A Hero Comes Home

by Sandra Hill

  Frankly, he didn’t care anymore.

  Or he’d thought he didn’t.

  The conflict was driving him nuts.

  And still the guy’s hand remained on her arm—her bare arm—as they chatted. Jake blinked and saw a flash of red behind his eyelids. No, no, no! No red tides! Not now! What was it that Dr. Sheila said he should do when he felt a rage coming on . . . that mindfulness crap. Just breathe. That was it.

  So, he inhaled, and exhaled, and chanted to himself. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe . . .

  I am one screwed-up sonofabitch.

  Just breathe.

  I shouldn’t have come home.

  Breathe, dammit.

  If it hadn’t been for my last deployment rocking off into a three-year goat fuck, Sally and I would be divorced by now. No doubt about it.

  Breathebreathebreathe.

  So, what do I do within five hours of coming home? Practically jump my wife’s bones. Pathetic, that’s what I am. She probably only kissed me back because she felt sorry for me. A pity fuck, that’s what it would have been if we hadn’t been saved by the buzzer.

  Don’t knock it, pal. A fuck is a fuck is a fuck.

  I can’t breathe.

  I need to get out of here.

  Just then, the town bells began to toll the hour. The two churches and then the town hall. Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong! Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong! Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang! By the time they were finished, he was grounded back in reality.

  “Daddy?”

  It took Jake a moment to realize that his son Luke was tugging on his shirt, trying to get his attention.

  He looked down and asked, “What’s up, buddy?”

  “I hafta pee,” Luke said.

  He frowned with confusion. “Don’t you know where Grandpa’s bathroom is?”

  He nodded but was still tugging on the hem of his shirt, then his arm, indicating that he wanted him to lean down. Then, into his ear, Luke whispered, “My zipper is stuck.”

  Jake’s lips twitched with a grin. “An emergency, huh? Okay. Lead the way.” Jake tossed off the other vinyl glove, grabbed for the cane he’d placed against the grill, and took Luke’s little hand in his big paw and proceeded to walk with him up the stairs to the back porch. When he got there, he told his father, “The first batch of burgers and dogs are ready. Can you serve them and turn that new batch?”

  “Sure,” his father said, and both he and Old Mike started down the steps.

  In the bathroom, he stood Luke on the closed toilet seat and worked out the snag in the zipper, then waited while the boy took care of business. Afterward, they both washed their hands. Luke looked up at him and flashed a gap-toothed grin at him. “I love you, Daddy,” he said.

  And Jake’s heart about cracked with emotion. “Love you, too, short stuff,” he said, ruffling his bristly hair.

  “Chow’s ready!” they heard his father’s shout from outside.

  And Luke ran off.

  Instead of returning to the backyard, Jake headed down the hall toward the front door. On the way, he hesitated and went into the living room, which was similar in layout to his own home. On the fireplace mantel and on the built-in shelves on either side, he saw a series of framed photographs which drew him closer.

  On the mantel, there was his parents’ circa-1970s wedding picture, his dad in a formal black suit and his mother in a big fancy white gown and veil, standing outside Our Lady by the Sea Church. His dad had a serious, nervous expression on his face as he stared ahead at the camera. His mother’s head was tilted toward her new husband in a teasing, intimate manner, the way it often was when his father was all grumpy after a bad day on the water.

  Next to it was a photo taken outside city hall in New York City, Jake in his full dress uniform and Sally in a white suit with matching high heels. She carried a bunch of daisies which he’d purchased from a street vendor on the way. Sally had been four months pregnant by then, but you’d never know it by her slim figure. The way she was looking at him in the photo clearly showed that the setting didn’t matter to her a bit. She was happy. And in love.

  Jake couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at him that way.

  Over on the shelves, the framed photos were arranged by event. His birth: a newborn baby being held by his mother in a hospital bed with his father sitting on the edge of the mattress, beaming with pride. Then the birth of Jake’s three sons. Sally and the newborns were featured in these three, of course. He was in one, wearing a blue hospital gown and cap, holding baby Matthew. Jake had tried his best but had been unable to make it home in time for the deliveries of his other two sons. A sore point between him and Sally, to say the least.

  On other shelves were pictures of christenings, first communions, kindergarten graduations, PeeWee and Little League baseball, birthday parties, Christmases, first bicycles, fishing off the Bell Cove wharf . . . dozens of them. Jake had seen all these, or most of them, before, of course. Sally had been religious about sending him digital photos of his kids. Still . . . seeing all of these in one collection, he realized how much he’d missed of his sons’ lives. And of Sally’s, too. There was one particular one he noted showing her standing with a giant pair of scissors about to cut the ribbon on a storefront with a sign boasting “Sweet Thangs,” the grand opening of her bakery.

  All water under the bridge now. And, really, no different than any other soldier’s wife or family.

  “Jake? Food is ready,” Sally called out, and then he heard her footsteps approaching.

  “I’m in here,” he said, not wanting her to think he was hiding out or anything pathetic like that. He was pathetic enough without being that kind of wuss, too.

  She arched her brows when she saw him standing before the photos. “A walk down memory lane?” she asked, leaning against the archway leading to the hall.

