Lone eagle

“She can't just sit here day after day and night after night,” Liz complained later to her husband. “There's no commitment between them. They're not promised or engaged.” Her mother wanted the real thing for her.

“It's a commitment of the heart, from what I understand,” her father said calmly. He was concerned about Joe, and sympathetic to his daughter. He had none of the suspicions his wife did about Joe. He thought he was a great guy.

“I'm not sure Joe will ever make more of a commitment,” Liz said, looking worried.

“I think he's being very responsible, he doesn't want to make her a young widow. I think he's doing the right thing.”

“I don't think men like him ever make real commitments,” she insisted. “He's too passionate about his flying. Everything else in his life will always come after that. He'll never give Kate what she needs. His first love will always be flying,” she predicted grimly, and Clarke smiled.

“That's not necessarily true. Look at Lindbergh. He's married, he has children.”

“Who knows how happy his wife is?” she said skeptically.

But however they felt about it, Kate continued what she was doing. She stayed home with her parents during the entire vacation, and when she went back to school in January, the other girls looked as unhappy as she did. Five of them had gotten married before their boyfriends shipped out, at least a dozen had gotten engaged, and the others all seemed to be involved with boys who would be going overseas very soon. Their whole life already revolved around photographs and letters, which reminded Kate that she didn't have a single photograph of Joe.

She applied herself to her studies diligently, and saw Andy from time to time. She still refused to go out with him on dates, but they were friends, and he came to visit her often at Radcliffe. They would take long walks across the campus, and go to the cafeteria afterward, and he teased her about the elegance of their dinners together.

“Why won't you let me take you someplace decent?” he moaned as they sat at a back table eating dry meat loaf and nearly inedible chicken. The cafeteria was famous for how bad the food was.

“I don't think it would be right. And this is fine,” she insisted.