The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway by Una McCormack

Author:Una McCormack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books

* * *

I had another two weeks of leave, and I did spend most of it with Mark. (My mother was not in the least put out that I didn’t come home: it seemed that Phoebe had let her know what was going on.) On the last day before I was due to head back, we went out into the woods together, and walked arm in arm under the huge trees.

“You know,” he said, “I was going to suggest we go somewhere for this last day. Rome, or Paris… But then I realized I just wanted to be here.”

I smiled. I’d had the same thought.

And then he said, “Kate, you do realize, don’t you, that I want to marry you?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Mollie was snuffling around my boots. “I beg your pardon?”

He smiled at me. “You must have worked that out by now!”

“Mark, we’ve known each other… What? Two months? Not even that! Seven weeks!”

“Long enough for me to know.”

“But… You don’t mean it, do you? Surely you don’t mean it.”

He took my hand. “Kate,” he said, “I mean it absolutely. I think you’re great. I haven’t laughed this much… Well, you’ve made me feel happy again.”

I felt a deep wave of affection toward him. “Oh, Mark, I’m so glad about that! But marriage?”

“Listen,” he said. “Losing Lisa…” For a moment, his face took on a haunted look. He went on, “It brought home to me how fragile life is. How easily we can lose everything. And that if another chance comes our way, we should have the good sense to seize it. I mean it, Kate. I want to marry you.”

For a moment, I wavered. He really did make me feel so special. He made me feel loved. But I was leaving on the Billings the next morning. “Oh, Mark, it’s much too soon!”

He lifted my hand to kiss it. “All right,” he said, and began to laugh. “I’m hardly going to force you, am I?”

“Can we still see each other?”

“When you’re back home, you mean?”

“There is that,” I admitted. “Please?”

“Oh, Kate,” he said. “I’ll be waiting at the docking bay to welcome you home.”

So that’s where we left it, for the moment. Agreeing to see each other whenever I was home… And I found that whenever I was with him, that’s how it felt—like coming home. The Billings was close to Earth during this period, and so we saw a fair amount of each other. We found, yet again, that what made us most happy was simply being together. Lots of long walks, with Mollie, of course, but also just time at home. He was a great cook (I am not), and he would make me stop and take time away from messages and reports (once you reach a certain level at Starfleet, you’re never totally on leave). Left to my own devices, I would lose myself completely in my work. But Mark made me look up from my desk, made me relax and enjoy the world around us.

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