It was hard not to think of Joe as Kate stood at the barbecue, toasting marshmallows, remembering when she'd seen him there the year before. It had been the beginning of their romance. They had started writing to each other shortly after that, and then she had invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. But she could remember almost every word he'd said that night when they walked along the beach. She was standing lost in thought, when someone standing behind her broke into her reverie. She had been a million miles away, thinking of Joe.

“Why do you always burn them?” the voice said, as she gave a start, and then turned quickly backward to see him. It was Joe, standing right behind her, looking tall and thin and pale, and a little older. He was smiling at her, and in a split second she had tossed the branch with the burning marshmallows into the sand, and he had his arms tightly around her. He was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen.

“Oh my God… oh my God…” It couldn't be, but it was. She couldn't even begin to imagine what he was doing there, and as she stepped back from him with a worried look, she saw that he was whole, so at least he wasn't wounded. “What are you doing here?”

“I have two weeks leave. I have to report to the War Office on Tuesday. I guess I must have hit my quota of Germans, so they sent me home to check on you. You look pretty good to me. How are you, baby?” Infinitely better now that she saw him. All she could do was think how lucky she was to see him. And he looked every bit as happy as she did. He couldn't keep his hands off her as they stood pressed closely together. He stroked her hair, and kept her close to him, and every few minutes, he kissed her, and held her tight. Neither of them cared who saw them. Kate was just happy he was alive.

Her father spotted them a few minutes later. At first, he couldn't imagine who the tall blond man was standing with Kate, and then he saw him kiss her, and realized it was Joe, as he hurried toward them across the sand.

He gave Joe an enormous hug, and then stood beaming at him as he patted his shoulder. “It's good to see you, Joe. We've all been worried about you.”

“I'm fine. You should be worrying about the Germans. We've been shooting the hell out of them.”

“They deserve it,” Kate's father said firmly with a smile. He felt toward Joe almost like a son.

“I'm just doing it so I can get home,” Joe beamed. He was a happy man, and Kate looked like an ecstatically happy woman. She couldn't believe what had just happened to her. It was a reprieve from the long agonizing months of waiting for him and praying for his safety. Two weeks seemed like a miracle to both of them. All she wanted to do was look at him and hold him. And he hadn't moved an inch from her since he'd first surprised her. He wanted to stand as close to her as he could and breathe her in.

“How's it going over there, son?” Clarke asked him in a serious voice, as Kate tore herself away just long enough to go and find her mother and tell her that Joe was home.

“The Brits are having a tough time,” Joe said honestly. “The Germans are just plowing right through them, and bombing all the cities. It's pretty tough when you're living through it. I think we'll get them eventually, but it's not going to be easy.” The war news had been discouraging for the past two months. Germany had captured Sevastopol, and then launched a ferocious and relentless attack on Stalingrad. Rommel was pummeling the British in North Africa. And the Australians in New Guinea were engaged in fierce combat against the Japanese.

“I'm glad you're all right, son,” Clarke said to Joe. He already felt as though he were part of the family, although no promises had been made yet on either side. And even Elizabeth seemed to have softened as she walked over to see him with Kate. She gave him a kiss and a hug and told him how happy she was that he was all right. And she was, for her daughter's sake.

“You've lost weight, Joe,” Elizabeth commented, looking worried. He'd gotten very thin, but he was flying hard, working long hours, and eating very little. The rations they were getting were pretty awful, as Kate knew from his letters. “Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked Joe. She was searching his eyes, as he nodded.

“I am now that I'm here for two weeks. I have to go to Washington tomorrow, for two days, but I'll be back on Thursday. I have another ten days after that. I was hoping to come to Boston.” For obvious reasons. And Kate beamed.

“We'd love that,” Clarke said quickly with a glance at his wife, and even she couldn't resist the look of sheer joy on her daughter's face.

“Would you like to stay with us?” Elizabeth offered, and Kate looked near tears she was so happy as she thanked her mother. But even Elizabeth knew you couldn't fight the tides forever, at some point, you had to go with them. And if anything ever happened to him, she didn't want Kate to feel that they had done whatever they could to keep her and Joe apart. It seemed better for all concerned to be magnanimous about it, as long as Kate didn't do anything foolish. Her mother was planning to talk to her about it, now that she saw them together. Joe was, after all, a thirty-one-year-old man, with needs and desires that far exceeded what was good for Kate to be doing at this point. But as long as they behaved, Elizabeth was willing to have him stay with them. The burden of how they behaved was going to rest on Kate.

The rest of the night seemed to speed by in a blur, and Joe left her long after midnight, to get to Washington by the next morning. He had to drive to Boston, and then take a train to Washington. There were no planes available to him. And when he left her, he kissed her long and hard, and promised to see her in Boston in three days. She hated the fact that she had to go back to school while he was there, but her parents insisted that she couldn't start late. She would just have to make the best of the time they had. The only concession they made was that she could stay at the house with Joe and them, as long as she went to classes every day.

“I'll take her to school myself, and make sure she stays there,” Joe promised them, and she suddenly felt as though she had two fathers, not just one. There had always been something very paternal and protective about Joe, which was part of why she felt so comfortable with him. There were a million reasons why she did, and when he left her to drive back late that night, he held her for a long moment and told her how much he had missed her and how much he loved her. Kate looked at him and savored the words. She hadn't heard them in a long time.

