A Hero to Come Home To

by Marilyn Pappano

  Feeling as blah as the room, she got the phone, kicked off her shoes and curled up in the recliner. She’d slept there for the first month after Jeff’s death, convinced she could feel his presence: the curves where the leather had conformed to his body, the faint spicy scent of his cologne that seemed to have seeped into the cushions, the distant whisper of his voice trapped in the softness.

  Now she realized that the curves conformed to her body, and the only scent besides leather was her own cologne.

  She located Lisa’s number in the phone’s directory and pressed send, then snagged the fleece throw folded over the back of the chair and tucked it around her.

  “I swear to you, Isaac, if you don’t leave your sister alone—”

  From the other end of the phone came a deep inhalation, and Carly could picture her sister-in-law, eyes closed, mouth thinned, while she did a quick and silent count to ten in at least three of the languages she spoke fluently. The image made Carly smile.

  “Hello?”

  “Aw, poor baby,” Carly teased.

  “As he informs me every day and twice on Thursdays, he’s no longer a baby.”

  “I wasn’t referring to Isaac. I meant you.”

  After a moment, Lisa laughed. “In that case, thank you. I need all the sympathy I can get. How are you?”

  “Okay.” Quickly, before she could latch on to that unenthusiastic answer and run, Carly went on. “How are you and my brother and your adorable children?”

  “Isaac is picking on Eleanor because she just wants to play house while he wants to use her Chef Cathy model kitchen to whip up his latest experiment. He’s convinced he’s on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  “So much for that cowboy outfit I sent him for his birthday.” Carly laughed. “The fun of raising a five-year-old genius. Give them both hugs for me and tell them Aunt Carly misses them.”

  “I will. I’ll do the same with Roger when he comes up for breath. Do you know how hard it is to compete with the latest research in string theory for the attention of a theoretical physicist?”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got your secrets. Those kids weren’t conceived in a test tube.”

  “My secret is Victoria’s Secret, including a few skimpy strings of my own.”

  Memories of her own stash of sexy lingerie flitted through Carly’s mind. She hadn’t needed it to distract Jeff from work—simply breathing had been enough for that—but it had been fun to dress up from the skin out.

  Good thing she had no desire to wear it now, because it probably wouldn’t fit her.

  “How’s the rest of the family?”

  “They’re fine as usual. Your mom’s gone to a conference in China, where she’s presenting a paper. Your father actually mentioned the word retirement the other day, though apparently the concept struck him as so odd he lost his train of thought. Other brothers, wives, and kids are doing great.”

  “Great.” Everything and everyone was just great…except Carly. Oh, she was better than she’d been a month ago and would be even better next month. She was just tired of the months. She wanted to feel better right now.

  “How did your last adventure go?”

  Ah, see? Thinking of last weekend made her feel better. “I climbed into a cave about eighty feet above the ground and have the pictures to prove it.”

  Lisa let out an excited whoop. “Good for you! Geez, you’ve always wanted your feet planted solidly on the ground. Send me pictures so I can enjoy it vicariously.”

  “I will. So that’s the highlight of my week.” Absently Carly rubbed her thumb over a scrape on the chair arm, and without thought unbidden words popped out. “I’m thinking of painting the living room.”

  “No more dull, dreary white walls? Oh, thank God. No one should have to live with white walls. What colors are you thinking?”

  “Oh. Um. I actually haven’t gotten that far. In fact, I don’t even know why I said that because I did think about it, but it’s really too big a job for just one person and, really, everything’s fine the way it is. It’s comfortable and—and familiar.”

  A moment of complete silence followed her abrupt stop, then Lisa’s voice took on what Carly thought of as her mommy tone. “Sweetie, it’ll still be comfortable and familiar. Painting the walls and rearranging the furniture or even replacing some of it aren’t going to erase Jeff from the place. You’ve got years of memories of him there, and those aren’t going to go away or be diminished if you make a few changes. It’ll be good for you. Brighten things up. Make it cozy. Besides, he was going to paint them himself…”

  Together they chimed, “Eventually.”

  After their laughter faded, Carly went on. “I don’t know, Leese. It’s just…so hard.”

  “I know, sweetie.”

  A lot of people Carly had met over the years didn’t want anyone telling them I know what you’re going through, but Lisa did know. She’d been there for Carly every horrible step of the way, holding her, crying with her, feeling, hurting, grieving with her. Maybe she hadn’t experienced the death of her husband and their dreams, but she knew from observation and participation how much it had cost Carly.

  A wail erupted in the background and Lisa’s voice returned to normal. “Uh-oh, junior Einstein just got whacked with a pink plastic skillet.”

  “Eleanor’s got cookware, and she’s not afraid to use it. I’ll let you go.”

  “Promise me this, Carly: When we talk next week, you’ll have done something, right? Even if it’s nothing more than moving the table from one end of the sofa to the other. Okay? I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She could handle moving the end table. Maybe the coffee table, too. Maybe even putting higher-wattage lightbulbs in the lamps. Jeff had preferred near darkness for watching TV, but she liked lots of light.

