Lone Eagle (38 page)

“So where are we now?” Andy asked innocently, in the guise of talking man to man. But what he had done was not worthy of any man. It was something Joe would never, ever have done, to her, or anyone else. But his own fears were so rampant, he couldn't see Andy's ploy
for what it was. The act of a desperate man. He took it as truth. And he wanted to cry as he sat at his desk.

“I think you're right. I think no matter how hard I try, the way I live my life, and have to with my work, will cause her irreparable damage. Imagine if she killed herself while I was on a trip.” He couldn't even bear thinking about it, the very idea made him feel sick, and overwhelmed.

“I think she could,” Andy said thoughtfully, as though weighing the possibility, as he met Joe's eyes. And all he could see in Joe's eyes was fear.

“I can't do that to her. At least you can keep an eye on her. Weren't you afraid to leave her when you went to Europe for four months?” Joe asked, looking puzzled for a moment, but Andy was quick to explain.

“My parents promised to keep an eye on her, and hers of course. And she sees her psychiatrist twice a week.”

“Psychiatrist?” Joe looked shocked again. “She sees a psychiatrist?”

Andy nodded. “I gather she didn't tell you that either. It's one of those dark secrets she keeps.”

“She seems to have a lot of them.” But he could see why. In his eyes, it wasn't something to be proud of, nor was her father's suicide. Her secrecy about that had set the stage for everything else Andy chose to say. Kate had never seen a psychiatrist in her life, as he knew full well, nor attempted suicide, nor chased after him when he went to work. Nor had he ever come home to her in the middle of the day. It was all lies. But it had worked. “I don't know what to say to her,” Joe said with a look of
despair. He loved her, and she him, but he believed now that attempting to share his life with her would more than likely destroy her, or even kill her. It was a danger he was not willing to risk. And a guilt he could never have borne.

All Joe wanted now was to get Andy out of his office, and to be alone. He had never felt as unhappy in his life, not even when she left New Jersey. This was far, far worse. He had been so sure he was going to marry Kate, and that in time Andy would step aside. But he could see now that it was better for Kate if she stayed with him. It was safer for her, and best for their child. There really was no choice. And to signal that the battle was over, he stood up and looked dour as he shook Andy's hand.

“Thank you for coming here,” Joe said somberly, “I think you did the right thing for Kate.” He loved her too much to put her in jeopardy, and the fear of her committing suicide was too great a risk to take, not to mention the terrors Andy had awakened in him as well.

“So did you,” Andy said, as Joe showed him to the door of his office, and Andy left. And as the door closed, Joe went to sit at his desk again, and stare at the view. All he could think of was Kate as tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. He had lost her again.

Kate never knew what had happened between Joe and Andy that day. She never even knew that they had met. Andy came home quietly that afternoon and said nothing to her. But there was an air of victory about him that made her feel sick. Her jailer, who had once been her husband, was pleased with himself. And she
hated him all the more. Any hint of love had vanished between them, and for her at least was forever gone.

Two days later, Joe asked her to lunch. They met at a small dark restaurant where they had gone to lunch before, and neither of them touched their food. He told her simply that he had thought about it, and knew that he could not drag her out of her marriage, at the risk of her losing her son. It was something he could not do. And listening to him, she could see the guilt in his eyes. He was in great pain. Far greater than she knew. All he'd been able to think of since seeing Andy was her attempted suicide three years before, and all because of him supposedly. It was more than he could stand. And so he was leaving her. It was an agonizing lunch for both of them, and afterward Kate cried all the way home in the cab. Joe had told her that they had to let each other go, had to forget each other. The pain had to end for both of them. He was afraid to say too much to her, for fear of driving her to suicide again.

And as she lay on her bed and cried after she got home, she knew she'd never see Joe again. She wished she were dead, but not enough so to take the matter into her own hands. The thought never even crossed her mind.