“I love you too, Joe. I've been so worried about you.” Far more than she could ever tell him.

“We'll get through this, baby. I promise. And when it's all over, we'll have a great time together.” It was not the kind of promise that her mother was hoping for, but she didn't care. Just being with him was enough.

Joe came back from Washington, sooner than expected, in two days, and moved into the house with them. He was courteous, considerate, polite, well behaved, and extremely respectful of Kate, which pleased her parents. Even her mother was impressed by how he behaved. The only thing he hadn't done, which would have pleased them more, was ask for her hand in marriage.

Her father skirted the subject delicately one afternoon when he came home early from the office, and found Joe in the kitchen sketching designs for a new airplane. There was no way to get it built now, but when the war was over, it was going to be his dream plane. He had already filled several notebooks with intricate details.

Seeing that led to a brief discussion about Charles Lindbergh, who was helping Henry Ford organize bomber plane production. Lindbergh had wanted to enlist in the military, but FDR had refused. And what he was doing with Ford was valuable and important to the war effort. But nonetheless the public and the press remained critical of him, due to the political positions he'd taken before the war. Like the rest of the country, Clarke had been disappointed by his statements on behalf of America First. They had made him appear to be sympathetic to the Germans. And like many others, Clarke had lost some of his earlier respect for him. He had always thought of Lindbergh as a patriot, and it seemed so out of character and naive of him to have been impressed by the Germans before the war. But he had redeemed himself in Clarke's eyes recently by putting his shoulder to the war effort in whatever ways he could.

The conversation drifted slowly back from Lindbergh to Kate, and Clarke didn't ask him directly, but he made it obvious to Joe that he was curious, if not concerned, about his intentions toward his daughter. Joe didn't hesitate for an instant telling him he loved her. He was honest and up front, and although he looked uncomfortable as he spoke of it, he didn't dally around or beat around the bush. He looked down at his hands for a long moment and then back up at her father. And Clarke liked what he saw there, he always had. Joe had never let him down so far. He was just a little slow moving, slower than Kate's mother would have liked, but Kate didn't seem to mind, and Clarke had to respect that. Whatever their feelings for each other, they seemed to be moving toward what they wanted, and had a keen sense of each other. They were inseparable while he was at home, and obviously deeply in love.

“I'm not going to marry her now,” Joe said bluntly, squirming slightly in the narrow kitchen chair, like a giant bird sitting on a perch with his wings folded. “It wouldn't be right. If something happens to me over there, she'll be a widow.” Clarke didn't want to say that married or not, she would be devastated either way, they both knew that. She was a very young girl. And at nineteen, he was the first man she had ever been in love with, and hopefully the last, if her mother got what she wanted from him. She had told Clarke the night before that she thought they should get engaged. It would at least clarify his intentions and show some respect for Kate. “We don't need to be married. We love each other. There's no one else over there. I'm not seeing anyone, and I won't,” Joe explained to her father. He hadn't spelled that out to Kate, but she instinctively knew it. She trusted him completely, and had laid her heart bare to him. She had no defenses or protective wall around her, she had held back nothing from him, which was precisely what was worrying her mother. She wasn't sure if Joe had done the same, and she suspected he hadn't. He was old enough and cautious enough to keep something for himself. Just how much was, in reality, the question. Kate was much younger, and more naive, and far more vulnerable and trusting, although she could have also hurt him very badly, but she wouldn't do that. Of that there was no doubt.

“Do you see yourself settling down eventually?” Clarke asked quietly. These were the first deep insights he'd had into what Joe wanted out of life. They'd never had a chance to talk about it before the war.

“I suppose so, whatever that means. As long as I can keep flying around and building airplanes. I know I have to do that. As long as everything else fits into that, I guess I could settle in. I've never thought much about it.” It was hardly a proposal, or a firm declaration of intention. It was more of a maybe. He had taken a long time to grow up, and obviously had no deep emotional need to be settled with anyone or anything. As he had told Kate, he had never even really cared if he had children. Just airplanes. “It's pretty hard thinking about the future, when you put your life on the line every day, several times a day. When you're doing that, nothing else really matters.” He was flying as many as three missions a day, and every time he took off, he knew he might never come back. It was hard to think beyond that. In fact, he didn't want to. All he could do was concentrate on what he was doing, and the importance of shooting down the enemy. The rest was unimportant to him. Even Kate, at those particular moments. She was a luxury he could allow himself after the important things were accomplished. It was how he thought about his life actually. He had things he had to do, and after he did them, he could allow himself to be with her. But she had to wait until he had taken care of business. And right now, the war was business for him.

“I love Kate, Mr. Jamison,” Joe said to Clarke, as he handed him a glass of bourbon, and Joe took it and sipped it. “Do you think she'd be happy with a guy like me? Would anyone? Flying comes first with me. It always will. She has to know that.” In his own way, he was a genius, he had brilliant ideas about aeronautical engineering, and he knew every tiny piece of his engines intimately. He could fly in any condition imaginable, and had. He knew all there was to know about aerodynamics. He understood a lot less about women, and he knew that, and Clarke was just beginning to understand. Kate's mother had sensed all that about him from the first.