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That's all the strategy we need. Now what was so important to of' Yoda at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning?"
    Although the words were spoken lightly, Kate noted that he had not yet put the car into gear. From the beginning of their relationship, he had been somehow threatened both by her career and by her unique friendship with her aging department head. It was nothing he had ever said, but the threat was there. She was certain of it. "Later?" She tried one last time.
    Jared switched off the ignition.
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    The mood of the morning shattered like dropped crystal. Kate forced her eyes to make and maintain contact with his. "He said that tomorrow morning he was going to send letters to the medical school and to Norton Reese announcing his retirement in June or as soon as a successor can be chosen as chief of the department."
    "And ... ?"
    "And I think you know already what comes next."
    Deep inside her, Kate felt sparks of anger begin to replace the tension. This exchange, her news, her chance to become at thirty-five the youngest department chief, to say nothing of the only woman department chief, at Metro--they should have been embraced by the marriage with the same joy as Jared's election to Congress would have been.
    "Try me," Jared said, gazing off across the lake.
    Kate sighed. "He wants my permission to submit my name to the faculty search committee as his personal recommendation."
    "And you thanked him very much, but begged off because you and your husband agreed two years ago to start your family when the election was over, and you
    simply couldn't take on the responsibility and time demands of a department chairmanship)--especially of a moneyless, understaffed, political football of a department like the one Yoda is scurrying away from now--right?"
    "Wrong!" The snap in her voice was reflex. She cursed herself for losing control so easily, and took several seconds to calm down before continuing. "I told him I would think about it and talk it over with my husband and some of my friends at the hospital. I told him either to leave my name off his letter or wait a week before sending it."
    "Have you thought what the job would take out of you? I mean Yoda's had two coronaries in the last few years, and he is certainly a lot more low key than you are."
    "Dammit, Jared. Stop calling him that. And they weren't coronaries. Only angina."
    "All right, angina."
    "Do you suppose we could talk this over after we play? You're the one who was so worried about being
    [ late." I
    Jared glanced at his watch and then restarted the I engine. He turned to her. There was composure in the j lines of his face, but an intensity--perhaps even a fear--in [ his eyes. It was the same look Kate had seen in them j when, before the election, he spoke of losing as "not the j end of the world." I
    "Sure," he said. "Just answer me that one question. | Do you really have a sense of what it would be like for I you--for us--if you took over that department?" I
    "I ... I know it wouldn't be easy. But that's not what F you're really asking, is it?" j Jared shook his head and stared down at his clenched hands.
    Kate knew very well what he was asking. He was thirty-nine years old and an only child. His first marriage had ended in nightmarish fashion, with his wife running off to California with their baby daughter. Even Jared's father, senior partner of one of Boston's most prestigious
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    law firms, with all the king's horses and all the king's men at his disposal, couldn't find them. Jared wanted children.
    For himself and for his father he wanted them. The agreement to wait until after the election was out of deference to the pressures of a political campaign and the newness of their marriage. Now neither was a factor. Oh, yes, she knew very well what he was asking.
    "The answer is," she said finally, "that if I accepted the nomination and got the appointment I would