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She had grandchildren in New York, but she had thought it would be a fun thing to do. She'd had no idea he was planning to leave Kate behind permanently.

Kate looked horrified. “You've already decided all that? When did you make up your mind?”

“Probably a long time ago. I think I knew this summer. And when I came back to New York, I thought it was the right time. There's no point hanging on anymore. I think I've been gone for a long time.” What had happened? What had she done? How had she failed him? It was impossible to believe that she hadn't done something terrible to him.

But the truth was she hadn't, other than marry him. It was the one thing he didn't want, and thought he had. But he'd been wrong. She fascinated him, she intrigued him, she excited him, but that was all it had ever been for him. He had been drawn to her like moth to flame, but he wanted the sky rather than her warmth, and he had flown away."

"She lay beside him and cried quietly all night. She stroked his hair, and looked at him as he slept.

If he had been anyone else, she would have thought he was insane. But there was something very cold and calculating about what he had said. It was the only way he knew to save himself, and it reminded her of their ending in New Jersey years before. Not knowing what else to do, Joe shut down emotionally and ran away. She had been dispensed with, dismissed, as she understood it, he didn't want her anymore. It was the cruelest thing anyone had ever done to her. In some ways, even crueler than her father's suicide.

In Kate's eyes, the reasons Joe had offered weren't adequate to justify his leaving her, although they were to him. Gouging her out of his heart, no matter how painful to him or her, was all he knew how to do.

She never slept all night, and at first light she got up, washed her face, and then went back to bed. He lay close to her, as he always did, when he woke up. But this time, he said nothing, he simply rolled over and got out of bed.

And when he left the apartment for his flight to London, he said goodbye to her very carefully.

He didn't want to raise any false hopes that he'd change his mind. He was leaving her forever, and she knew it to her very soul.

“I love you, Joe,” she said, and for an instant he saw the girl he had once met, in her pale blue satin evening gown, with the dark auburn hair. He remembered her eyes that night, and they were the same ones he saw now. But as he looked into them he saw immeasurable pain.