Lone eagle

Three weeks after they got back from Europe, Kate smiled at him shyly over dinner, and told Andy she had news for him. He imagined she had done something fun that day, or talked to her mother or one of her friends. He was startled when instead she told him she was sure she was pregnant. They had only been married for six weeks, and she thought it might have happened the day after their wedding, the first time they made love.

“Did you go to a doctor?” He looked both thrilled and worried, cleared the table for her, insisted that she take it easy, and asked her if she felt sick or wanted to lie down, and Kate laughed.

“No, I didn't go to the doctor yet, but I'm sure.” She had felt this way before, five years before with Joe's baby, but she couldn't tell Andy that, and wouldn't have. “And it's not a terminal illness, for Heaven's sake, I'm fine.”

He made love to her ever so gently that night, afraid to do anything that might hurt her or the baby, insisted that she go to the doctor as soon as she could arrange it, and was disappointed when she wouldn't let him tell their parents yet.

“Why not, Kate?” He wanted to shout it from the roof, which she thought was sweet. He was even more excited than she was, and she was pleased. She wanted a baby, it was one reason she had left Joe after all, and this would be a further bond between her and Andy. This was what she had wanted, a real married life. And yet at the same time, with all the happiness she felt, and love she felt for Andy, there was always an empty space in her that she could never quite fill, despite all her efforts. She knew what it was, but not how to cure it. It was Joe. All she could hope was that the baby would fill the immeasurable void Joe had left in her.

“What if I lose it?” she said sensibly in answer to her husband's question. “It would be awful if everyone already knew.”

“Why would you lose it?” He looked puzzled. “Do you feel like something's wrong?” The possibility hadn't even occurred to him.

“Of course not,” she said, looking happy. “I just want to be sure that everything's all right. They say there's always a risk of miscarriage in the first three months.” Particularly if you got hit by a boy on a bike. Andy had never heard about the first three months being sensitive before.

Kate went to the doctor a few days later, and he told her that everything was fine. She told him, in confidence, about the miscarriage she'd had five years before, and he was disturbed that she hadn't had medical attention, but he felt it was an isolated incident, not due to any weakness on her part, but because she'd been hit by the bike. He told her to be sensible, rest, eat well, and not to do anything foolish like ride horses or skip rope, which made her laugh. And he sent her home with vitamins and some written instructions to share with her husband, and told her to come back to see him in a month. The baby was due in early March.

And as she walked home to their apartment, she strolled along the edge of Central Park, thinking how lucky she was. She was happy, loved, married, had a great husband, and she was having a baby. All her dreams had come true, and she knew finally that she had done the right thing when she married Andy. They were going to have a great life.

They told her parents about the baby finally when they went to stay with them for a week at the end of August, in Cape Cod. Her mother was beside herself with excitement, and her father was pleased for them.

“I told you he'd be perfect for her,” Elizabeth beamed at her husband after Kate and Andy went back to New York.

“Why? Because he got her pregnant?” Clarke teased her. He had been fond of Joe, but he agreed with her, Andy was the right husband for Kate, and he was happy for them.

“No, because he's a good man. And having a baby will do her a world of good. It'll ground her and settle her down, and make her feel closer to him.”

“And give her lots of work!” Clarke laughed. But she had nothing else to do. She was ready for a family. She was twenty-six years old, which was certainly old enough, and older than most of her friends when they'd had their first babies. Most of the girls she'd gone to school with already had two or three. There had been a wave of young people who'd gotten married right after the war, and were having babies every year to make up for lost time. Compared to them, and those who had gotten married before the war, Kate was off to a late start.