by Skye Taylor
She climbed the back stairs, crossed the deck, and let herself into the house. Kip, close on her heels, zipped in past her and hurried to his water dish. Meg washed her hands and began assembling the ingredients for the coffee cake. She was dusting the pan with flour when Evan came around the corner dressed in one of her camouflage utility uniforms.
“I’m gonna be a soldier for Halloween,” he announced with a grin.
Shock rocketed through Meg and left her breathless. A vivid kaleidoscope of images raced through her head. Philip in his Marine dress blues standing up with Jake at the front of the church. Meg’s sudden realization of how Sandy Cameron must feel every time she had to let her son go off to war. One of Meg’s best friends, his face contorted with burns, begging her not to tell his mother what he looked like. A flag-draped coffin being loaded into a plane to bring another mother’s son home. The young Marine Meg had barely known, barely old enough to even be in a war zone, crying for his mother while clutching Meg’s hand as blood oozed from dozens of shrapnel wounds.
“No, you’re not!” Meg screamed at her son.
Evan looked shocked. “But, Mom?”
“But nothing. You are not going trick-or-treating dressed up like a soldier.”
“But you’re a soldier,” Evan protested, his eyes awash with tears.
“And you aren’t,” Meg snapped. And you never will be if I have anything to say about it. “Go take those clothes off this instant.”
Evan left the kitchen with his head down and his footsteps dragging.
Meg leaned against the kitchen counter shaking all over. So much for great intentions. Not only hadn’t she apologized to her husband, but now she’d brought tears to her son’s eyes. He was only a little kid. He couldn’t possibly know the gory images that had flashed through her mind when she’d seen him wearing her uniform. How did Sandy Cameron do it? How did Ben?
Meg pushed away from the counter and tucked the hair that had tumbled into her face behind her ear. Then went in search of Evan.
BEN LEANED AGAINST the headboard reading a book when Meg came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but her damp towel. He carefully marked his place and set the book aside as she turned out the lights. She stood a minute beside the bed before dropping the towel on the floor and slipping between the sheets. Ben didn’t move.
Meg rolled onto her side and slid her hand across the sheets until it came to rest on Ben’s bicep. “I’m sorry.”
“I figured that’s what the coffee cake was all about.” Ben rolled toward her. He pushed his palm up her arm, cupped her shoulder briefly, then curled his fingers about the back of her neck.
“It was supposed to be a peace offering,” Meg agreed. But she owed Ben a whole lot more than a coffee cake. It was just so hard to find words. She didn’t understand half of what she was feeling herself. “I haven’t been very nice lately, and I’m sorry.”
Ben didn’t respond. Didn’t turn her apology down, but didn’t help her either. He waited, his fingers still laced into her hair. As her eyes began to adjust to the pale shafts of moonlight coming in the windows, she could see the strong planes of his cheekbones and the glitter of his eyes as he studied her, patiently waiting, as always.
“I’m just—I don’t know what I want.”
Ben drew her toward him, pulling her head into his shoulder. She resisted for a moment, thinking it would be easier to explain if she weren’t tucked intimately against his side, listening to his heartbeat. But then she gave in and let him envelop her with his warmth and strength.
“That part I got,” Ben said into the hair on top of her head. “I’m just not sure where I fit in. Or if I fit in. And that scares me.”
Meg pulled free of his embrace and propped herself up on one elbow. Ben let her go, but trailed his fingers down her back.
“You’re my husband. And my best friend.”
“But I get the feeling that’s not enough. You need or want something I’m not. Or something I can’t give you.”
The anguish in his voice cut deep into Meg’s heart. The confusion and angst that had been growing inside her since she got home often consumed her, but Ben was her rock. He had been for too many years to count.
“It’s nothing you’re doing or not doing. It’s me.” When she reached out to touch his face, he captured her hand and held it tight in his.
“I don’t want to go away again, but I don’t know who I’ll be if I’m not a Marine. And if I stay active, chances are I’ll have to go. But if I’m not a Marine, then what am I? I don’t really know anything else. I haven’t got a real career like you. I don’t—”
No point in beating a dead horse. She’d already covered this ground, and Ben already knew she no longer felt drawn to a life in law enforcement.
“You could get out, apply for your GI Bill benefits, and go back to school,” Ben suggested.
“And study for what? I don’t know what I want to be.”
“Maybe it will come to you later.”
“I’m a good Marine. A damned good Marine. I’ve spent years being good at that. I know my place there and what’s expected of me. Here there’s nothing. Well, not completely nothing. I’m still your wife and a mom. But every day I rattle around this house feeling trapped and useless. When I was on active duty, I had a job. People depended on me. And I was good at it. All except for that once—” Meg broke off suddenly. Ben didn’t know about Scout. She hadn’t planned on ever telling him because she knew how distressed he’d be. He wouldn’t blame her the way she blamed herself, but he’d still be distressed.
She slid back into the curve of Ben’s arm and settled her head against his chest. The steady beat of his heart thrummed rhythmically beneath her ear. He was the most nonjudgmental man she knew and the most forgiving. His patience and understanding had gotten her through some of the most difficult times in her life, but how could he possibly get her through this? He hadn’t been there. Hadn’t seen the carnage hidden roadside bombs left behind. Ben would never understand just how hideous her nightmares could get.
