A Hero Comes Home

by Sandra Hill

  In any case, Francine was sporting one of those old-fashioned beehive hairdos which she was attempting to bring back in style, apparently. Hopefully, to no avail. Was a time, years ago, when rumor had it that creatures took up residence in those hair nests, and he didn’t mean bumble bees. Francine was married to Sheriff Bill Henderson, who was at the back end of the yard supervising his daughter Mary Anne and Joe’s three grandsons in a game of badminton, which involved much giggling and shouting and barking. The barking coming from Joe’s mutt, Goofus, who considered the birdie his personal chew toy. Mary Anne, who was about ten years old, had a mini version of her mother’s beehive hairdo, most of which was falling down due to her energetic movements.

  Back to the food table, which Joe intended to visit real soon, not having eaten anything since lunch, he noticed that Sally had put on a pretty peach-colored sundress before walking over with Jake an hour ago, a slow and obviously painful process that his son had insisted on. No walker or wheelchair for him! He was wearing dark sunglasses tonight, which were almost as jarring as the eye patch, considering the sun was no longer so bright.

  Gus grabbed a cold beer from the cooler and went over to shake hands with Jake, who had to tug off one of the blue vinyl disposable gloves he’d donned to handle the meat, or was it to hide those nailless fingers? And what was that all about anyhow?

  Joe didn’t know what Jake and Gus were talking about, but there was laughter involved; so, Joe relaxed, despite being on pins and needles, worried that someone might say something to Jake that would offend him or cause him to feel uncomfortable. Yeah, Joe was being overly protective. Came from being a father, no matter the age of the kid.

  “Whattaya s’pose happened to the boy?” Mike asked out of the blue.

  “What? You not buyin’ the cave hidey-hole story?”

  “Hell, no! What about you?”

  Joe shrugged. “Hard ta believe, but then him just survivin’ for three years, that in itself is unbelievable. A miracle.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Mike said. And Mike wasn’t even religious.

  “Amen,” Joe agreed. And he wasn’t very religious, either, although he might become more so with the “miracle” of his son’s return.

  “We gotta do somethin’ to help those two,” Mike said.

  Joe nodded. He didn’t need to ask what Mike meant. Jake and Sally hadn’t been within two feet of each other since they’d arrived. They pointedly avoided even looking at each other. It was obvious, at least to Joe and Mike, that Jake and Sally were as skittish around each other as strangers. And it wasn’t just the usual getting-acquainted-again that soldiers and their spouses faced every time they came home after a long deployment. And it wasn’t just that Jake had been MIA for three years and carried baggage Joe couldn’t imagine. And it wasn’t because Sally was an independent businesswoman now, who’d been about to hook up with a new man. Nope, these two had bigger problems than all that, ones that had been festering before he’d ever gone missing. Joe knew how devastating it had felt when Jake had chosen not to stay home and run the fishing business with him. It had to be doubly devastating to Sally that her husband chose, over and over, to stay in the military, on top of that, a branch of the military that had him constantly on the go to some dark and dangerous places, rather than stick in one place with her to raise a family.

  And, yeah, there was patriotism and loyalty and bravery and all that. And, yeah, he was proud of his son. But still, he understood. That didn’t mean he was gung-ho for Mike’s suggestion that they fix Jake and Sally. “Oh, no! I’m not getting involved in my son’s marriage,” Joe said. Then asked, “What’d ya have in mind?”

  “Those two need time alone ta work things out, even an ol’ bachelor like me knows that. How ’bout we plan a weekend fishin’ trip with the boys? We kin take them out to where the yellowfin will be hittin’ in a week or so. Eat and sleep on the boat.”

  “Oh, Lord! I have a headache already just thinkin’ about the noise. Those kids don’t talk when they can shout. All at the same time. The last time I took them out, and it was only for a few hours, Matt caught a hook in his thumb, Mark almost fell overboard, and Luke released all our bait because he felt sorry for the little fishies.”

  “Do ya want that K-4 fella ta be takin’ Sally fishin’, if ya get my meaning?”

