* * *
Sam took a deep breath as they stepped out of the cold and into the cavernous mall entrance.
It hadn’t changed much since she’d worked there as a teen. She’d been so excited when she’d gotten a job at Chess King. It had been so cool to have a job in the mall.
The Chess King was gone now, replaced by some place that sold purses and Maine kitsch. She wasn’t sure who at the mall would buy the refrigerator magnets or bumper stickers. Probably for folks who lived out of state now or had friends who visited.
She’d braced for the overwhelming sense of the familiar.
She did not count on the anxiety that slithered around her chest, squeezing like a wet wool blanket.
She looked back for Natalie. “Nat, honey, hold my hand.”
Patrick looked over at her, a question in his eyes.
“I don’t want her to wander off,” Sam said.
The fear was relentless, a pressure on the back of her neck that made her want to keep turning around. She rubbed Natalie’s hand, trying to focus on anything other than the sensation of being unable to breathe.
Patrick’s hand on her shoulder startled her. Her breath lodged in her throat.
“Sam.” His voice was gentle, his touch strong. “We can go,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to do this right now.”
She blinked rapidly. There was no judgment in his voice, no condemnation.
Simply understanding.
She smiled sadly. “We just drove an hour.”
“Are you okay?”
“I have to be, don’t I?”
He slipped his hand over her neck, cradling her. “Not all the time. No.”
She bit her bottom lip and looked away. Wishing she could explain the pressing fear on her heart. Wishing she could make the insurgent trepidation go away and leave her alone.
Wishing she could have a normal day at the mall with her daughter to go see Santa. But she couldn’t. Because she had decided that going to war was going to be a day at the damned beach. She hadn’t counted on the fear of getting blown up in a convoy grafting itself violently onto the fear of losing her daughter in a mall. They were not even remotely related and yet she knew that one had led to the other. There was simply no other source.
She’d done this before—gone to the mall and gone shopping like a normal person. Before the deployment. Before she’d spent days on the roads with her battalion commander.
She’d been fine before the war.
Now? Now she was just this side of a paranoid basket case. And wasn’t that a fun way to spend the day?
She was not going to ruin her daughter’s trip to see Santa.
She sucked in a deep breath. “Thank you for saying that, Patrick,” she said softly.
She met his gaze then. Saw the worry and the concern.
But it was the hurt that struck at her. The hurt that lashed out and resurrected the guilt she’d been trying to ignore. Because leaving him had not been an easy choice.
It had simply felt like the only choice. Cut him free from the dead weight. Let him be with someone else. Someone not broken by the war. Someone who could admit there was something broken and get help and get better. Not her, who was terrified of those three little words.
A full-blown person rather than a shadow.
Maybe someday, she’d finally feel normal again. Maybe then, she could start unpacking everything that had happened. But for right now, she needed to lock things down. Needed to keep the box sealed tight.
Because the darkness within was just itching to get out.
And she was not prepared to deal with that emotional tidal wave.
Better to walk away. To leave sleeping things where they lay.
“Mommy, let’s gooo.”
She let herself be tugged away. Felt his hand slip from her neck and the cool kiss of air where the heat from his touch had been.
He stayed with her, though. He walked by her side, keeping an eye on her, she knew.
He was good like that.
The war hadn’t broken him like it had broken her. She wondered why. What was it about her that hadn’t been able to handle the boring days, the long hours, the relentless stress? He’d lost friends. Good friends. He’d deployed three times to her one tour.
Why was he okay and she wasn’t?
They found their place in line. Sam tried not to scan the crowds. Tried to enjoy listening to Natalie chatter on about Santa and Rudolph and the elves.
Instead, all she could focus on was Patrick standing behind her. Warm and solid and silent. Not trying to argue with her. Not shaming her or demanding what the hell was wrong with her that she couldn’t relax.
It should be easy, to turn to him. To say something is wrong. I want to get help. But I’m afraid. But it wasn’t easy. Even with him there, solid and steady behind her. Guarding her back.
Just like always.
Chapter 4
Who knew seeing Santa was that exhausting?” Sam murmured. “She’s out cold.”
Patrick glanced in the rearview, confirming Sam’s assessment that Natalie was indeed asleep in the back seat, laid out across the bench seat, the seatbelt tucked around her chest and hips. He glanced over at Sam, trying to gauge how she was coping with everything. He’d seen her skittishness at the mall, remembered it well. The panicked feeling of too many people, of no easy access to cover. It wasn’t a rational fear but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
It had taken him a long time to put those instinctive reactions behind him and even then, they were still there, a latent energy that sometimes snuck up on him.
“She’s not the only one who needs a nap,” Patrick said quietly.
“You didn’t sleep when you left earlier?”
“No. Dropped off my stuff, got some coffee, and met you at the house.” He was more relaxed than he’d been earlier. Less tense once they’d left the mall.
He’d watched her trying so hard to be normal. Trying so hard to pretend that she was just another parent at the holidays, trying to squeeze in a visit with Santa in the chaos of last minute shopping.
