She didn't know why, but she had bad dreams all week, and couldn't sleep at night. She was exhausted when her father reached her on Thursday afternoon, and Kate was startled to hear Clarke's voice. He had never once called her at Radcliffe. He asked if she'd like to come home for dinner that night, and she told him she had work to do, but the more she tried to get out of it, the more insistent he became, and she finally relented and agreed. It seemed odd to her, and she was a little concerned. She wondered if one of them was sick, and they wanted to tell her. She hoped not.

As soon as Kate walked into the house, she knew something had happened. Her parents were waiting for her in the living room, and her mother had her back to her so Kate wouldn't see her crying. She was devastated for her.

It was her father who told her the news. He felt more capable of it than Kate's mother did. As soon as Kate sat down, he looked straight at her and told her he'd gotten a telegram that morning, and he had called Washington himself to find out everything he could.

“I don't have good news,” he said, as Kate's eyes grew wide. This wasn't about them, she suddenly realized, it was about her, and she could feel her heart pound. She didn't want to hear what he was saying, but she knew she had to. She didn't make a sound as she watched his face. “Joe listed you as his next of kin, Kate, along with some cousins he hasn't seen in years.” Kate's mother had accepted the dreaded telegram, and called Clarke at the office, as she opened it. And Clarke had immediately called someone he knew in the War Department for further details, none of which were good. He didn't waste more time then. Kate was holding her breath. “He was shot down over Germany last Friday morning.” It had been a week, and on Thursday night she had begun having those hideous dreams about planes free-falling through the sky. It had been Friday morning in Europe. “They saw his plane go down, and they have a rough idea of where he landed. He parachuted out at the last minute, and he may have been killed on the way down, or he may have been captured. But they've had no word of him through their underground sources since. There's been no sign of him on the lists of officers who've been captured. He's flying under a different name, but neither the one he's using, nor his real name has shown up. There's some concern that he may be being held secretly, or that the Germans have killed him. I believe he may have been aware of classified information, which would make him of considerable interest to the Germans, if they're aware of who he really is. Joe is quite a prize because of his own history, he's a real plum for them, because he's a national hero.” She was staring at her father dumbly, trying to absorb what he had told her, and for a moment, there was no reaction whatsoever from her. “Kate… Allied Intelligence doesn't think he made it,” he summed up for her. “And even if he did, the Germans won't let him live long. He's probably dead by now, or either the Americans or the British would have heard something about him.” She stared at her father with wide eyes, and was too stunned to speak for a minute, as her mother moved closer to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

“Mom… is he dead?” she asked in the voice of a lost child, trying to understand what someone speaking a foreign language had just told her. She couldn't absorb it. Her heart refused to know. It was like a terrifying echo of the day her mother had told her that her father died. And in some ways, this was worse. She had loved Joe too much.

“They think so, dear,” her mother said softly, aching for her only daughter. Kate was sheet white and looked shell-shocked. She started to get up, and then sat down, as her father looked at her with eyes filled with sympathy and regret.

“I'm sorry, Kate,” he said sadly. She could see that there were tears in his eyes, not only for Joe, but for her.

“Don't be,” Kate said sharply as she stood up. She wasn't going to let this happen to her. She couldn't. Or to him. She didn't believe it, and never would, until they were sure. “He's not dead yet. If he were, someone would know it,” she insisted as her parents exchanged an unhappy glance. It was not the reaction they had expected, or one she had planned. She refused to accept it. “We just have to know that Joe is going to be okay, Mom … Dad… that's what he'd expect of us.”

“Kate, the man landed in Germany, surrounded by Germans who were out looking for him. He's a famous flying ace. They're not going to let him out alive, even if he was alive when he landed. You have to face that.” Her father's voice was firm. He didn't want her deluding herself.

“I don't have to face anything,” she shouted at him, as she ran out of the living room, up the stairs, and slammed her bedroom door.

