A Hero to Come Home To

by Marilyn Pappano

  Once they were all settled and had ordered drinks—iced tea for Ilena—Lucy turned to Carly. “Okay. Tell us all about running into Dane.”

  With six expectant faces turned her way, Carly laughed. “Guys, it’s not like I never see men. I work on post, remember.”

  “With ankle-biters, which Dane is not,” Jessy said, then mused, “though maybe a gentle nip or two would be fun.”

  “Ahh, I miss gentle nips,” Ilena said wistfully.

  Carly gave the details of the encounter—heavens, that sounded so much more significant than it had really been—then finished with a shrug. “Coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Marti said. “However, I do believe in fate.”

  “Right.” Carly scoffed. “It was a matter of timing. If we’d been five minutes later getting there, he probably would have been gone.”

  “But he wasn’t,” several voices chimed together, then Lucy pointed out, “Therese and I work on post, too, but we didn’t run into him. And he must leave the fort occasionally, but no one else has run into him.”

  Marti nodded as if that made her point. “Fate.”

  Carly rolled her eyes, then gestured across the room. “Look, our every-other-weeklies are here.”

  Everyone greeted the four newcomers and the conversation—thankfully—turned to catching up with them. She didn’t need any more talk about Dane. She’d thought about him enough today. And that nonsense about fate…She took her class to the Warrior Transition Unit every Tuesday; he had a buddy there. It was just coincidence that they’d shown up at the same time. Nothing more.

  She believed it, too, until after ordering fajitas, then excusing herself to go to the ladies’ room. On the way back to the table, she took a shortcut through the bar, where she glanced over a half dozen men, hardly noticing them, before her gaze caught on a lone man at a tall round table. She would have skimmed right over him, as well, if he hadn’t looked up at exactly the same moment to lock gazes with her.

  You don’t believe in fate, remember? Coincidence. A matter of timing. That’s all it is.

  A tiny doubt-filled voice spoke up then. Isn’t it?

  Once Dane had excelled at stealth, camouflage, and going unnoticed, but it seemed he’d lost more than his foot in Afghanistan. He could have chosen a dozen better tables. He could have taken into account that the clear path through the bar, which allowed him to see the women at the back, also increased the possibility of one of them seeing him. He should have seen that the shortest path from the table to the ladies’ room, of course, went right through the bar.

  Carly stopped abruptly, still holding his gaze. When a young soldier tried to squeeze past with an apology, she realized she was blocking the way and took a couple of slow steps to bring her to his table. “The world’s even smaller than I thought.”

  He didn’t know what a person from Utah sounded like, or if years in Colorado and Oklahoma had made her accent uniquely her own. He did know her voice was quiet, definitely female and, at the moment, lacked the all-business edge he associated with the only women in his life: doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. Only the women shrinks he’d seen back east had ever sounded that soft.

  “They tell me this is the best Mexican restaurant in town.” Someone had actually told him that, when he’d first arrived. He hadn’t paid attention, since he hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since he’d come back to the States.

  “It is.” A group of girls who looked barely old enough to be in the bar swarmed past on their way to the biggest table in the corner, and Carly eased out of their path, practically hugging the tall chair across from him. Her left hand rested on its back, the wedding ring prominent.

  He’d taken his gold band off the day his buddies had confirmed his suspicions of Sheryl’s affair. Last he’d seen it, it was sinking in the polluted waters of the Bacchiglione River. Surely by now it had been silted over or had been carried into the Adriatic Sea.

  Picking up his beer bottle, he gestured toward her table. “So you guys are intrepid adventurers and connoisseurs of Mexican food?”

  She glanced at her friends, none of them watching, then slid onto the stool and folded her hands on the tabletop. “Connoisseurs of margaritas, actually—but yes to the ‘adventurer’ part, too. We’ve scaled high peaks, braved dark caves, and hiked until our feet blistered. We even dared to attend the Tulsa State Fair with a group of twenty, rode every ride and sampled every food available. On opening day, no less.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  Her smile appeared suddenly, softening the seriousness of her expression. “Don’t be. You saw the high peak and the cave, and the hiking trail was paved. But the state fair…it was two thumbs-up until Jessy puked up a funnel cake and a fried Snickers on the Ferris wheel. From the top. The people below were not happy.”