But she wasn’t a normal parent. She was a mother who’d deployed to Iraq.
It had dawned on him when they’d first stepped into the mall and he’d seen the fear etched into the lines around her mouth, the panic in her eyes.
This was more than having a hard time adjusting to being home. There was a very real thing going on with her, and he figured out in that moment that she was trying to ignore all of it.
She was trying to do what so many soldiers did: stuff down the uncomfortable and unsettling thoughts and emotions. Lock them away and pretend that nothing about the war was out of the ordinary.
Pretend that deployment was just another day at the office, except that the office was now half a world away. Ignore the fact that sometimes, you needed help in coming home.
When you were deployed, there were no trips home to reset the mind. To release the tension and the stress until the next day.
No, whether you were out walking the streets or working at a desk, the stress was constant. The fear of a mortar didn’t only haunt the infantrymen or the maneuver forces. Patrick knew that all too well.
And until she dealt with everything that’d happened to her downrange, she would never come home. Not fully. He wondered if she’d even considered seeing Doc back at the unit. Doc could point her in the right direction. Keep things quiet for her.
“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts off Broadway on the way home,” she suggested.
“That is a brilliant idea.”
They drove in silence for a little bit before they stopped to order coffee, being careful not to wake Natalie. She’d normally sleep through a train wreck, but that didn’t mean he wanted to test that theory.
There was so much he couldn’t say with Natalie in the car. But there were other things he could.
“When I came home from that first tour, I hated leaving the house.” He kept his voice neutral, his words
soft. Not some big revelation of a tragic homecoming. Just a statement of what had been. “I couldn’t stand going to the grocery store and listening to people complain about the lines or about Wal-Mart being out of their favorite toilet paper.”
She cracked the barest smile. “I was so happy when we got to the FOB that we had a real toilet. And showers. We were always out of toilet paper, though. I carried a roll in one of my cargo pockets.”
“I can see where that would be a problem.” This was such a simple conversation. Like they were talking about the weather instead of latrine conditions in a war zone. “You know, if I ever deploy again, I’m going to take pictures of all the Porta-Potty graffiti. Maybe write a book about it.”
“Valuable history, huh?” she said dryly.
“Some of it was pretty good. ’Course, I can’t imagine hanging out in a Porta-Potty long enough to draw some of it.”
She snorted softly. “That’s some dedication right there.”
“Well, there wasn’t much else to do.”
“You have a very limited imagination if drawing on latrine walls is all you can think of to pass the time in Iraq.” Her voice thickened a little at the mention. Just a hint of emotion but enough that he noticed it, now that he was looking for it.
“Well, I didn’t exactly have free time. I worked pretty much round the clock. Except Sundays. Sundays were the big sleep days.”
“We did that too. There was always a movie playing at the chow hall after evening chow.”
Silence stretched between them. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking about. Were there other memories that haunted her beyond losing Melanie?
“It’s funny the things I remember. Like I remember how the gravel felt beneath my boots and the mural on the T-wall outside the chow hall. But all the days? Most of them blended together.” His throat tightened as memories circled, just out of reach. Sensations, really.
“Except for the ones that stand out.” She looked out into the cold Maine afternoon.
He reached for her then, daring to cross the chasm between them and rest his hand on her shoulder. A tentative gesture. One meant to offer comfort. Solace.
Understanding.
His breath lodged in his throat when she covered his hand with hers.
“Yeah, there were a few of those.” He twined his fingers with hers. “More than a few I wish I could forget.”
She didn’t look at him, keeping her focus at the hazy winter sky. “I haven’t slept well. Not since about halfway through my tour.”
A quiet admission. He could guess how much it cost her to admit but it was an opening too precious to ignore.
“Did you ask Doc for some Ambien? Maybe talk to someone about not sleeping?”
“No.” That single word was laced with fear. She unthreaded their fingers, slipping away from him once more with that quiet admission.
He swallowed, tapping his thumb on the lid of his coffee mug before taking a sip, buying himself some time. He wanted to push her, to ask her why she was trying so hard to be so tough when she clearly needed to talk to someone. Hell, it didn’t have to be him, but someone. Anyone.
Instead, he took a deep breath and chose a different tactic. “My first tour, I worked eighteen-hour days. Nonstop. I remember curling up under my desk to catch a nap, then I’d get back up and keep going.” A deep breath. “I hit the wall about eight months in. Punched my ops sergeant major for taking my last RipIt.”
She looked at him, a single eyebrow arched. “You punched someone over a RipIt?”
“And some copier toner. It was already a tense relationship. Then he used the last of the toner for no smoking signs around the TOC when I had a packet to prepare for the brigade commander. I missed my briefing and got my ass handed to me. Then he took my last RipIt, and it was all over.” He smiled flatly. “I don’t actually remember doing it. My boss at the time was less than impressed that his brand new captain socked his senior NCO. Sent me to the doc, and ordered me to get some sleep.” He shrugged. “So I kind of appreciate what a good night’s sleep can do for the soul.”
