Lone eagle

“Can you imagine a man who would let his wife practice law? Anyone I'd marry would want me to stay home, and have children.” It was just the way things were, and they both knew it.

“Is there someone you want to marry, Kate?” he asked, with more than a little interest. Maybe she'd met someone since Christmas, or had known him before. He didn't know that much about her.

“No,” she said simply, “there isn't.”

“Then why worry about it? Why not do what you want till you meet the right man? It's like worrying about a job you don't even have yet.

Maybe you'd meet a nice guy in law school.” And then he turned to her with a question. Their legs were barely touching as they stretched them out before them, but he didn't try to hold her hand, or put an arm around her. “Is getting married that important?” He hadn't even come close to it, at thirty. And she was just eighteen. She seemed to have a lifetime ahead of her for marriage and babies. It was odd to hear her talk of it, like a career path she had chosen, rather than an inevitable outcome of what she felt for someone. He wondered if that was the way her parents saw it. It was certainly not uncommon. But unlike most women, who seemed more clandestine to him, she was so open about it.

“I guess marriage is important,” she answered thoughtfully, “everyone says it is. And I suppose it will be to me one day. I just can't imagine it right now. I'm not in a hurry. I'm glad I'm going to college first.” It was a reprieve for her, from her mother's plans for her.

“I won't even have to think about it for four years, and by then who knows what will happen.”"

"“You could run away and join the circus,” he said, pretending to be helpful, and she laughed at him, lay back on the soft sand, and rested her head on one arm flung behind her. He had never seen anyone as beautiful, as he looked at her in the moonlight. He had to remind himself of how old he was, and that she was just a child. But she didn't look like one as she lay there, she was very much a woman.

He looked away from her for a long moment, to regain his composure. Kate didn't have the remotest inkling of what was in his mind.

“I think I'd like being in the circus,” she said to the back of his head, as he observed the night sky. “When I was a little girl, I thought the costumes were terrific. And the horses. I always loved the horses. The lions and tigers scared me.”

“They scared me too. I only saw the circus once, in Minneapolis. I thought it was too noisy.