Lone eagle

She was well known for the beautiful table she set, and her elaborate flower arrangements. And she was distracted when Kate first walked into the kitchen, trying to assess her mother's mood.

“Hi, Mom. Need a hand?” Her mother looked over her shoulder in surprise. Kate was always the first to escape when she thought her mother needed help in the kitchen. She always said that domestic duties bored her, and they were demeaning.

“Did you flunk out of school?” her mother said with a look of amusement. “You must have done something really awful if you're offering to help me count china. How bad is it?”

“Couldn't it be that I'm just more mature now that I'm in college?” Kate said with an imperious look, and her mother pretended to think about it for an instant.

“That's possible, but very unlikely. You've only been there for three months, Kate. I think maturity starts to happen junior year, and doesn't come full-blown until you're a senior.”

“Great. Are you telling me that after I graduate, I'll actually want to count china?”

“Absolutely. Particularly if you're doing it for your husband,” her mother said firmly.

“Mom… okay, okay. I did something in the spirit of what you always tell me Thanksgiving is about.” Kate looked innocent as she faced her mother.

“You killed a turkey?”

“No, I invited a homeless friend for dinner. Not homeless, but family-less.” It sounded reasonable to both of them the way she said it.

“That's sweet, darling. One of the girls in your house at Radcliffe?”

“A friend from California,” she hedged, trying to soften up her mother before she told her.

“It's perfectly understandable she can't go home. Of course you can invite her. We have eighteen people coming here for dinner, and there's plenty of room at the table.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Kate said looking relieved, at least they had room for him. “By the way, it's not a girl.” Kate held her breath and waited.

“It's a boy?” Her mother looked startled.

“Sort of.”

“From Harvard?” Her mother looked genuinely pleased. She loved the idea of Kate dating a boy from Harvard, and it was the first she'd heard of it. And only three months into the school year.

“He's not from Harvard,” Kate dove into the icy water, “it's Joe Allbright.”

There was a long pause as her mother looked at her with eyes full of questions. “The pilot? How did you happen to hear from him?”

“He called me out of the blue yesterday. He's visiting the Lindberghs, and he had nothing to do on Thanksgiving.”"

"“Isn't it a little odd that he would call you?” Her mother looked suspicious.

“Maybe.” She didn't tell her about the letters, it was hard enough to explain why she had invited him for Thanksgiving. She wasn't even sure why herself, but she had. And now she had to find some plausible reason to explain it.

“Has he called you before?”

“No, he hasn't,” she was able to say honestly. Her mother didn't ask if he'd ever written to her. “I think he just likes Dad, and maybe he's lonely. I don't think he has any family. I don't know why he called, Mom, but when he said he had no plans for Thanksgiving, I felt sorry for him. I didn't think you and Dad would mind. It's kind of the spirit of Thanksgiving,” she said blithely, and helped herself to a carrot from the icebox. But her mother wasn't entirely taken in, she knew her better, although she'd never seen her daughter look quite like that. But at fifty-eight, she hadn't entirely forgotten what it felt like to be wooed by an older man when you were young, or to be smitten. But something about Joe Allbright worried her. He was so remote and so aloof, and at the same time so intense. He was the kind of man who, if he turned his full attention on you, could be overwhelming. And even if Kate didn't understand that, because she had no experience with it, her mother did, and that was precisely why she was worried about him.

“I don't mind if he comes to dinner,” Elizabeth Jamison said honestly, “but I mind very much if he's pursuing you, Kate. He's a lot older than you are, and not the sort of person I think you should fall in love with.” How did one decide those things, who to fall in love with, and who not? And how could one control it? But Kate only nodded at her mother.

“I'm not in love with him, Mom. He's just coming to eat turkey.”

“Sometimes that's how those things start, by being friends and becoming too familiar,” her mother warned her.

“He lives in California,” Kate said blandly.

“I'll admit, that makes me feel better. All right, I'll tell your father. And I hate to say it, but he'll be delighted. But I swear, if he offers to take your father up in some dangerous plane with him, I'll put arsenic in his stuffing. And you can tell him I said so.”

“Thanks, Mom,” she beamed at her mother, and wandered nonchalantly out of the kitchen.