Lone eagle

Andy had been home from Germany for eight months by then, and it had been a very rough time.

Her parents had commented on it, but this time neither of them dared ask what was going on. Whatever it was that had happened to them, it had taken a tremendous toll.

They went to Cape Cod that summer, as they always did, and this time Kate and Andy slept in separate rooms. Andy could force Kate to stay married to him, but he couldn't force her to make love. Their life had become a nightmare, their marriage an empty shell. And Kate looked like a ghost as she walked around the house.

Kate stayed home from the barbecue that year, and when her parents came back, her father commented that Joe Allbright hadn't been there that year. As he said the words, Andy looked at Kate, and the look of hatred between them was so strong that Clarke was stunned. Her parents were in despair over what they'd seen after Kate and Andy went home.

Reed was walking by then, and when they got home, she called Joe, as she did from time to time, just to see how he was. Hazel said he was in California, doing test flights again, and Kate asked her to send him her love when he called. All she heard from him by then were cryptic postcards once in a while. They hadn't talked in a long time.

It was nearly Thanksgiving when Andy looked at her one night. The nightmare that their marriage had become had gone on for a year. “Is there any chance we could at least become friends again? I miss talking to you, Kate.” They had lost everything between them when he had refused to let her out. He had won an empty victory, all that was left of Kate now was a shell. “Why don't we at least try to be friends?” But even as he said the words, he saw in her eyes that there was no hope. She was gone. He had been her enemy for too long."

"“I don't know,” she said to him honestly. In the past year, she had felt nothing for him. The only man she still cared about was Joe, and he was out of her life and back to his own, and his other love. His airplanes had become his passion again, and had always been. It was only for a brief time that he had finally understood he could have both. And now that she was gone, they were all he wanted, and all he had. There had been no other woman in his life.

They went to Andy's parents for the holidays that year, and after that, out of sheer loneliness, she at least began talking to him again. But that was all. She hadn't slept with him, or made love to him in eighteen months. She had moved into the second bedroom with Reed. They spent New Year's Eve with friends, and actually danced with each other, and Kate drank an inordinate amount of champagne. He actually heard her laugh that night, and she was so drunk she flirted with him on the way home. It was the most fun he'd had with her in a year and a half, and it almost reminded him of old times. He helped her out of her coat when they got home, and the strap of her dress slipped off her shoulder, and revealed parts of her he hadn't seen in far too long. He'd had a fair amount to drink himself, and suddenly found himself kissing her, and fondling her, and was amazed to feel her respond.

“Kate?…” He didn't want to take advantage of her when she was drunk, but the temptation was far too great, for both of them. They were married after all, and living a celibate life. She was twenty-eight years old, and he had turned thirty that month, and they had just spent one of the loneliest years of both their lives.

She followed him into the bedroom they no longer shared. She was still living in the bedroom next to his, and Reed was still sleeping in a crib next to her. He was twenty-one months old, and sound asleep when the sitter left that night.

“Would you like to sleep with me tonight, Kate?” Andy offered tentatively, and without a word, she took off her dress and slipped into his bed. He had no illusions that she was in love with him. They were two drowning people lost in a stormy sea, clutching at anything they could to survive. Each other, if all else failed.

Afterward, she hardly remembered making love to him that night. All she knew was that she'd woken up in his bed, and then scurried back to her own. When he woke up on New Year's Day, she was gone.

They both had fearsome hangovers and said very little that day. She was profoundly upset by what had happened the night before. She had vowed to herself fourteen months before that she would never sleep with him again. And she hadn't, until then. But she was so lonely, the champagne had unleashed a torrent of desire that had gone unquenched for too long.

They made no mention of it and went back to their separate solitude, and it was only at the end of January that she told him the news. She had been devastated when she found out. It was yet another bond to him, but she had long since given up hope of getting out. Andy had made it perfectly clear to her. He owned her for the rest of her life.