“I don't want to go anywhere,” she snapped at him, and this time he snapped back. He had tried to be patient with her, but it didn't get him anywhere, except angry and hurt.

“No, you don't, do you, Kate? You just want to sit here, feeling sorry for yourself. Well, for chrissake, Kate, goddamn grow up. I can't sit here holding your hand all the time. I can't bring those babies back, and who knows, maybe it was for the best, maybe we weren't meant to have more kids. It wasn't our decision, it was God's.”

“That's what you wanted anyway, wasn't it? You wanted me to have an abortion so you didn't have to be bothered coming home more than ten minutes a month. Don't tell me how much you've done for me, or how lucky I am, or whose decision it was to let my babies die… don't tell me a goddamn thing, Joe, because you're never here anyway. It took you five goddamn days to come home when they thought I was going to die. So where the hell do you get off telling me to grow up? You're out there flying your damn planes and having a good time all over the goddamn world, while I sit here with my kids. Maybe you're the one who needs to grow up!” He looked like she had taken a blowtorch to him, and he said nothing to her. He walked out of the apartment and slammed the door, and stayed at the Plaza that night. And all she did was lie on her bed and sob. She had said everything she hadn't wanted to say to him. But she was so filled with misery and grief, and so lonely for him all the time. And all she had done was make it worse. She wanted him more than anything, wanted him to fix it for her, and she hated him because he could not. He couldn't bring her babies back, couldn't stay home with her, couldn't turn back the clock. She had wanted them so much, and still wanted him, and she knew she was doing everything she could to drive him away, and didn't know why. There was no one she could talk to about it. It was as though she had fallen into a black hole six months before, and couldn't find her way back up. And there was no one to rescue her. She knew she had to do it herself, but she had no idea how.

He came back to the apartment the next day, but only long enough to pack a bag and leave for L.A. And just seeing him pack panicked her. Joe seemed icy cold, and unnaturally controlled.

“I'll call you, Kate,” he said quietly. He didn't know what else to say to her. He thought she hated him. And she didn't know how to tell him she hated herself. In spite of all the fire and debris she threw at him, he was still the one she loved. But it would have been hard to convince Joe of that. She had said such terrible things to him, and been so unkind to him that for the first time he was beginning to wonder if they would ever find each other again. And the guilt she had engendered in him only made him want to escape. Joe felt overwhelmed and he had never been as lonely or as miserable in his life.

He stayed in L.A. for a month, and ran the company from there. He even had Hazel fly out so he didn't have to go home. It was nearly Thanksgiving when he finally came back. He opened the door gingerly when he came home, and was startled when Reed flew into his arms.

“Joe! You're back!!” He was happy to see the boy. The children were one of the things he loved most about Kate, particularly these days, and he missed them when he stayed away.

“I missed you, ace,” Joe said with a broad grin. And he had missed Kate too. A lot more than he'd expected to, which was why he'd come home. “Where's your mom?”

“She's out. She went to a movie with friends. She does that a lot.” Reed was five, and he thought Joe was the best. He hated it when Joe was gone, and his mom cried all the time. She had for a long time. Stevie was only three, and asleep by the time Joe got home.

And when Kate came back from the movies, she was surprised to see Joe. She looked calmer than she had when he left, and he cautiously took her in his arms. He never knew when she was going to attack. They hardly ever spoke on the phone anymore when he was gone.

“I missed you,” he said, and meant every word of it.

“Me too,” she said as she clung to him and started to cry. She seemed better this time, as though she were slowly coming back from the terrible place she had been.

“I missed you before I left too,” he said, and she knew what he meant.

“I don't know what happened to me…. I must have hit my head harder than I thought.” She had been through a lot. The accident, losing the twins, it all seemed too much. And her mother was constantly whipping her up. He wished Kate would stop talking to her, but he knew it was something he couldn't ask.

She was much better this time, and they both finally began to relax. They agreed to stay home for the holidays, and not spend Thanksgiving with her parents in Boston this year. He thought it would be more than he could take, but he didn't say that to her. He just said he thought it would be good for them to stay home, and she agreed, which was a huge relief to him. But by sheer bad luck, three days before Thanksgiving he got a cable from Japan. Everything was in a mess there, and they insisted he had to come. It wasn't what he wanted to do, but for the sake of his future dealings with them, he knew he had to go. He hated to tell Kate.