  K-4 . . . that would be Kevin Fortunato, a new guy in town who’d been sniffing around Sally. Nope, Jake didn’t need any competition. Not that his son couldn’t handle the challenge. And deep down Joe knew that Sally loved his boy, and vice versa. There was a legend in his family that the Dawson men fell hard and fast for the women in their lives, and that it lasted. It certainly had for him and Marge. But could he just assume that Jake and Sally would get their acts together? Wouldn’t that be tempting fate? And it seemed to Joe that fate hadn’t been treating Jake very well in recent years.

  “It’ll be fun,” Mike insisted.

  Joe arched his brows. “Since when did you become Mister Matchmaker?”

  “Don’t be so grumpy, or they’ll be votin’ you the Grinch of Bell Cove come Christmas.”

  “I’m not grumpy. You’re the one who’s grumpy.”

  “Anyways, those two need some time alone together.”

  They both took long draws on their bottles of beer and looked at Jake, who was alone for the moment. He drew a kitchen counter stool over and leaned his butt back on it with a long sigh. Being on his leg for this long was taking its toll, but Joe knew without making the suggestion that his stubborn son would decline pain meds or any obvious fussing over him.

  But then Jake’s attention seemed to be caught by something across the yard. Sally was welcoming Jeff Hale, the new doctor who’d taken over the local medical clinic. A single doctor! As they talked, Jeff put his hand on Sally’s forearm and leaned in to whisper something in her ear. She threw her head back and laughed out loud. The hand on the forearm remained.

  Not good!

  Jake stiffened.

  Definitely not good!

  On the other hand, good, if he’s finally dropping that mask of “I don’t give a shit” emotional detachment that he’s been wearing like a shield since he got home.

  Bad, if he’s going to react in some public way.

  “Okay, I’m in,” Joe said.

  Yep, blue eyes—or a blue eye—can still turn green . . .

  The barbecue wasn’t as bad as Jake had expected. In fact, it was kind of nice to meet up with neighbors, some of whom he’d known his entire life.

  What made it more palatable in this small crowd—about fifteen people so far—was that they acted as if he was back from a routine deployment. None of them grilled him about where he’d been the last three years and what exactly happened to him. Yeah, he had the canned dickhead responses that his dickhead liaison had fed him for practically every question. Luckily, he hadn’t needed to use any of them.

  He wasn’t sure if his father and Sally had prepared the way for him by warning folks not to ask those kinds of questions, but more likely these were just good, sensitive people—friends—who knew how to be polite. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be gossiping about him when they got home. It was Bell Cove, after all, where everyone minded everyone else’s business.

  “Hey, buddy!” Karl Gustafson said, coming up to shake his hand. Jake had to remove one of the vinyl gloves he was wearing to handle the raw hamburger, and, yes, to hide his nailless fingertips, before taking Gus’s clasp. Gus didn’t stop there, though. The big blond giant of a man, whom he’d known from grade school, pulled Jake into a bro hug.

  Jake almost fell, but caught himself just in time, regaining his balance with a hand on the side shelf of the barbecue.

  “Gus! How you doing? Still playing football?” He’d been drafted right out of college by the Dallas Cowboys—which prompted much teasing by the sports pundits because a guy of Norse descent had been expected to go with the Vikings.

  “Hell, no! I retired more than two years ago when my kne
e got torn up again. Shortest career in NFL history!”

  That wasn’t quite true. As Jake recalled, Gus had been playing pro for several years before Jake had left on his last deployment. Four years in the pros was nothing to sneeze at. “And now? You left the limelight and you’re back in Bell Cove?”

  “The limelight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Home is where the heart is and all that shit.” He grinned and took a long swig of beer.

  “Doing what?”

  “I have a convenience store on the outskirts of town,” he said. At Jake’s snort of disbelief, he added, “And more recently, I joined up with Bell Cove Treasure and Salvaging. That’s a new operation started up by a former Navy SEAL, Merrill Good. You’ll meet him soon enough. Your wife and Good’s wife, Delilah, are best friends.”

  Really? That’s news to me. First, the SEAL she’d been dating, and now BFF with another SEAL’s wife. Just how many SEAL connections does my wife have?