And Joe did what he knew best. He ran. He flew to California that night. And when Andy saw her when he came home from the office that afternoon, he knew that the deed was done. He had won, whatever the price.

18

T
HE ATMOSPHERE BETWEEN
Andy and Kate was tense for months. They barely spoke to each other, she was obviously depressed, and she lost a shocking amount of weight. They hadn't made love with each other since he got home. She stayed as far away from Andy as she could. She talked to Joe from time to time. But just as he knew it would, the time and space between them began to force them apart, no matter how deeply they still felt for each other. Andy had executed his plan brilliantly. The fatal damage had been done. But Kate knew that no matter how long he kept her prisoner, he would never change what was in her heart. He lost her forever the moment he had forced her to stay with him, and blackmailed her with her son. She had stopped feeling anything, even sympathy for him. For Kate, it was over from that moment on. She hated him, and would have hated him more if she'd known what he'd said to Joe.

Things improved slightly after Reed's first birthday in March. Andy had been home from Germany for eight months by then, and it had been a very rough time.

Her parents had commented on it, but this time
neither of them dared ask what was going on. Whatever it was that had happened to them, it had taken a tremendous toll.

They went to Cape Cod that summer, as they always did, and this time Kate and Andy slept in separate rooms. Andy could force Kate to stay married to him, but he couldn't force her to make love. Their life had become a nightmare, their marriage an empty shell. And Kate looked like a ghost as she walked around the house.

Kate stayed home from the barbecue that year, and when her parents came back, her father commented that Joe Allbright hadn't been there that year. As he said the words, Andy looked at Kate, and the look of hatred between them was so strong that Clarke was stunned. Her parents were in despair over what they'd seen after Kate and Andy went home.

Reed was walking by then, and when they got home, she called Joe, as she did from time to time, just to see how he was. Hazel said he was in California, doing test flights again, and Kate asked her to send him her love when he called. All she heard from him by then were cryptic postcards once in a while. They hadn't talked in a long time.

It was nearly Thanksgiving when Andy looked at her one night. The nightmare that their marriage had become had gone on for a year. “Is there any chance we could at least become friends again? I miss talking to you, Kate.” They had lost everything between them when he had refused to let her out. He had won an empty victory, all that was left of Kate now was a shell. “Why don't we at least try to be friends?” But even as he
said the words, he saw in her eyes that there was no hope. She was gone. He had been her enemy for too long.

“I don't know,” she said to him honestly. In the past year, she had felt nothing for him. The only man she still cared about was Joe, and he was out of her life and back to his own, and his other love. His airplanes had become his passion again, and had always been. It was only for a brief time that he had finally understood he could have both. And now that she was gone, they were all he wanted, and all he had. There had been no other woman in his life.

They went to Andy's parents for the holidays that year, and after that, out of sheer loneliness, she at least began talking to him again. But that was all. She hadn't slept with him, or made love to him in eighteen months. She had moved into the second bedroom with Reed. They spent New Year's Eve with friends, and actually danced with each other, and Kate drank an inordinate amount of champagne. He actually heard her laugh that night, and she was so drunk she flirted with him on the way home. It was the most fun he'd had with her in a year and a half, and it almost reminded him of old times. He helped her out of her coat when they got home, and the strap of her dress slipped off her shoulder, and revealed parts of her he hadn't seen in far too long. He'd had a fair amount to drink himself, and suddenly found himself kissing her, and fondling her, and was amazed to feel her respond.

“Kate?…” He didn't want to take advantage of her when she was drunk, but the temptation was far too
great, for both of them. They were married after all, and living a celibate life. She was twenty-eight years old, and he had turned thirty that month, and they had just spent one of the loneliest years of both their lives.

She followed him into the bedroom they no longer shared. She was still living in the bedroom next to his, and Reed was still sleeping in a crib next to her. He was twenty-one months old, and sound asleep when the sitter left that night.