  “Jessy—the redhead?”

  Carly nodded, and a thick strand of her hair, worn down tonight, fell from her shoulder to dangle over a sweater the color of a fine Italian red wine. “Never ride a Ferris wheel with her.”

  Like that’s gonna happen. He’d never been fond of amusement park rides when he had two good legs to escape if he got trapped at the top. Not even a pretty woman like Jessy—or a prettier one like Carly—could entice him to put his life in the hands of old equipment and traveling carnies.

  His cell phone rang, and he fumbled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, then muted it. Carly moved as if to leave. “You can take that.”

  “Nah. No name. I don’t answer calls with no name.”

  She smiled faintly. “Afraid the command’s trying to call you in to work?”

  He made a stab at smiling, too. Caller ID had made it more difficult for first-line supervisors to call people in; most soldiers knew better than to answer a call that likely meant work. The first-line supervisors had started blocking their numbers when they called, so their subordinates had stopped answering blocked calls, too.

  He set the phone aside, screen down, and returned to the subject. “Why margaritas? Why not wine or cosmos or lagers?”

  “To drown our sorrows, and because not one of us would willingly drink a cosmo or lager.”

  The face she made showed what she thought of the last two, and he deliberately wrapped his hand around the label on his bottle. The muscles in his neck tightened, a little bit of guilt because he knew something about her of which she wasn’t aware. Hell, that was why he’d come here tonight, even after he’d tried to talk himself out of it. He’d known she would be here, and he’d wanted to…just see her. That was all.

  The guilt made the next question—the obvious question—difficult to get out, but he managed, sounding relatively normal, he thought. Not like he already knew. Not like he particularly cared. “Do you have a lot of sorrows?”

  Her expression saddened, and she fingered the wedding band a moment before putting on a resigned face and answering. “We’ve all lost our husbands or fiancés in combat. Around here, they call us the Fort Murphy Widows’ Club, though not to our faces. We prefer the Tuesday Night Margarita Club. It’s a little more frivolous. A little less mournful. And you don’t have to say you’re sorry. You were there, weren’t you? In Iraq or Afghanistan.”

  He nodded. “Both. Four years.”

  “You’ve lost a lot, too.”

  He wondered for one cold instant if she knew, but she went on.

  “Time, hope, illusions. Friends.”

  His throat narrowed, with both unrealized fears and the sad fact that she was right, and he nodded again. She understood as much as it was possible for someone who’d never been there. She wouldn’t ask for war stories, for the retelling of close calls to leave her breathless. She wouldn’t ask if he had killed anyone, or how many, or how it had felt. She wouldn’t relish the details the way so many people did.

  With a fortifying breath he would have missed if he hadn’t been watching so closely, she picked up the magazine open in front of him, marked his place with her finger a
nd flipped to the cover. “Ah, motorcycles. Man toys. Do you have one?”

  That lump still in his throat made swallowing difficult. “I used to.” Still did, to be honest. The racing bike he’d bought in Italy was in storage with his household goods, waiting for him to land someplace permanently, where he would likely sell it. Like those gorgeous palominos Sunday, the Ducati seemed way out of his league now. His limbs were already 25 percent bionic; he didn’t want to take a shot at losing any more.

  “I prefer totally enclosed vehicles myself, but you Airborne guys like to fly, don’t you?”

  “The need for speed.” There was nothing quite like going a hundred and fifty miles per hour on the bike, besides free-falling at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Freedom, exhilaration…and a world of hurt or death if anything went wrong. Kind of like combat. They all got your adrenaline pumping.

