A Hero to Come Home To

by Marilyn Pappano

  He reached Fort Murphy in good time, turning at the end of Main Street into the post’s main entrance. A sandstone arch on either side of the four-lane held engraved concrete: WELCOME TO FORT MURPHY on the left, a list of the tenant commands on the right, including the Warrior Transition Unit. That was the unit that currently laid claim to him. In the future…

  Once he’d had his life all laid out: Twenty years or more in the Army, retirement, a family, a second career that left him time to travel. He’d thought he might teach history and coach, open a dive shop or get into some type of wilderness-adventure trek business. Now he didn’t have the vaguest idea what the future held. For a man who’d always known where he was going, it was kind of scary, not knowing where he was going or how—or even if—he could get there.

  After clearing the guard shack, he drove onto the post, past a bronze statue of the base’s namesake, cowboy, actor, and war hero Audie Murphy. The four-lane passed a manicured golf course, a community center with an Olympic-size pool and the first of many housing areas before he turned onto a secondary street. His quarters were in a barracks, opened only months ago, small apartments to help their occupants adjust to life outside the hospitals where most of them had spent too many months. Dane’s own stay had lasted eleven months. Long enough to bring a new life into the world. Not long enough to adjust to a totally new life.

  He was limping painfully by the time he let himself into his apartment. Tossing the keys on a table near the door, he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and washed down a couple pills, fumbled his way out of his jeans, then dropped onto the couch before removing the prosthesis. He had two—one that looked pretty real from a distance and this one that seemed more of a superhero bionic thing. He was grateful to have them—he’d seen nonmilitary people forced by the cost to get by on much less efficient models—but neither was close to the real thing.

  Absently rubbing his leg, he used the remote to turn on the television, then surfed the channels. There were lots of sports on today that he didn’t want to watch. They reminded him too much of his own years playing football and baseball and running for the pure pleasure of it. No chick flicks, no talking animals, no gung-ho kick-ass action movies. He settled on a documentary on narrow-gauge railroads that let his mind wander.

  How had he filled his Saturday afternoons before the amputation? Running for his life sometimes. Taking other people’s lives sometimes. Jumping out of helicopters, patrolling barren desert, interfacing with locals. Before Iraq and Afghanistan, it had been riding his motorcycle through the Italian Alps, taking the train to Venice with his buddies, sightseeing and drinking too much. Hanging out, using too many women badly trying to get over his failed marriage.

  He replayed weekends all the way back to his teens. Chores, running errands, homework, extra practices if the coach deemed them necessary, dates on Saturday night with Sheryl. Before she’d married him. Before she’d fallen out of love with him. Before she’d run around on him—adding insult to injury, with guys from his own unit.

  He was over her. By the time she’d actually filed for divorce, he’d been so disillusioned by her affairs that he hadn’t cared. But there was still this knot of resentment. They’d been together since they were fourteen, for God’s sake, and she hadn’t even had the grace to say “It’s over.” She’d lied to him. Betrayed him. She’d let him down, then blamed him for it.

  And her life was great. She’d gone back home to Texas, married a rich guy who only got richer and lived in a beautiful mansion with three beautiful kids.

  Dane’s mother gave him regular updates, despite the fact that he’d never once asked. “You let her get away,” Anna Mae always ended with a regretful sigh.

  Yeah, sure. He’d screwed up. It was all his fault. To Sheryl and Anna Mae, everything that had gone wrong was his fault, even the IED that had cost him his leg. If you’d listened to Sheryl and me and gotten out of the Army…

  A dim image of the women he’d met that day—Carly, Jessy, and the others—formed in his mind. Did they lie to their husbands, betray them, let them down? It would be easy to think yes. The unfaithful-always-ready-to-party military wife was a stereotype, but stereotypes became that for a reason.

  But today, after driving to the park, hiking to the falls, and climbing up to the cave, he’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt. That was something normal people did, and today, he was feeling pretty normal.