  “Sort of,” he said.

  “You gonna come and eat?”

  “In a minute,” he said, sinking down into his dad’s recliner.

  Instead of taking the hint and leaving him alone, she sat down in his mother’s rocker on the other side of the fireplace, facing him. “You’ve seen all these photos before,” she reminded him.

  “Not all. The one in front of your bakery is new,” he pointed out.

  “Right,” she said. “Speaking of which, there’s something I need to discuss with you.” She rocked a little faster now. With nervousness?

  Uh-oh. Was this the beginning of the uncomfortable questions he wouldn’t be able to answer?

  “This will sound really morbid, but I used your death benefit to buy the bakery. Will I have to pay it back now?”

  Ah. He relaxed visibly. “Don’t worry about that. Uncle Sam won’t be knocking on your door looking for a payback. They owe me too much.”

  “Do you mean back pay?”

  “No, I mean leverage.” As soon as the word left his mouth, he knew it was a mistake.

  “Leverage?” She pounced on the word.

  “I mean, how would it look if they sicced a collection agency on one of its POWs—I mean, MIAs?” Man, I am screwing up here big-time.

  He could tell she wasn’t convinced but, luckily, she moved on to another subject. Well, unluckily, considering the subject.

  “Are you still in the military, Jacob? I know you reupped for another four years before your last deployment, but does that mean you’re still considered active duty?”

  “I’m on medical leave at the moment, and with all the rehab I need, my term of duty will end in March, like it would normally. It will be up to me to decide whether to reup again then.”

  Shock appeared on her face for a moment before she masked it over. Still, she glanced at his leg and his eye, and Jake knew what she was questioning. How could he ever engage in battle again?

  He couldn’t.

  “They want me to work in the Pentagon, some kind of public aff
airs position.” In other words, a propaganda puppet.

  The shock was back, or was it anger now? “Please don’t tell me you accepted without discussing it with me first.” She’d said almost those exact words when he’d told her he reupped for four years before his last deployment.

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t accept, and I have no intention of moving to the capital.”

  The expression on her face revealed nothing about her feelings at that news. “What will you do?”

  His head was beginning to hurt, along with his leg. “Do we have to discuss this now?”

  He could tell that she wanted to, but she conceded. “No. But we do need to talk sometime, Jacob.”

  And she wasn’t just referring to his career plans. He knew that.

  For a few moments, there was just silence between them as they looked at each other. The pretty peach dress was hiked up to her thighs and he noticed once again how bronzed she was, all over, or at least what he could see, and that was a lot. “How is it that you’re so suntanned, Sal? Don’t you spend your days indoors at the bakery?”

  “The bakery doesn’t open until eight, but I usually go in at about four to start the ovens and begin baking. I stay until after the lunch hour, and then I leave the bakery in the hands of one of the clerks who work for me. The rest of the day I spend with the boys, usually on the beach over by the lighthouse if the weather is nice. I go in again, after the kids are in bed, to prepare the breads and rolls so they can rise overnight.”

  He nodded, though he had to wonder how she juggled so many hours. Very efficient, his wife had become. Maybe she always had been, and he’d just never noticed, or hadn’t been home to notice.

  His bad!

  Or more of his bads!

  As if she’d read his mind, she added, “Your dad, and your mom when she was alive, helped me a lot. Your dad still does. He, or Old Mike, come over in the evenings for those few hours I’m gone. I don’t know how I would have survived without them . . . all of them. And the townsfolk, too. Your mother probably instigated the help from that quarter, everything from volunteer cleaners and painters when I first bought the bakery to, yes, the yellow ribbons. Your mother’s rosary society came in for coffee and donuts every morning after mass, religiously.” She smiled at her pun.

  The pain of his mother’s death hit him with a sharp stab to the heart. The loss was still new to him.

  “Your mother prayed for you every day, you know. And she was always doing novenas for ‘special intentions,’ but everyone knew they were for you.”

  That shocked him, for some reason. “Because she thought I was still alive.”

  She shook her head. “No. The military was definite in declaring you dead. She just prayed for you, wherever you were.”

  “In hell,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He used his cane to help propel himself up out of the chair. When he stood, he said, “C’mon. Let’s go outside before everyone starts speculating about what we’re doing in here.”

  “No one would think that.”

  “Are you kidding? They’re probably taking bets on how many times I need to boink you to make up for three years in a cave.”

  “Boink?” She laughed. “Just out of curiosity, how many boinks would that be?”

  “Five hundred, at least.”

  She had nothing to say to that, but she did blush, which he kind of liked. Nine years of marriage, and I can still make my wife blush. How about that?

  As he began to walk beside her down the hall toward the kitchen, he said, “I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”

  She frowned and gave him a sideways glance.

  “On the sofa. I practically jumped your bones.”

  “Please! You weren’t the only one jumping.”

  There were a dozen remarks he could have made to that, ranging from raunchy to only slightly inappropriate. He chose to keep them to himself. “It was a mistake. We have issues.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He thought about asking her what she meant by that. He knew what he meant, but were they on the same page? Instead, he remarked, “I like your dress.”