And when he did, she looked shocked. “Can't you tell them it's Thanksgiving here? This is important, Joe.” She was near tears when he explained it to her, and they were both trying not to get into a fight. Things had been better for a while.

“My business is important too, Kate,” he said in a calm voice.

“I need you here this year, Joe. This is hard for me.” She was still upset about the twins, although she was better than she'd been in months. “Don't leave me alone.” It was the plea of an anguished child, a child who had lost her father to suicide, and a woman who had recently lost not one, but two babies that she had wanted so desperately. Joe knew he couldn't change any of that, and he expected Kate to be an adult.

“Do you want to come with me?” It was all he could think of at that point. But she shook her head.

“I can't leave the kids on Thanksgiving, Joe. What would they think?”

“That you need to take a trip with me. Send them to the Scotts'.” But she didn't want to do that. She wanted to spend Thanksgiving at home with them, and with him. She tried everything she could to talk him out of going, and he kept explaining to her that he wanted to be with her, but he had to go. “I'll come home in a week. No matter what.” But that didn't do it for her. She felt as though he was putting his business first again, and putting her last. She looked like a child as she sat in their bed crying the morning he left. “Kate, don't do this to me. I don't want to leave. I told you, I have no choice. It's not fair for you to make me feel guilty over this. Make this work for both of us.” She nodded and blew her nose, and kissed him before he left. She wanted to understand, but she was feeling abandoned anyway. Joe had invited her to go with him, and he wanted her to, but she wouldn't. She took the kids to Boston instead.

And in the end, he was gone for twice as long as he said. He came home in two weeks instead of one. He didn't even stop in California on the way home. But when he got back to New York, Kate was icy cold. Her mother had worked hard on her in the two weeks that he'd been gone. She seemed to have a huge investment in convincing Kate that he was rotten to her and didn't give a damn. She had never forgiven him for taking five days to come home when Kate had the accident and lost the twins. And she had hated him long before that. She had never approved of him from the first, because he hadn't married Kate, and when he had it had cost her her marriage to Andy Scott, whom Liz loved. It was as though she wanted to destroy what he and Kate had, at all costs. And she was doing a good job of it. In two short weeks, she had turned Kate around again, and they hardly spoke the night he came home.

He didn't apologize to her, he didn't explain it again, he didn't defend himself for having been gone. He was tired of doing that, he had been doing it for months. He played with the kids that night, and read quietly when they went to bed. He wanted to give Kate time to calm down and readjust. He knew that his comings and goings were hard for her, and she needed time to warm up to him again sometimes, particularly if her mother had been talking to her a lot.

He told her about Japan when she came to bed, and acted as though nothing was wrong. Sometimes that worked too, if he didn't react to her. It was hard for him when he was tired after a long trip. But he tried to be as patient as he could. He didn't want things to revert to the way they had been for the six months before he left. Things had improved for a while, and he wanted them to continue to head that way. But he could tell that he'd lost ground with her while he'd been gone. The holidays were a big deal to her and her family, and his not being there for Thanksgiving meant a lot, more than it did to him. To him, it meant a badly timed business trip. To her, it was a slap in the face, or worse, it meant that he didn't love her as much as she'd thought, or perhaps at all. Her mother had tried to convince her of that.

Things calmed down a little in the next few days, and he was home for more than two weeks. He and Kate went to buy a Christmas tree with Stevie and Reed, and decorated it. And for the first time, he saw Kate laugh and smile like the old days. Her spark had finally come back. It had been a tough year for them, particularly for her, but she was finally out of the woods, and he could see light up ahead. And it felt very good to him. It was about time. It had been a very hard time for him too.

Three days before Christmas, he got a call telling him he had to go to L.A. But he wasn't worried about it. He wasn't going to stay long, he only had to attend meetings for a day, and after that he'd fly home. He promised to be home on Christmas Eve. And even Kate didn't react this time. She was so used to his comings and goings. L.A. seemed like a short hop to both of them. She was relaxed and friendly when he left, and for once he didn't feel guilty about a trip. They even made love the morning he left.