  Like that matters!

  Jake flipped the burgers and turned the hot dogs as they talked. “I heard about that company. Izzie—Isaac Bernstein, you remember him, don’t you?—sent me a bunch of old Bell Cove newspapers. A big shipwreck discovery, huh?”

  Actually, that was the operation that Sally’s ex-SEAL, K-4, or Kevin Fortunato—Uncle-Fucking-Kevin—was involved in, as well. Not that Jake was going to ask Gus about that.

  “Yeah. Beginner’s luck!”

  “So, you married? Have any kids?” he asked as he moved the burgers and dogs that were done onto a warming rack, and placed fresh meat on the grill. He’d wait until he had at least two dozen of each before the first serving, he decided.

  “No kids. I was married for a blip of a second to a trophy wife who wasn’t too fond of my return to Bell Cove, out of the media spotlight and all that hoopla. Now, being the only celebrity hereabouts, I’m looked at as a potential trophy husband. Every woman I meet seems to view me as a stepping-stone to something bigger.”

  Jake shook his head at Gus’s self-deprecating humor.

  “Hey, you’re a celebrity now, too. You could say you’re already a trophy husband.”

  Hah! Sally would have something to say about that. Probably, “Some trophy!” But wait . . . his father and Sally had promised him that only neighbors were invited to this barbecue. That meant . . . “You aren’t still living at home with your mother, are you?” He glanced across the yard to where Vana Gustafson was chatting up Frank Baxter, who owned Hard Knocks, a hardware store on the town square. Good ol’ Frank still sported the world’s worst comb-over, or rather comb-forward, to hide the bald spot on top of his noggin. Vana, on the other hand, was seriously hot, and always had been—the source of many a Bell Cove boy’s, and man’s, wet dreams.

  “Just temporarily . . . until my house is finished.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was living in an apartment over the convenience store, but then I had this special needs boy working for me, and the authorities found out he was living in his car and were gonna force him to go live in some crappy halfway house in Myrtle Beach. So”—he shrugged—“I offered him my digs and started building a house I’d been planning for some time. It’s out on the Sound near the cove. This all happened about the time we discovered the shipwreck, but I had money left over from my football days, too. So . . .” His words trailed off as he realized how much he’d been talking. He grinned and said, “Sorry. TMI. I had a few beers before I got here. Needed something to cushion the shock. I just found out my mother, who’s been a widow for twenty frickin’ years now, has suddenly decided to sign up for some half-assed senior citizen internet dating site, and when I saw her profile, well . . .” He fanned his face and rolled his eyes.

  “Bell Cove soap operas! This place never changes.”

  “You got that right. Did you hear about that sexy seniors club over at the Patterson house? Supposedly a dance club, but I don’t know.” He grinned at Jake.

  “Why didn’t your mother just join that club if she was looking to hook up?”

  “Please! Don’t use hook up and my mother in the same sentence,” Gus said, still grinning. “Actually, I made the same point, and she said she’s looking for a younger man. Can you believe it? My mother, a cougar?”

  Half of what Gus said was, no doubt, bullshit, but Jake found himself laughing, which was probably Gus’s goal.

  “By the way, I recognize a fellow partner-in-pain.” Gus used his beer can to point at Jake’s leg where a soft brace could be seen below his board shorts, then pointed to his own knee where old scars marked his numerous surgeries. “I can recommend a rehab place over on Hatteras that has not only primo licensed physical therapists but a whirlpool to die for. I can give you the number if you want.”

  “I may take you up on that.” Jake was surprised that he wasn’t offended by Gus’s mention of his injury. Probably because he hadn’t asked any questions that would force him to spew out the military version of his POW experience, or rather, MIA experience, and how he’d gotten said injury. Shiiit! Lying is damn hard work, or rather being discreet about covert activities is hard work!

  Gus went off to referee the badminton game, and Abe and Rachel Bernstein, Izzie’s uncle and aunt, came up to give him warm hugs. They both had tears in their eyes as they looked him over. Jake wasn’t sure if it was because he looked so pitiful, or they were so emotional over his return, knowing that their nephew might very well have been in the same kind of situation. Probably both.