  And the room wasn’t that big. Painting couldn’t be that monumental a job. Therese and the kids would help her move the monster TV if she asked. Jacob might be only eleven, but he was built like his dad.

  Before she could change her mind, she pushed herself out of the chair, grabbed her purse from the messenger bag and headed out the door. She would have plenty of time for second thoughts when she was facing the endless paint samples and the wide choice of brushes, rollers, tapes, and cleaners.

  She didn’t head for the Walmart just south of downtown, but instead followed her morning route to work. Most of the traffic leaving the fort for the day had already done so, and there was little going in. She drove to the huge parking lot shared by the commissary, the PX, a few restaurants, the Class 6 store—better known to civilians as a liquor store—and a handful of boutique shops. She didn’t do enough cooking to bother with the commissary these days, didn’t eat out by herself, and didn’t drink enough to frequent the Class 6 store, but she used the PX, with its combination of a little bit of everything.

  After showing her military ID at the door, she walked to the back center of the store, past women’s and girls’ clothing on one side, men’s and boys’ on the other. She hardly spared a glance for the display of pricey leather bags or the Bobbi Brown makeup she regularly purchased, but instead made a right at the intersecting aisle and headed for the hardware department.

  And not fifty feet after that turn, she got distracted by sweet fragrances mingling in the air. The perfume counter, where she’d faithfully purchased Jeff’s favorite scent ever since he’d given it to her.

  New paint and perfume? Wasn’t that a lot to change at once? Besides, she might not love the way her cologne smelled, but she was accustomed to it. How strange would it be, sitting in a repainted, redecorated room smelling like a different woman?

  What might she gain from the changes? And how much would she lose?

  Chapter Four

  Fiddling with a package of picture hangers, Dane turned the corner to head off in search of a hammer. In the days he’d been at Fort Murphy, he hadn’t really settled in. He’d unpacked his clothes, but the box of pictures that would make i
t officially home was still taped and shoved into the back of the closet. It was time to pull them out.

  A display of paint samples filled half the next aisle and curved around the end, plenty of colors he could live without ever seeing again, like desert tan, olive drab, and the sterile shades of hospital neutrals. But there were also bright, light colors, the sort that would be okay to look at when he would be staring at the walls for hours on end. When he finally landed somewhere for good—or for three more years, depending whether he stayed in the Army—he just might use every eye-popping color he could find.

  “Well, crap.” The lone customer in front of the paint chips sighed heavily and ran her hands through her hair before apparently realizing she’d spoken aloud and looking around to see if she’d been heard.

  He would have recognized Carly’s voice and silky auburn hair even if she hadn’t turned around. He didn’t know whether he would have stopped to say hello—the tightness in his gut suggested he would have—but when she smiled in greeting, there was no doubt.

  “Hi, Dane.”

  “Sounds like you’re having trouble deciding.”

  She glanced at the samples and sighed again. “Does there have to be so many choices? Seriously, how many shades of one color can there be?”

  He looked at the samples, too, then shrugged. “A whole lot, apparently. But it’s just paint. Pick a color, and if you don’t like it, do it again with another one.”

  Her gaze was steady on him, as if she were measuring him in some way. Her conclusion was summed up with an eyebrow lift and one word: “Men.” Patiently she explained, “I don’t want to do it again and again. I want it to be perfect the first time.”

  Perfect. What was the thing most of the women he knew had with perfection and getting it right on the first try? Life wasn’t perfect. It was incredibly messy and out of everyone’s control and sometimes even when you did something a second time, the results still sucked.

  Which might be why she wanted perfection in something she could control.

  “Okay, so you pick some colors you like, get samples and paint big squares on your wall. Then you look at them for a few days and see which one will be perfect.”

  “Samples, huh?”

  He scanned the paint cans on the opposite side of the aisle, then had to move closer to her to reach the one he wanted. Close enough to smell her perfume, almost close enough to feel the silkiness of her hair. Swallowing hard, he straightened, stepped back and tossed the small can up, then caught it on his palm. “Samples.”

  She took the can, her nails lightly scraping his skin. Heat flared, traveling halfway up his arm before he managed another step back. He’d already known it’d been way too long since he’d had sex—before the hospitals, before the last rotation to Afghanistan—but if such simple contact could affect him like that, he was in worse shape than he’d realized.

  “I don’t suppose you would choose the colors, too.” The fingers that had just skimmed his hand waved across the display that, he suddenly decided, didn’t have nearly enough choices. He could pick a variety in seconds.

  “What makes you think you’d like the colors I choose?”

  “You’re not leaning toward white, khaki, or Army green, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay. Me neither. At least you can make a choice. I seem to be paralyzed by the options.”

  Smiling at her overly dramatic statement, he studied the rows of colors. “What room?”

  “Living room.”

  He took his time moving from the neutrals, though he’d already dismissed them, to the pastels, to the bolder and darker colors, to the neons. In his mind, he was trying to picture his ideal living room, something he’d never given much thought to. Except for the time he was married, he’d lived his adult life in barracks, tents, or plywood structures. A comfortable sofa and a television, the bigger the better, were the only details he could fill in.