  “I thought you would.”

  Whaat? “My favorite color.”

  “I know.”

  So, it was deliberate. Or am I reading too much into a simple statement? And do I want her trying to entice me? Entice? Where the hell did that word come from? I’ve been living in a cave too long, apparently. Ha, ha, ha!

  Talk about ping-ponging emotions! I am a regular whack, whack, whack job. Really, he had to stop this back-and-forth banter with Sally with its sexual undertones. They did have issues, probably insurmountable ones, and engaging in sex would only complicate them, not solve them.

  Although it was an enticing prospect.

  He had to ask the big question that had been nagging at him for weeks now. Hell, probably for more than three years. “Do you still have the papers, Sally?”

  “What papers?”

  “The divorce papers. The ones you told me that you got from a lawyer.”

  She stopped midway down the hall to stare at him.

  He stopped, too, and stared back at her.

  She didn’t back down, like she used to in a stare-off. “You idiot!” she said finally. “There were no papers.”

  “But you said . . . I specifically recall, just before I left for my last deployment, you saying that you met with a lawyer and got some divorce papers to look over, and . . .” He let his words trail off.

  “Idiot!” she repeated. “I lied. It was intended to be a wake-up call for you.”

  He didn’t know if he was angry or happy at her ploy. One thing he did know: he might not have been awake back then, but he sure as hell was now.

  Chapter 9

  There were many steps on the road back home . . .

  Less than twenty-four hours home, and Jake was driving her crazy with his flip-flopping actions. She was trying to be sympathetic because of all he’d been through, but he made it hard. Not that she knew exactly what he’d been through because he clammed up every time she asked even the simplest question, like, “Did the locals help you with food and stuff while you were hiding in the cave?”

  Nope. First thing out of his mouth on seeing her for the first time after more than three years had been to mention divorce. Then he’d kissed her into a melted pool of hormone hotness on the sofa. After which he practically ignored her at the barbecue. Then tugged at her heartstrings when he revealed that all the time he’d been missing he’d been under the impression that she’d seen a lawyer and didn’t want him anymore, thus explaining the earlier divorce remark.

  Why couldn’t he just say what he was thinking?

  And now, ever since they’d returned from the barbecue, he’d gone all silent and brooding. Dark and brooding might be great for a romance novel hero, but not for a real-life hero. After she’d glared at him a time or five for his one-word responses to the kids’ incessant questions, he went out to the garage where he was still prepping his “go-bag,” the backpack that had to be “wheels up” ready on a moment’s notice when a soldier was called to active duty. The go-bag, also known as a grab-and-go or Go-to-Hell bag, included a seventy-two-hour supply of everything from clothing to first aid kits to MREs. Plus weapons and ammo, which was why it was kept in a locked chest under the tool bench.

  Like he was going to need a go-bag anytime in the near future! Not with his injuries! Although what did she know? Maybe, with his skill set, limping, vision-impaired soldiers were a prized asset in the field today.

  She could accept that his detachment was just the way he was when only she was involved. But the boys were confused and hurt by his actions, as well, and that she couldn’t tolerate. After the barbecue, following quick showers and teeth brushing, they’d finally gotten into their beds, despite their moans that they wanted Daddy to tuck them in tonight.

  Yeah, well, Daddy was too busy with nonessential crap out
in the garage. Not that she told them that. Instead, she said, “Not tonight, sweeties. Daddy has important business to take care of right now. He’ll be here when you get up in the morning.”

  Bottom line: really, sometimes Jacob could be such an ass.

  So it was that she went, with a mother’s ire, stomping down the steps and out the kitchen door to confront the insensitive brute. She found him sitting on the back steps. By the light coming through the kitchen door and window, she could see clearly. He’d removed the soft brace and was massaging his extended leg.

  She stopped dead in her tracks, and all the anger seeped out of her at the sight of the uncovered limb. It had been shaved, unlike the right leg which was covered with black hairs, and there was clear evidence of old and new scars from midthigh to midcalf. Lots of them.

  “Are they from injuries or surgeries?” she asked, sinking down to the top step beside him.

  “Both.”

  “Jake, the kids are disappointed.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re little. They don’t understand. You have to be careful—”

  “I’m trying, Sal.”

  “Would it have hurt for you to go up and tuck them in?”

  “Actually, it would have. More than you can imagine.”

  Was he talking about physical hurt, or emotional hurt? She frowned at him in confusion.

  “I couldn’t have made it up the stairs tonight unless I crawled, and even then it would probably have to be backward, a butt bump up the steps, bracing myself on my arms.” When she didn’t say anything, he elaborated, “I’m going to get better. Eventually. I mean, my leg will improve with rehab over time. Probably never back to normal, but better than this mean mess that it is presently. For now, though, I’m in excruciating pain. Bear with me if I don’t act the way you think I should.”

  Wow! Was that a kick in the gut or what? Guilt me out, why don’t you? That was probably why he’d bathed in the cold outdoor shower before going to the barbecue tonight, instead of using the full shower and bath upstairs. She had wondered at the time, figuring he’d just wanted to leave that bathroom for her and the kids to get ready. “The pain is that bad?”