Lone eagle

No one had any idea what had happened to her, and as the weeks went by, she quietly put it behind her. She never told Joe.

8"

"FOR THE REST OF KATE'S sophomore year, she was busy with school. She got letters from Joe constantly, but there were no leaves on the horizon for him. It was the spring of 1943, and Kate went to see newsreels every chance she got, hoping to catch a glimpse of Joe's face.

The RAF was continuing to bomb Berlin and Hamburg, and other cities. Tunis had been taken by the British, and the Americans had taken Bizerte, in North Africa, back from the Germans.

On the eastern front the Germans and Russians had almost come to a dead halt, up to their knees in mud, in the spring thaw.

Kate saw her parents frequently on the weekends, wrote to Joe, and went to dinner or the movies occasionally with Andy. He had a new girlfriend from Wellesley that spring, and was spending time with her. It left him less time for Kate, but she didn't mind. She, Diana, and Beverly had become fast friends after her miscarriage.

And that summer she was working for the Red Cross again.

They went to Cape Cod at the end of August, but this time Joe didn't appear to surprise her at the barbecue. He hadn't been home in eight months, since the previous Christmas, when they met in Washington. And she couldn't help thinking, as she took long solitary walks on the beach that, if she hadn't lost the baby, she'd be eight months pregnant by then. Her parents never found out what had happened.

And her mother was still talking about the fact that Joe had still made no promises about a future with her. She reminded Kate constantly that she was waiting for a man who had promised her nothing. No marriage. No ring. No future. He just expected her to wait for him, and see what happened when he came home. She was twenty years old, and he was thirty-two, old enough to know what he wanted to do when he returned.

Her mother constantly reminded Kate of it every time she went home, and continued to, as the leaves had begun to turn in late October.

Kate was studying for exams, it was her junior year, and the house mother where she lived came to tell her she had a visitor downstairs. Without even questioning it, Kate assumed it was Andy. He was in his second year of law school, and working like a slave.

She ran quickly down the stairs, with a book still in her hand, and a pale blue sweater over her shoulders.