  The waitress set a steaming platter on the table, then added a plate with the makings for fajitas. Carly inhaled deeply. Then she met his gaze, reluctance in her hazel eyes. “I should get back before they come looking for me and find you. You’d be stuck with eleven of us tonight.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded reluctant, too, that one word all he could say. All he would let himself say. Not Stay awhile longer. Certainly not Can we meet again?

  She stood, but instead of saying good-bye and leaving, she looked at him. “Three times now, and I don’t know your last name.”

  “Clark.” He gave a flippant salute. “Staff Sergeant Dane Clark.” The same rank as her dead husband whose ring she still wore nearly two years after his death.

  Her smile softened, and so did something inside him. “I’ll see you around, Staff Sergeant Clark.”

  It was hunger, he told himself as she wiggled her fingers in the smallest of waves, then walked away. He hadn’t had fajitas in nearly two years, and he couldn’t remember what he’d had for, or even if he’d had, lunch. Just hunger.

  And the hell of it was, it was true.

  He just wasn’t hungry for food.

  His phone beeped while he was finishing the first fajita. He turned it over, pressed view later, and assembled a fajita. He hadn’t lied when he’d said there was no name—only the number had shown—but he’d misled Carly into thinking he didn’t know who was calling. It was his mother, one of her infrequent calls to check on him that, no matter what was going on, always managed to make him feel worse.

  Turning back to the magazine, he ate and read and, way too often, let his gaze wander across the room. Other than the redhead, her back to him, he couldn’t identify any of the other women by name, though six faces were familiar. Did the four strangers complete the club membership? Just how many wives at Fort Murphy had been widowed by the war?

  Even eleven was too many.

  After finishing his meal, he debated having another drink, but had just decided against it when the women in the corner began the readying that signaled departure. He flagged down the waitress, paid his bill and got carefully to his feet. Carly looked up then, and just a little smile touched her mouth as she nodded once. “I’ll see you around.”

  He nodded, turning away before any of the others could notice him. From the back, most soldiers looked alike, Sheryl used to say.

  It wasn’t until he got home, removed his prosthesis and settled in on the couch that he picked up the phone and dialed his mother’s number.

  “It took you long enough to call me back,” Anna Mae said. If he closed his eyes, he could see her face: remarkably smooth for a woman her age, pretty, the natural blond of her hair maintained with chemicals now, her mouth slightly pursed, the usual look in her blue eyes. He’d never been able to decide whether it was disappointment or disapproval. He did know a great deal of it had to do with him, with his father, with the life she’d gotten versus the one she’d thought she deserved.

  He didn’t close his eyes.

  “I was having dinner.”

  “What, you couldn’t have held the sandwich in one hand and the phone in the other?”

  His skill in the kitchen didn’t extend far beyond sandwiches. She’d never wanted him underfoot when she was cooking, and once he’d gotten married, Sheryl had fixed the meals when they didn’t eat out.

  “What’s up?” Even though these calls were supposedly to check up on him, she never asked how he was, if physical therapy was any easier going, if he’d gotten more comfortable with the new prosthesis. Thinking of his poor leg just made her sad, and she had enough sadness without going looking for it.

  “I just got off the phone with Sheryl a minute before I called. I couldn’t wait to share the good news. She’s pregnant.”

  Dane stared at the darkened television. What was the right response to that? Why tell me? Am I supposed to care? Do you expect me to be glad that my ex-wife who always claimed she wanted my babies is pregnant by another man? And a last uncharitable thought: Is she sure her husband’s the father?

  “Well? Isn’t that wonderful?” Anna Mae sounded as happy and proud as if the baby was her own grandchild.

  He cleared his throat. He wanted to growl, I don’t freaking give a damn, but his father had taught him better. Anna Mae might be pessimistic, perpetually dissatisfied, self-centered, and irritating as hell, but she was his mother, and that had to count for something.

  “Uh, yeah,” he finally managed. “I guess.”

  A smile beamed over the distance. “I’ll tell her you said so. Not that she asks about you much. Not since…well, you know.”