  “Do you ever feel guilty for looking at a guy and thinking, ‘Wow, he’s hot; I’d like to get to know him’?”

  The quiet question came from Therese, sitting on the far side of the third-row seat of Marti’s Suburban. Carly looked at her over Jessy’s head, slumped on her shoulder. The redhead’s snores were soft, barely noticeable, and due more to the third margarita she’d had with lunch than anything else, Carly suspected. Jessy was full of life until she got a few drinks in her, then she crashed hard.

  “You mean, do I feel like I’m being unfaithful to Jeff, his memory, our marriage, his family, myself? Yeah. We had such plans.” Regret robbed her voice of its strength. “Life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.”

  “But are we meant to spend the rest of our lives honoring our husbands’ memories and…alone?”

  Alone. That was a scary word even for women as independent as the Army had forced them to become. Even before their husbands had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, they’d been gone a lot, training at various bases around the country. They’d worked long hours to get themselves and their troops combat-ready, and most home-life responsibilities had fallen on their wives.

  But then, alone had been okay. There had been an end to every training mission, to every deployment. The men had come home, and they’d made up for all the time missed.

  For the seven of them, though, and the rest of the margarita club, the last return home had been final. There would be no more kisses, no more hugs, no more great sex, no more making up for missed time. There were only flags, medals, grave sites, and memories.

  Yes, and some guilt.

  “Paul wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone.”

  The words sounded lame even to Carly. Lord knows, she’d heard them often enough—from friends, from her in-laws, from therapists. The first time, from a grief counselor, she’d wanted to shriek, How could you possibly know that? You never met him!

  But it was true. Jeff had loved her. He’d always encouraged her to live life. He would be appalled if she grieved it away over him instead. Her head knew that.

  Her heart was just having trouble with it.

  Therese’s laugh broke halfway. “I don’t know. Paul was the jealous type. He didn’t want me even looking at another guy.”

  “But that was because he was there. Now…” It took a little extra breath to finish the sentence. “He’s not.”

  A few miles passed in silence before Therese spoke again. “What about you guys? What if one of us…”

  After her voice trailed off, Fia finished the question from her middle-row seat. “Falls in love and gets another chance at happily ever after?”

  Therese swallowed, then nodded. “Would it affect us? We became friends because we’d all lost our husbands. Would a new man in one of our lives change that? Would we want to share you with him?”

  “Would he want to share you with us?” Ilena asked. “What guy would want his new girlfriend spending time with a group that’s tied at its very heart to her husband’s death?”

  Shifting uncomfortably, Carly stared out the window. She had other friends—a few from college, teachers she worked with, a neighbor or two—but the margarita club, especially these six, were her best friends.

  She wanted to say a relationship could never negatively affect their friendship, but truth was, she wasn’t sure. She’d had other best friends before Jeff died—they all had—other Army wives, and they’d grown apart after. They’d shown her love and sorrow and sympathy, but they’d also felt a tiny bit of relief that it was her door t
he dress-uniformed officers had knocked at to make the casualty notification, that it was her husband who’d died and not theirs. And they’d felt guilty for feeling relieved.

  She knew, because she’d been through it herself.

  She forced a smile as her gaze slid from woman to woman. “I’ll love you guys no matter what. If one of you falls in love, gets married and lives the perfect life with Prince Charming, I’ll envy you. I’ll probably hate you at least once a week. But I’ll always be there for you.”

  The others smiled, too, sadly, then silence fell again. The conversation hadn’t really answered any questions. It was easy to say it was okay to fall in love, even easier to promise their friendship would never end. But in the end, it was actions that counted.

  The closer they got to Tallgrass, the more regret built in Carly. Though their times together were frequent—dinner every Tuesday, excursions every couple months, impromptu gatherings for shopping or a movie or no reason at all—she couldn’t ignore the fact that she was going home to an empty house. All of them were except Therese, who would pick up her resentful stepchildren from the neighbor who was watching them. They would eat their dinners alone, watch TV or read or clean house alone, and they would go to bed alone.

