Lone eagle

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.