  “Not since I came to after an IED detonated and found out my foot was gone?” he asked drily, then immediately regretted the words.

  “William Dane! You don’t have to talk about it.”

  But the shrinks said he did. So did the therapists and the guys he worked out with. Pretending it didn’t happen didn’t make it so. It wouldn’t grow him a new foot and calf and knee. But if he wanted to pretend it never happened, how could he blame her for doing the same?

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said quickly. “Tell Sheryl whatever you think is appropriate. I, uh, need to go.”

  “And I need to make some plans. You know, I made crib quilts for each of Sheryl’s other kids. I’ll have to start one for the new baby. It’s so exciting.”

  Dane mumbled his way through the good-byes, then lay back and stared at the ceiling. Anna Mae had thought her life would be some sort of fairy tale, but instead of the three beautiful daughters she’d intended to have, the only pregnancy she’d successfully carried had delivered him. They’d butted heads routinely, but especially once he’d decided to join the Army. Then she’d been widowed just before her forty-fifth birthday. In divorcing Sheryl, Dane had screwed up the only thing he’d ever done to please her, and he’d had the nerve to come back from the war a cripple. He didn’t think that was such a horrible life, but she did, and she was his mother. He could cut her a little slack.

  Carly had been widowed a whole lot younger, and under worse circumstances, but she didn’t seem to have any of his mother’s self-pity. But Carly was a whole different person. He couldn’t imagine anyone describing her as pessimistic, dissatisfied, self-centered, or irritating. In fact, a boatload of other words came to mind. Pretty. Warm. Friendly. Generous. Sexy. Sweet. Intriguing. Patient. Really pretty. Really sexy.

  And not married. Still grieving, still attached, but maybe ready to take a step or two forward. Maybe open to spending a little time with another man. Maybe even thinking about more.

  But even if she was, could he be that man? Did he even want to?

  His snort was loud in the dimly lit room. Oh, yeah, some part of him definitely wanted. The other parts of him—the doubt, the lowered self-esteem, the lack of confidence, the shame—sang a line from an old song in four-part harmony.

  You can’t always get what you want.

  After school on Thursday, Carly went home as usual, stopping only to buy a half gallon of soy milk. Cradling the cold container in the crook of one arm, she let herself in and made it halfway to th
e kitchen before stopping abruptly.

  As she stood there in the hallway, she could literally feel her good mood seeping away. It was cold in the house, despite the bright sun and seventy-three degrees outside. Her refuge, her safe haven, felt different. Stifling. Almost like a vacuum.

  Letting her bag slide to the floor, she put the milk in the refrigerator, then slowly walked back to the living room. Everything was in its place. Where it had been the day Jeff had left. Truly, the only things different were the wooden box on the mantel holding his awards and the flag that had covered his casket, plus a single plant out of the hundreds that had been sent for his funeral.

  She went to the front windows and opened the blinds for the first time in a year and a half. In a rush, she did the same in the dining room, kitchen, and her bedroom. It was too late in the day for sunlight to flood the rooms, but it did ease the gloom.

  In the living room once more, she turned in a circle. She should rearrange the furniture. Replace the pastel froufrou rug with something in a bold geometric pattern. Better yet, she should paint the walls. Painting the stunningly boring white walls throughout the house had always been on their list of things to do, but Jeff had put it off every chance he got, claiming he would get to it eventually.

  The truth, she’d known, was that he didn’t have the patience for painting. He hadn’t wanted to bother with taping or drop cloths or prep work. His style had been to slap on the paint quick as he could, and ignore the unfortunate drips, splatters, and thin coverage.

  She should paint. Redecorate. Rearrange. Start over.

  The momentary rush drained as quickly as it had come. How could she redecorate without Jeff’s input? Besides, the bland white on the walls was soothing in a way. It didn’t demand her attention or catch her eye. It just faded into the background. And she knew so well where every single thing was located that she could navigate the room in the middle of the night with the lights off and her eyes puffy from crying. And she couldn’t begin to move that ridiculous TV by herself.