Ben welcomed Meg back into his embrace. “No one’s perfect, Meg.” He slid his fingers into the masses of silky hair he loved so much and massaged the back of her head and neck. If he kept his mouth shut and just waited, perhaps she’d finish what she’d started to tell him about some failure she felt responsible for. Then maybe he’d understand what haunted her. The silence stretched out. Then again, maybe not. Not yet, at least.
“Why do you feel like there’s nothing you’re good at here?”
“You don’t need me.”
Her bald statement caught Ben in the gut like a sucker punch. He stopped kneading her head and leaned back to peer into her face. “I’ll always need you.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
Now it was Ben’s turn to lurch up onto one elbow. Her hair splayed out around her head like a silky dark halo. This time her tears weren’t just a sheen wavering in her eyes. This time, they were leaking from her eyes and running down her cheeks. His Meg never cried. Never.
He dipped his head and kissed her damp eyes. Then her cheeks and finally her mouth. He tried to put all his aching passion into the kiss, yet let it be gentle enough so she wouldn’t mistake it for lust.
Meg hiccoughed on a sob.
What had he done? Why the tears? What was wrong?
He collapsed on his side and pulled her full against him. “Meggie. Meggie,” he crooned. “I’ve needed you for as long as I’ve known you. How can you doubt it?”
Meg sniffled back another sob. She squeezed her hand between them and rubbed ferociously at her eyes. “I know you need me. But you don’t need me.”
“You’re not making sense.” He helped to wipe away the tears that so distressed her with the pads of his thumbs. Confusion ran rampant in his head. “How can I need you and not ne
ed you?”
Meg waved one hand wildly in the air. “Around here. You don’t need me around here. I get up in the morning, and everything is already done. You feed the boys and get them off to school before I’m even out of the shower. You don’t even leave any messes for me to clean up. The house could be in a magazine, for Pete’s sake.
“Rick won’t let me help with his homework, and Evan says he wants you to go to his T-ball games, not me. Rick wants you to take him hunting, but I’m not allowed to go. It’s okay if I fix supper, but it’s okay if I don’t. Every time I think to do laundry the hamper is empty, and you’ve already done it. You don’t need me for anything.”
Shock hit Ben first, then dawning understanding. All the things that had filled her days during the year she was deployed were gone. The daily routine that had dominated her life as a soldier had ended abruptly. She had no reports to file, no convoys to escort, no orders to carry out. She’d gone from sixteen-hour days of exhausting, demanding duty to nothing in the twenty-seven hours it had taken to travel from a war zone to home. And while she was away, he’d become so accustomed to taking up the slack on the home front that he hadn’t realized he was still doing everything around the house.
Meg chuckled, but it sounded watery and uncertain. “Most women would kill for a husband like you.”
“Most men would kill for a woman like you.” Whatever she was going through right now, Ben prayed it was just temporary. He’d always felt like the luckiest guy on the planet to have a wife like Meg.
To start with, she was drop-dead gorgeous with a silky mane of rich chocolate-colored hair, eyes so dark and compelling he felt like he was falling into them, and a smile that could light up a whole auditorium. She was a squared away Marine with a hard-earned commission and sterling efficiency reports. She’d given him two incredible sons, and when she made love to him, he felt like he owned the world. What more could any man want?
“I’m a mess.”
“You’re not a mess, and I need you more than I can ever find the words for.” He kissed her again, trying harder to make his point.
If his wife was having a little trouble fitting herself back into civilian life, that was to be expected. But now that he knew how she felt, he could try harder to make it easier for her. “How about we move the alarm clock to your side of the bed? You can wake me up, then go roust the boys out and get them moving in the morning.”
“It’s more than that. I just . . .” Meg trailed off.
“You just what?”
“If I get out, then what will I do with myself?”
Ben hesitated. Maybe he should say it, but . . . “You were always good at working with the dogs. I could use you out in the kennels.”
He’d definitely had her in mind for his new venture into training service dogs for returning vets with issues. She, more than anyone, especially more than he, would understand some of those issues. Seemed like a perfect fit. A woman his dogs had always responded to helping to train dogs to respond to the nightmares both waking and sleeping that tormented returning soldiers. Her boots-on-the-ground experience should have made it a perfect fit. Except she hadn’t been near his dogs since she returned and clearly had issues even with Kip.
“I thought the things you learned as a Marine might fit into my new project. You’d be good at that, too.”
“I got Scout killed.”
She what?
“Who’s Scout?”
“The bomb dog that was attached to our unit. I got him killed.”
Meg loved dogs. She’d written that there were a couple attached to her unit, but she wasn’t the handler, so how could she have gotten the dog killed?
“He—” Meg gulped back another sob.
Ben pulled her more firmly into his embrace.
“He found a bomb that I should have found first.”
If she had, then she’d be dead instead. That shocking possibility was too painful to even think about. “Isn’t that what the dogs were trained to do?” Ben forced himself to ignore the unspeakable image of his wife getting killed or dismembered by a roadside bomb.
