She told Joe the next morning, over breakfast. She said it quietly and reasonably, and succinctly. “I'm leaving, Joe.” Their eyes met across the table and he looked confused. He was still reverberating from the pain they had caused each other the night before.

“Why, Kate?” He looked shocked, but he didn't tell her not to go.

“After what you said last night, I can't stay here anymore. I love you. With all my heart. With all my life. I waited two years for you, unable to believe you were dead. I didn't think I could love anybody else after you, and I still don't. Not the way I love you. I never will. But I want a husband and children and a real life. You don't want the same things I do.” There were tears in her eyes as she spoke, but she was trying to stay calm, despite the sinking feeling of panic in her stomach, or the knife in her heart. She wanted him to take back everything he'd said the night before, but he didn't say a word.

Joe finished his breakfast silently, and then he looked at her. It was one of those hideous moments in a life that you remember forever, visually and word by word. “I love you, Kate. But I have to be honest with you. I don't think I ever want to get married. I don't want to. I don't want to be married to anyone, except maybe my planes. I don't want to be tied down. I don't want to be ‘owned.’ There's room for you here, if you want to share my work with me. But that's all I can give you. It's all I have to give. Me and my planes. I probably love them as much as I love you. Maybe more some days. I can't love you more than that, I'm too afraid. Kate, it's who I am, and all I have to give. I don't want kids. Ever. I don't have room for them in my life. I don't need them. And I don't want them.” Joe realized with regret that right then, he didn't want her either. She was too big a threat to him. He wanted his business and his planes, and her after that. But Kate was a twenty-four-year-old girl, and she wanted babies and a husband and a life, not just the opportunity to work for him. What he had just said to her struck her like a blow, and confirmed all of her worst fears.

“I don't want a business, Joe. I want children. I want you. I love you, but I'm going home. I guess I should have asked these questions a long time ago.” She felt like an utter fool. And she felt the same way she had the day her father died. Overwhelmed by immeasurable loss.

“I don't think I knew how I felt when we started the business. Now I do. Do whatever you have to do, Kate.”

“I'm leaving you,” she said simply, as their eyes met.

“Is it worth leaving the business?” He couldn't imagine her doing that. He thought she'd be crazy if she did. Didn't she understand what he was doing here? It was something that had never been done before, and he wanted to share it with her. It was the best he could give. But right then, she didn't care.

“It's not my business, Joe, it's yours.” He hadn't thought about that. That clarified things for him, or at least so he thought.

“Do you want stock?”

She smiled at him. “No. I want a husband. My mother was right, I guess. Eventually, it matters. To me anyway.”

“I understand,” he said, and believed he did. He wanted to. But they both had a lot to learn. Joe picked up his briefcase and looked at her. “I'm sorry, Kate.” After all they'd been to each other for seven years, in one form and another, he had to let her go. He wasn't willing to be forced into marrying her. He had too many other things to think about. In public life on the exterior, he knew that he had become an important man, but deep inside, no matter how important he was, he was still a frightened, lonely little boy.

“I'm sorry too, Joe,” Kate whispered.

It was like a death scene. Their relationship was dying. He was killing it. He had made disastrous choices about their life without even consulting her. But he felt he had no other choice.

He didn't kiss her goodbye. He didn't say anything. And neither did Kate. He just walked out the door with his briefcase, without looking back, as Kate watched him go.





13

KATE'S PARENTS KNEW she had come home for good, but they didn't know why. She never explained it to them, never said anything about Joe or what had happened in New Jersey. She felt too bruised and broken to discuss it with them. And she was crushed when he never called her. She kept hoping that he would wake up and miss her unbearably, and call to tell her that he wanted to marry her and have children with her after all.

