Lone eagle

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.