A long moment stretched between them. “I don’t even remember what that feels like.”
He hesitated, unsure how far he could push this relative truce.
“Maybe when we get back to Texas, talk to Doc. Can’t hurt, right?”
* * *
Can’t hurt, right? She let his words sink in, turned them over in her mind. He wanted her to talk to Doc. For sleep meds. She’d thought about it, so many times. Had even gone so far as to make an appointment with Doc only to cancel it at the last minute. Because fear was such a powerful thing.
Can’t hurt, right?
Except that yeah, it could hurt. A lot. Because what if it didn’t work? What if she was well and truly broken and nothing would ever help put her back together again?
She sighed softly. “I tried an Ambien once. Terrible nightmares and woke up feeling like hell the next day.” She badly needed to turn the subject into something safer. Something that involved less soul-baring intensity.
She wasn’t ready to unpack everything that happened in Iraq. Yet somehow, they’d just carried on a completely normal conversation without dredging up bad memories or worse.
And he wanted her to talk to Doc.
It was a completely normal conversation between two people pretending to be normal about a situation that was everything but normal.
He took a sip of his coffee. “I had a sergeant major who chewed them like they were Tic Tacs. Said it took five of them to knock him out every night.”
She looked over at him. “The RipIt sergeant major?”
“Nah, this was my second tour. He’d stayed in and volunteered to do back-to-back tours to put his kid through Johns Hopkins Medical School.”
“Why do I feel like you’re not making that up?”
He covered his heart with one hand. “Swear to God. Sarn’t Major Megholtz. Meanest SOB you ever met. Daughters had him wrapped around their little fingers.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” she said quietly.
He glanced back at Natalie. “She’s a good kid.” His words were suddenly thick.
Her heart ached at the love in that simple sentence. “You’re a good dad.”
He said nothing for a long moment. The muscles in his neck bunched, his knuckles tensed on the steering wheel. “Whatever happens between us, Sam, please don’t take my daughter.” His voice cracked a little in the fading afternoon light.
She closed her eyes at the pain in those words. Pain she’d caused. She folded her arms over her chest and sank into the seat, struggling to hold in the wave of sadness his words sent surging.
There was nothing she could say to make things right. Nothing to take back the hurt she’d inflicted on him.
Nothing to make her feel the happiness that she should feel when he was around her daughter. The joy and the gladness that her daughter would grow up with a father who would be there for her. Who wouldn’t leave her.
But Patrick was a soldier. And soldiers who went to war sometimes didn’t come home. She knew that now. Up close and personal. And the thought of him at war again while she waited at home…
The sadness was back. Seeping out of the box. Threatening to destroy the latches and the hinges and send everything crashing over her.
She couldn’t do it. It was easier not to feel. Easier to pretend she didn’t care. Easier to pretend she didn’t need help, that she’d snap out of it if she just tried harder to feel normal.
If she told herself she didn’t care often enough, maybe it would be true. Because not caring was the only way to survive his next deployment.
Or hers.
God, how was she going to get on that plane again and leave Natalie? What if she didn’t come home?
What if she was like Mel? There one day, gone the next.
Who would Natalie have left? Her biological father? That scumbag had no claim on Natalie. His name wasn’t on her birth certificate. He
could never come back and hurt her if anything ever happened to Sam.
Patrick was the only father she’d ever known. And he was a good father. A good man.
She trusted him with Natalie.
She just didn’t trust herself with him anymore.
“Where’d you go just then, Sam?” he asked quietly.
“Nowhere.” She sniffed. “You can’t fix this.”
“Maybe not.” A cautious pause. “But we won’t know unless we try. We haven’t even tried. You…you just left.”
She couldn’t answer for the longest time. Her throat closed off and her eyes burned. She swiped at her cheeks, trying to keep the tears at bay.
Her voice broke when she finally managed the words. “I don’t want to take Natalie from you.”
“This isn’t just about Natalie, Sam. This is about you. This is about us.”
They rolled to a stop at a random light in the middle of nowhere. He turned to face her. “This isn’t over yet. And the sooner you accept that, the better off all of us will be.”
“Maybe it’s been over a long time…we’ve just both been gone too much to see it.”
“And maybe we’ve just been gone too much to remember how to be us,” he snapped. There was steel in those words. Resolve that she was so intimately familiar with. “We haven’t had that. There’s been no you and me. We’ve both been working our asses off since the war started. We don’t know how long this damn thing is going to go on. We don’t know when it’s going to end, when we’ll finally get to be a normal family again. But we damn sure won’t get that chance if we just cut sling load because the first time we’re together again after almost two years, things don’t fall magically back into place.”
She shifted in her seat, his words hitting her at center mass, dead in the heart.
“I wish I had a better answer for you.” Shame and fear laced those words. “But I don’t. I’m sorry. But that’s the best I’ve got to give.”
He shook his head, the muscle in his jaw tensing. He looked at her then, his eyes furious and dark. “That’s not good enough, Sam. Our family deserves better.”
Come Home to Me Page 3