappeared through the gate.

5

CHRISTMAS WAS GRIM for everyone that year. Two and a half weeks after Pearl Harbor, the world was still reverberating from the shock. America's sons had begun to go off to war, and they were being shipped to Europe and the Pacific. The names of places no one had ever heard of before were suddenly on everyone's lips, and Kate took small comfort in knowing Joe was in England. From the only letter she had had from him so far, his life sounded fairly civilized.

He was stationed in Swinderby. He told her only as much about his doings as the censors would allow. Most of the letter had expressed his concern for her, and told her about the people he'd met there. He described the countryside, and how kind the English were being to them. But he didn't tell her he loved her. He had said it once, but he would have been uncomfortable writing it to her.

It was obvious to both her parents by then how in love with him she was, and the only consolation to them was the sense they had that he also loved her. But in their private moments, Elizabeth Jamison still expressed her deep concerns to Clarke. They were even more profound now because, if something happened to him, she was afraid that Kate would mourn him forever. He would have been a hard man to forget.

“God forgive me for saying it,” Clarke said quietly, “but if something happens to him, she'd get over it, Liz. It's happened to other women before her. I just hope it doesn't.”

It wasn't just the war that worried Elizabeth, it was something much deeper that she had sensed in Joe, from the moment she met him, and she could never quite find the words to express to Clarke. She had a sense that Joe was unable to let anyone in, and to love or give fully. He was always standing back somewhere around the edges. And his passion for the planes he designed and flew, and the world that opened to him, was a way for him to escape life. She wasn't at all sure that, even if he survived the war, he would ever make Kate happy.