  “Still making your famous Reubens?” Jake asked Abe.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve suggested a fat-free version, but will he listen to me? No,” Rachel said with a laugh.

  “Every good Jewish butcher knows there has to be a little fat on the corned beef for flavor. Skinny meat, skinny women, pfff!” He pinched his wife’s ample behind for emphasis.

  “Oh, you! Behave!” Rachel chided her husband, though not offended. For as long as Jake could remember, these two, a childless couple, had been bickering playfully with each other. “Have you heard?” Rachel addressed Jake now. “Izzie is coming for a visit over Labor Day. His mother and father are coming from Seattle, too.”

  No, Jake hadn’t heard that, but then he hadn’t been reading any email or text messages that were nonessential the past few days. “A regular family reunion,” Jake remarked.

  “For sure, but also to take part in your Welcome Home celebration,” Abe said, beaming at Jake. “I’m thinking about offering red, white, and blue sandwiches. Rare roast beef, white sour cream and horseradish sauce, dotted with blue cheese, all served on fresh kaiser rolls from Sally’s bakery. What do you think?”

  Jake bristled and asked, “What ‘Welcome Home’ celebration?”

  “Shhh!” Rachel elbowed her husband.

  “What? It’s not a secret,” Abe responded.

  “It’s not a secret and it’s not going to happen,” Jake asserted, vowing to contact Mayor Doreen Ferguson himself to put the kibosh on any events involving him. “Not that I don’t want to see Izzie and his parents again.”

  After that, Ina Rogers came up. She also gave him a welcoming hug, which involved him bending over at the waist since she was about five foot two. Ina had been the secretary at Our Lady by the Sea Church for as long as Jake could remember.

  “Jake, honey, you can borrow my walker, if you want. I bought it when I had hip surgery last spring and don’t need it anymore.”

  “Um . . . I’ll think about it.” Seeing as how Jake had about ten inches in height on her, he couldn’t see himself ever using her walker, but then he had no intention of using a walker, period. He didn’t say that, though. “Thanks for the offer, Ina.”

  “I assume I’ll see you in church on Sunday,” Ina said.

  Some assumption, he thought, and was about to say so, in a nice way, but she was already heading for the porch where his dad and Old Mike had been sitting on the glider, watching him to make sure he didn’t trip over his size twelve flip-flops, or somethi
ng. Without saying a word, just keeping an eye on his every move, they were acting like overaged babysitters and he was the unpredictable toddler.

  His attention was caught by something else. A man, one he didn’t recognize, went up to Sally, and he put his hand on her forearm as he talked to her. It couldn’t be the ex-SEAL, whom he would expect to be super buff. Not that this guy was in bad shape. Just ordinary build in khakis and a golf shirt. But not military-looking. More like nerdy. Besides, the K-4 fellow didn’t live on this street, as far as Jake knew.

  But then the nerd-with-a-death-wish not only kept his hand on her forearm but leaned down to whisper in her ear.

  Sally was looking hot tonight in a thin-strapped sundress, which cupped her breasts like a bra, hugged her abdomen and waist, then swirled out to just above the knee, leaving her suntanned arms and shoulders and legs bare down to strappy, flat sandals. He wondered idly how she’d gotten so sun bronzed if she worked in a bakery all day, but that was a question for another time. Although an image flashed in his brain for a moment of Sally lying on a beach blanket somewhere next to a stud in Navy SEAL shorts. She had long hair in that image. In reality, her short hair had been spiked up today with mousse or gel or some hair product, making her look elfish. A sexy elf! The sundress was peach-colored, like the one she’d worn the first time he met her in New York City all those years ago. Was that deliberate? Probably not.

  It shouldn’t matter to Jake. He’d decided before he ever got on that plane in Germany that Sally was better off without him. She was already halfway there with that SEAL dude. His plan had been to come home, get his affairs in order, sign the divorce papers she clearly wanted and had prepared more than three years ago, then take off for some solitary place where he could heal. He didn’t need this kind of complication in his own recovery.