“I was trained to look for them too. That was my job. It was why I rode along on those convoys. Only I missed one. And because I missed it, Scout got killed.”
Images and possibilities scrambled in Ben’s brain as he tried to sort out her story. He prayed she wouldn’t notice just how ragged his breathing had become.
“Tell me about it.”
Chapter 16
MEG HADN’T TOLD him. Not all of it, anyway. Feeling like it was past time to get the nightmares that haunted her out in the open, Ben had more or less commanded her to tell him the rest of the story, but she hadn’t.
All he knew now that he hadn’t known before was that she felt responsible for the death of a trained military bomb-sniffing K-9.
Ben stared down at the papers scattered across his desk, but didn’t really see them. Columbo got up from his place by the door and came over to shove his nose under Ben’s hand and whimper. Ben patted the dog absently.
Meg had been deliberately vague about her actual duties while she was deployed. Now that Ben knew she’d regularly accompanied convoys of supplies through streets that were routinely booby-trapped with IEDs, he understood her reticence. She’d been doing her best to shield him from worrying over things he couldn’t do anything about.
And the dog she’d told him about, the one she’d said reminded her of Ben’s dogs and made her feel like it was a little bit of home in a faraway place, had been a K-9 specifically trained to sniff out bombs. Ben had probably known that all along, but just hadn’t thought it through. Why else would dogs have been there in the first place? But he’d never really considered it in conjunction with Meg’s avoidance of the kennels since her return. Even if he had, not knowing about Scout, he couldn’t have made the connection.
But now he did.
Which meant putting the whole service dog project on hold.
Ben focused on the papers in front of him. Sketches of the building he’d planned to build. Outlines of the program he’d been developing. A list of things that needed to be looked into. Trips that had to be made and consultations with others who’d already gotten into the field.
He gathered up the scattered notes and drawings, tapped them into a neat stack, and tucked them back into the file. Then opened the big drawer and shoved them inside. Under the checkbook. Under the kennel ledger. All the way to the bottom of the drawer.
He’d deliberately left the kitchen a mess after fixing his own breakfast, then woken Meg in time to get the boys off to school and come out to the kennel to help Mike clean the runs and put the dogs out to exercise. He hoped she was finding some solace in setting the kitchen to rights and fixing lunches, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
His wife was in turmoil. And God help him, he didn’t know how to help her.
He didn’t do helpless well.
Patience he was good at, and he could wait when he needed to, but right now, he wanted to fix this. He didn’t want to wait and watch while his wife spiraled down into depression if that was where she was headed. He didn’t want to see her sink into a hole she couldn’t dig her way out of. A hole that sucked the life out of everything, like the one that had kept Ron in its depths for so long. Especially if the unswerving devotion of a dog trained for the job couldn’t help.
MEG PULLED INTO her mother’s driveway and climbed out of her car. Aunt Bea had been so excited about the Elf Workshop project Meg came up with that they’d both decided more jars would be needed. Aunt Bea was helping to collect more, but Meg had come begging again.
Remy hung over the fender of his big Dodge Ram, tinkering with something under the hood. He lifted his head when she pulled in and watched as she crossed the yard to the trailer.
“Hi, Remy.” She waved briefly
as she neared the truck. She’d debated what she should call the man. Mr. McAllister seemed formal and maybe imparted some kind of advantage over her. Remy, she’d decided, put them on a level playing field.
“Marissa.” He touched the brim of his faded Yankees hat.
“Meg,” she insisted. “No one calls me Marissa.” Except John. And Ben on the day of their wedding.
“Meg,” Remy repeated agreeably. His gaze swept over her as it always had, but today appeared to hold no hidden agenda. Ogling any decent looking woman was just how he was made. He went back to working on his truck.
Meg continued on to the trailer, but before she got there, her mother appeared.
“I washed them all up for you. They’re inside.” Mary Ellen held the door open and invited Meg into the trailer. Her mother appeared sober. Or more sober than usual. She squatted beside the boxes she’d lined up by the door and opened the lid on the top one. At least two dozen jars of varying shapes and sizes sparkled in the sunlight streaming in the door.
Meg suddenly realized the whole living room seemed cleaner than last time. What had changed?
She glanced back at the big truck in the driveway and what she could see of the man working on its engine. Was Remy at the bottom of this? She recalled the dreamy quality of her mother’s voice the first time they’d discussed Remy’s return.
Her mother straightened, and she too glanced out the door toward the man and his truck. Then she looked back at Meg.
“I—I went to an AA meeting,” Mary Ellen whispered in a hesitant voice.
Meg’s gaze jerked back to her mother.
Mary Ellen pushed a strand of faded blonde hair behind her ear and looked at Meg with an odd half-proud-half-fearful expression.
Meg gaped at her mother, then shut her mouth quickly before Mary Ellen could take it for disbelief. “That’s—that’s good. Really good, Mom.”
Mary Ellen smiled. “I’m going to keep going, too.”
Astonished beyond words, Meg gathered her mother into an embrace. “I am so proud of you.”