“Would you like to sleep with me tonight, Kate?” Andy offered tentatively, and without a word, she took off her dress and slipped into his bed. He had no illusions that she was in love with him. They were two drowning people lost in a stormy sea, clutching at anything they could to survive. Each other, if all else failed.

Afterward, she hardly remembered making love to him that night. All she knew was that she'd woken up in his bed, and then scurried back to her own. When he woke up on New Year's Day, she was gone.

They both had fearsome hangovers and said very little that day. She was profoundly upset by what had happened the night before. She had vowed to herself fourteen months before that she would never sleep with him again. And she hadn't, until then. But she was so lonely, the champagne had unleashed a torrent of desire that had gone unquenched for too long.

They made no mention of it and went back to their separate solitude, and it was only at the end of January that she told him the news. She had been devastated when she found out. It was yet another bond to him, but she had long since given up hope of getting out.
Andy had made it perfectly clear to her. He owned her for the rest of her life. And now, she was expecting another child.

He hoped it would bring them closer to each other, but it drove them even further apart. She was constantly sick, day and night. She took to her bed and stayed there most of the time. She was in bed all through the spring, and only got up briefly in the afternoons to take Reed to the park. Her illness was yet another way of shutting Andy out.

They dined in silence at night, and the only sounds in the apartment once Andy got home, were Reed's chatterings. Andy and Kate rarely spoke to each other anymore. And in June, Kate saw in the newspaper that Joe had gotten engaged. She called to congratulate him, and found he was in Paris. He never called her anymore. At twenty-nine, she felt as though her life was over. She was married to a man she felt nothing for, was having a child she didn't want, and had lost the only man she'd ever loved. The baby was due in September, and Kate didn't seem to care. The only joys in her life were her son, and her memories of Joe.

It was Andy who finally came to her, just before their second child was born. She was lying on her bed, reading late at night, Reed was in bed next to her, sound asleep. He had turned two in March, and was a beautiful, loving child. She looked up when she saw Andy come into the room. Looking at him now was like seeing a stranger. It was hard to imagine they'd ever been close or thought they were in love, or were even friends.

“How do you feel?” he asked, sitting next to her on the bed. It was the closest they'd been to each other in
eight months. It was hard to believe it had been that way between them for almost two years. The only decent time they'd ever shared was their first year of marriage, before he left for Germany and Joe came back.

“I feel large,” she smiled. Talking to him was like talking to a distant friend, someone you had met years before and hadn't seen in a long time.

“I thought you'd like to know. I'm moving out after the baby comes.” He had made the decision weeks before, and rented an apartment that afternoon. He couldn't live that way anymore. Anything they'd ever shared or dreamed had long since died. And he knew now that he could no longer keep her like a bird in a cage. Her spirit had long since flown. The victory he had won over Joe was meaningless, he knew now. Kate had never been Andy's to lose. She was always Joe's.

“Why are you moving out?” she asked quietly, putting her book down.

“Why stay? You were right. It was a mistake. I'm sorry I got you pregnant on New Year's Eve. This complicates things for you.”

“Destiny, I guess. That word again.” It was the thing that made people come and go, or stay, or wish they could, and not make the right decision when they should. Chance. “The baby will be good for Reed,” she said quietly. “Where are you going?” It was like asking a fellow traveler on a train, not a man she had once loved. She was no longer sure she ever had. Probably not. They had been better as friends. She had just been so heartbroken after she left Joe. But they had both paid a high price for what they'd done.

“I should have listened to you two years ago,” he
said. She nodded and said nothing. The two years he'd taken to agree to a divorce had cost her Joe. She wondered if he was married yet. The papers hadn't said, only that he'd gotten engaged several months before. And she had to respect that now. It was too late for them. And certainly for her, she felt. Andy had wasted her life, and destroyed her dreams. They belonged now to the woman who was going to marry Joe. And Kate had none.

“You were probably right to try,” she said to Andy, trying to be fair. But she had been too much in love with Joe to even consider it. The marriage to Andy had ended the moment she saw Joe again.