Her parents looked stunned as they watched her go, and had no idea what to say to her. They had expected her to be devastated, and instead she was enraged at them and the rest of the world. But once in her room, with the door firmly closed, Kate threw herself on her bed and began to sob. She lay there and cried for hours, thinking of him and how wonderful he was. She couldn't bear the thought of what had happened to him, it wasn't possible, it wasn't fair, all she could think of now were her terrible dreams for the past week, and how he must have felt when he was shot down. And he had promised her he had a hundred lives.

It was late that night when her mother finally dared to slip into the room, and when Kate turned to look at her, her mother saw that she had red, swollen eyes. She went to sit next to her on the bed, and Kate sobbed in her arms.

“I don't want him to be dead, Mommy…,” she said, crying like a child, as tears of pain for her only child slid down her mother's cheeks.

“Neither do I,” Elizabeth said. For all her qualms about him, he was a decent man, and didn't deserve to die at thirty-three. And Kate didn't deserve a broken heart. None of it was fair. Nothing had been fair in the past two years. “We just have to pray that he'll be all right.” She didn't want to continue to reason with Kate that he was probably already dead. That would come in time. It was hard enough to accept that he'd been shot down. And if they didn't find him eventually, even Kate would have to accept that he was gone. She didn't have to face it now, it was obviously far too painful for her. Her mother stayed with her until late into the night, and stroked her hair lovingly until she fell asleep, making the little snuffling sobs that come after a child has cried for too long. It nearly broke her mother's heart.

“I wish she didn't love that man so,” Elizabeth said to Clarke when she finally came to bed. He was so worried about Kate that he had waited up for his wife. “There's something between those two that frightens me.” She had seen it the year before in Joe's eyes, and she could see it now in Kate's. It defied reason and time and words, it was like a tie between their souls that even they did not understand. And what frightened Kate's mother now was if the tie proved to be unseverable by death as well. It would be a terrible fate for Kate.

Kate was silent and grim at the breakfast table the next day, and any attempt to speak to her went ignored. She said nothing to either of them, drank only a cup of tea, and then drifted back upstairs like a ghost. She stayed home from school, and for the rest of the weekend, never left her room. Fortunately, she only had one more week of school, before the Christmas break.

But on Sunday night, she dressed and went back to Radcliffe, and never even said goodbye to them. She was like a disembodied soul. She spoke to no one in the house, and when Beverly came to say hello to her and ask if she'd been sick over the weekend, Kate never told her that Joe's plane had been shot down. She couldn't bring herself to say the words, and she cried herself to sleep every night.

Everyone in the house at Radcliffe knew something had happened to her, and it was several days later that someone saw a small article in the newspaper that he had been shot down. Military Intelligence had decided to keep it as low key as they could, so as not to demoralize people at home. They said he was missing in action, and the newspaper was noticeably vague. But it told them all they needed to know. All the girls in her house knew that Joe Allbright had visited Kate.

“I'm sorry…,” some of them whispered as they passed her in the hall. And all she could do was nod and look away. She looked terrible, lost weight, and she looked tired and ill when she went home for the Christmas break. And all her mother's efforts to comfort her were in vain. All Kate wanted was to be left alone, as she waited for news of Joe.

She asked her father to call his contact in Washington again before the holidays, but there was no further news. There had been no sign of Joe, and no word through underground sources. The Germans had not reported capturing him, and in fact had denied it when they were asked. No one identified by the name on his papers had surfaced anywhere. And if they knew they had captured Joe Allbright, they would have said so and counted it as a real victory against the Allies. And no one had seen him escape, or alive since he'd gone down. There was no sign of him anywhere.

There was no Christmas for any of them that year. Kate hardly did any Christmas shopping, didn't want any gifts from them, took forever to open the ones she got, and spent most of her time in her room. All she could do was think of him, where he was, what had happened to him, if he was still alive, if she would ever see him again. She thought constantly of the times they had, and she regretted even more bitterly now having lost the baby they had conceived the year before. She was inconsolable and unreachable, she hardly ever slept anymore, and she was rail thin.