But he meant what he had said. He sent her a small box of clothes a few weeks later, things she had forgotten in his apartment, and there was no note with it. Her parents could see how much pain she was in, but they didn't press her, although her mother suspected what had happened. Kate spent three months in the Boston winter, going for long walks and crying. And it was a painful Christmas for her. She thought of calling Joe a thousand times, and she desperately wanted to, but she wasn't willing to live with him as his mistress. In the long run, it would have made her feel like an outcast. She went skiing for a few days after Christmas, and came back to spend New Year's Eve with her parents. She didn't reach out to Joe, and he never called her. She felt as though part of her had died when she left him, and she couldn't imagine a life without him. But now she had to. She had taken a brave stand, and now she had to live with it, and make the best of it. She had no other choice.

She made an effort to see a few old friends, but she no longer seemed to have anything in common with them. Her life had been too entwined with Joe's for too many years. Not knowing what else to do, and determined to have a life of her own again, she decided to move to New York in January and take a job at the Metropolitan Museum, as an assistant to the curator in the Egyptian wing. At least it called into play her art history studies from Radcliffe, although these days she knew a lot more about airplanes. Her heart wasn't in it at first, but she was surprised to find, once she got there, that she loved her job, far more than she had expected. And by February, she had found an apartment. All she had to do now was get through the rest of her life. The prospect seemed grim and endless and depressing and incredibly empty without him. Night and day, she missed everything about him. Even when she was working, Joe was all she thought of. She read about him constantly in the papers. Seven years ago he had been in the news for setting flight records, and now the whole world was talking about him building fantastic airplanes. And when he wasn't working on them, he was flying them.

She saw in the paper in June that he had won a prize at the Paris Air Show. She was happy for him. And miserable, and lonely for herself. She was twenty-five years old, more beautiful than she knew, and her life was more boring than her mother's.

She never went on dates, and when people asked her out, she told them she was busy. It was just like when his plane was shot down, she was mourning him, and missing him intensely. She didn't even go to Cape Cod that summer because she knew it would remind her of him. Everything reminded her of him. Talking, living, moving, breathing. Even going to restaurants and eating. Cooking. It was absurd and she knew it, but he had become part of her essence. All she had to do now, she was convinced, was wait a lifetime to forget him. It could be done, she told herself, she just wasn't sure she could do it. She woke up every morning feeling as though someone had died, and then she remembered who. She had.

She had been in New York nearly a year when she was in the grocery store one day buying dog food. She had just gotten a puppy to keep her company, and even she laughed at herself and admitted that it was pathetic. She was checking out the different brands, when she looked up and was startled to see Andy. She hadn't seen him in more than three years, and he looked very grown-up and handsome in a dark suit and a Burberry. He had just come home from work and was obviously buying groceries. She assumed by then that he was married, although she didn't know that for sure.

“How are you, Kate?” he asked, smiling broadly. He had long since recovered from the blow she had dealt him, although even thinking about her had pained him for a long time, and he had thrown away all his pictures of her. But he was fine now.

“I'm fine, how've you been?” She didn't tell him that she'd missed him. Good friends were hard to come by, and it had been a long time since she'd had someone to talk to like him.

“I've been busy. What are you doing here?” He seemed happy to see her.

“I live here. I work at the Metropolitan. It's fun.”

“That's nice. I read about Joe everywhere these days. That's an incredible empire he started. Do you have kids yet?” She laughed at the question. It made an obvious assumption, which was not only incorrect, but now obsolete.

“No. I have a puppy.” She pointed at the dog food, and then decided to correct the assumption for old times' sake. “I'm not married.” He looked stunned when she said it.

“You and Joe didn't get married?”

“No. He's married to his airplanes. It was a good decision for him.”

“What about you?” he asked honestly. He had always been straightforward with her, it was one of the things she liked about him. “How was it for you, his decision, I mean?”

“Not so great. I left. I'm getting used to it. It's been about a year now.” It had been fourteen months, two weeks and three days, but she thought she'd spare him the details. “What about you? Married? Kids?”

“Girlfriends. Many of them. Safer. No heartbreak.” He hadn't changed at all, and she laughed at his response.