  Were they meant to spend the rest of their lives that way? Dear God, she hoped not.

  By the time the Suburban pulled into her driveway, Carly was pretty much in a funk. She squeezed out from the third seat, exchanged good-byes with the others, promising to share any good pictures she’d gotten, and headed toward the house as if she didn’t dread going inside.

  It was a great starter house, the real estate agent had told them when they’d come to Tallgrass. “That means ‘fixer-upper,’” Carly had whispered to Jeff, and he’d grinned. “You know me. I love my tools.”

  “But you never actually use them.”

  But the house was close to the fort, and the mortgage payments allowed plenty of money left over for all those repairs. Jeff had actually done some of them himself. Not many, but enough to crow over.

  She climbed the steps he’d leveled and inserted the key in the dead bolt he’d installed. A lamp burned in the living room, a habit she’d gained their first night apart, shining on comfortable furniture, good tables, a collection of souvenirs and knickknacks and, of course, photographs. The outrageously sized television had been his choice, to balance the burnished wicker chair she’d chosen for her reading corner. Likewise, he’d picked the leather recliner to hide at least part of the froufrou rug she’d put down.

  Their life had been full of little trade-offs like that. He would load the dishwasher if she would unload it. He would take his uniforms to the dry cleaner for knife-sharp creases, and she wouldn’t complain if he wore sweats at home. She mowed the lawn, and he cleaned the gutters.

  She’d stayed home, and he’d gone to war and died.

  And she missed him, God, more than she’d thought possible.

  To stave off the melancholy, she went to the kitchen for a bottle of water and a hundred-calorie pack of cookies. Before she reached the living room again, her cell phone rang.

  It was Lucy. “I sent you some pictures. Check ’em out.” She sounded way too cheerful before her voice cracked. “Norton, don’t you dare! Aw, man! I swear to you, that mutt holds his pee all day just so he can see my face when he soaks the kitchen floor. Gotta go.”

  “Hello and good-bye to you, too.” Carly slid the phone back into her pocket and made a turn into the dining room, where her computer occupied a very messy table. She opened her email, and pictures began popping onto the screen—group shots, individuals, posed, candid, all of them happy and smiling.

  No, not all. She hovered the cursor over one photo, clicking to enlarge it. Their cave-mate Dane. He was looking directly at the camera, a hint of surprise in his eyes as he realized he was being photographed, as if he wanted to jerk his gaze or his head away and didn’t quite manage.

  It was a stark photo of a good face: not overly handsome, with a strong jaw and straight nose, intense eyes and a mouth that was almost too sensitive for the rest of his features. He looked capable, a command-and-control kind of guy, except for his eyes. They were tough to read, even when she magnified the photo until the upper half of his face filled the screen, but there was definitely something haunted—or haunting?—about them.

  He had a story to tell, and probably a sad one. It wasn’t likely she would see him again to hear it. Tallgrass wasn’t a large town, but it was easy enough for people to live their lives without ever running into a specific individual. Unless Dane had a child at the elementary school or happened to crave Mexican food on a Tuesday night, they would probably never see each other again.

  Whatever his story, she wished him well with it.

  Chapter Two

  Last one out of the truck before Marti headed toward her own home, Therese stared at the house from the driveway. It was two stories, white siding with red brick, a narrow porch lined by flower beds and a patch of neatly manicured lawn waiting for spring to turn it green and lush.

  They had been married six years before Paul got orders to Fort Murphy, and ordinarily they would have rented an apartment in the beginning, but he’d just found out that his ex-wife was sending the kids to live with them. Up to that point, Therese’s exposure to Abby and Jacob had been limited to a few rushed days twice a year. She’d been excited about the move, actually buying a house and forming a real family with his children.

  Lord, had she really thought it would be that easy?

  It hadn’t been, not from the start. Her presence in Paul’s life had put a serious roadblock in the kids’ hopes that their parents would get back together, one they hadn’t recovered from when Catherine packed them off to live with their dad. Finding herself? Needing me time?

  Therese had wanted to smack the woman. The time to find herself was before she had children or after she’d raised them to be responsible, self-sufficient adults. At eight and ten, Jacob and Abby had been neither self-sufficient nor adults. Just deeply wounded children longing for the stability they’d lost.

  Things had never been smooth, then Paul had died and Catherine had declined to let the kids return home to California, claiming she just couldn’t handle the burden in her grief.

  They were her children, not a burden, Therese had pointed out when Catherine delivered the message in a phone call. And just how much grief could the woman have? She was the one who’d had an affair, who’d left the marriage, who’d filed for divorce. She was the one who’d broken Paul’s and the kids’ hearts. But Catherine hadn’t budged.

  Paul’s children. Not a burden. Even if Abby still resented her, still expected maid, chauffeur, and restaurant service, still thought the world revolved around her and Therese was the drudge whose sole reason for existence was greasing the axle. Even if Jacob was still sullen, rarely looking at or speaking to his stepmother—though, for the record, he paid Abby no notice, either. In his opinion, they were both just nuisances put there to test him.

  Paul’s children.

  Giving herself a mental shake, she walked past the car and took the steps to the porch. Hitting the autodial button for their neighbors, she braced her cell between her shoulder and ear while she unlocked the door, then stepped inside. Even empty, the house wasn’t peaceful. The air was filled with tension, as if it couldn’t escape the four walls or the doors that were constantly being slammed. Lord, how much longer? Would things ever get better for them?

  “Hi, Marsha,” she said when her friend answered. “I’m home so you can send the kids over any time. Did they behave?”

  Marsha laughed. “Don’t you know kids always behave better for other people than they do for their parents? They were fine. Abby and Nicole went to a movie, and Jacob and Liam played video games all day. I’m sure their eyes are still crossed. Did you have a good time?”

  “I did. The park was beautiful, and the exercise did me good. I appreciate you keeping them. Let me know next time
you and Will want a date night. I’d be happy to return the favor.” She wasn’t lying. Having company didn’t change Jacob’s behavior—Liam was sullen just like him—but Nicole’s presence always made Abby straighten up at least a bit.

  “I’ll take you up on that. I’ll pry the boys loose from their games and point them your way.”

  “Thanks.” Therese headed straight to the kitchen, leaving her purse and phone on the counter, hanging her keys on a cat sculpture nearby. As she placed a frozen pizza in the oven, she mused about Marsha’s choice of words. Pointing the kids her way…sounded like aiming a weapon.

  “Oh, Paul, the things I do for love,” she whispered.

  It was less than fifteen minutes before the front door slammed. The pizza was cooling on the counter, and Therese was tossing together a salad—literally: bagged lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and a container of diced cucumbers. Wearing a scowl, Jacob gave his hands a poor excuse for a wash, grabbed a bottle of pop from the refrigerator, and headed for his usual seat at the table.

  “Jacob, get the plates and silverware.” Therese’s voice sounded fairly neutral, considering it was about the thousandth time she’d made the same request. For about the thousandth time, he grunted—why did males think that was an appropriate response to anything?—and obeyed.

  Abby, on her cell with Nicole, was taking her turn at the sink. First she’d demanded, then wheedled her way into getting the phone by pointing out she could use it to stay in touch with Therese. Not once in the six months since had she ever called Therese, and Therese was pretty sure that, if she called Abby, the girl wouldn’t answer. But it had made her happy…for a while.

  “Three glasses of ice,” she reminded Abby when she dried her hands.

  “I don’t want ice.”

  “I do.” It was one of her few requirements for living in her house. They ate like civilized people, with dishes, drinks in glasses and everything. “And tell Nicole good-bye.” No phone calls during dinner, either.