  Then he glanced at Carly and instead tried to picture her in the room. Not pastels. She was soft enough all on her own. No really bright colors, either. They’d overwhelm her.

  Leaning past her, catching a whiff of her perfume again, he chose three colors: chocolate brown, dark green, and a deep burnt orange that would look good with cream-colored trim. Hey, he was from Texas. Go Longhorns.

  She took the cards from him, fanning them out. “Wow. When you go for color, you go all the way, don’t you?” She flashed a smile. “Isn’t that you Airborne guys’ motto? ‘All the way!’?”

  “That’s the Eighty-second.”

  “Oh. Did the Hundred Seventy-Third have one?”

  “Officially, no. Unofficially it was ‘Stay alive.’”

  Emotion crossed her face, too quickly for him to identify, and he dropped his gaze away, unfortunately, to her wedding ring. Her husband hadn’t managed to stay alive. Nice of him to remind her of that.

  Suddenly hot from the inside out, he cleared his throat, working up the words for an apology, but before he could speak, she did, sounding as normal and friendly as she had two minutes ago.

  “Okay, I like these. And since it’s a test coat, I don’t need to bother yet with tape and rollers and pans, right?”

  His breath came a little easier as the heat receded. “Just a brush.”

  “All right.” Picking up two more cans of the base paint, she moved down the aisle to the brushes. “Do you have any experience at painting, or do you just give advice? You know, men are always great at giving advice.”

  “When I was a kid, I helped paint my granddad’s barn a couple of times, and every time I got in trouble when I was staying with them, my grandmother sent me out to paint the picket fence around the yard. It got painted more often than any other fence in three counties.”

  “Aw, you had a lot of personality, huh?” Carly laughed, a throaty sound that made him…He watched her, searching for the word he wanted, then it came and brought some friends: Warm. Comfortable. Greedy, because he’d like to hear it again. Would like to be responsible for it again.

  God. Maybe that IED had taken more from him than his leg, like enough brain cells to make him react like a sixteen-year-old boy to a pretty woman.

  “What do you think?”

  He focused on her—rather, on the brush she was holding. “Too big, unless you want to pour the paint into a different container.”

  She switched the brush for a narrower one, then they went to the counter to get the paints mixed. After handing the paint and the sample cards to the clerk, she leaned against the counter, resting her hands on the metal surface. The position kept her ring out of sight, which somehow made him feel just a little easier.

  “Are your grandparents still alive?”

  He shook his head. “My grandmother died first, going in her sleep, and Granddad passed a month later. He didn’t want to live without her.”

  That emotion came again, accompanied by a sad smile. Had there been times when Carly’s husband died that she’d wanted to die, too?

  Probably. She’d loved him and had no children to keep her going. He’d known wives who were convinced they couldn’t live without their husbands. He’d known one who hadn’t left her husband’s casket, even sleeping in the visitation room at the funeral home, until she’d had no choice. He’d known wives who absolutely couldn’t process the fact that their husbands were gone. Weeks after the burials, they were still clinging to the hope that they would call and say, Hey, honey, it was all a terrible mistake. I’m here.

  Dane breathed deeply. Though his leg hurt with both real and phantom pain, though his future was nowhere near bright enough to have to wear shades, he was alive. He hadn’t felt much gratitude for that until recently.

  “You’re quiet for a kid who used to do a great deal of punitive painting.” She tilted her head to the side to study him. “Must be true that it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”

  “Did people have to watch out for you when you were a kid?”

  Another l
augh burst loose. “Good heavens, no. Remember, I was an average child in the midst of geniuses. All I ever wanted to do was play or hang out or read, while my brothers were trying to build nuclear reactors or killer lasers or create a new life-form. I learned to get out of the house or take cover quickly any time I saw smoke or smelled chemicals.”

  “And yet you grew up to be perfectly normal.”

  The mixing machine went silent, and a moment later the clerk set down the three small cans, a daub of color on each lid. Before she could pick them up, Dane did and together they started toward the front of the store.

  “Yeah, I’m the normal one,” she agreed, then sadness crossed her face again. “But they’ve got the wives, the kids, the pets, the white picket fences.” Her sidelong glance cleared. “Not that they don’t deserve it. My brothers are nice people, exceptionally intelligent, but they have the social skills of rocks—or, as my oldest brother, Leo, would say, naturally occurring solid aggregates of minerals and/or mineraloids.”

  This time it was Dane who laughed out loud. “Are you kidding?”

  “Oh, no. They talk that way. Have since they were four or five. You can imagine the dinner conversations I grew up with, being the only one at the table with an IQ below one-eighty.”

  “At least you had brothers. There were times I even would have been happy with a sister.”

  “There were times I would have been happy being an only child. Though that would have made me the focus of my parents’ attention, and the weight of their expectations would have been unbearable. As it was, they had three brilliant sons to pin their hopes on. An average daughter could be overlooked.”

  There wasn’t any resentment in her voice, no hint of longing that things had been different. How old was she when she’d realized that her parents couldn’t be like other parents and that was all right?

  As they joined the shortest line at the checkout, she set the brush down, shoved the paint samples into her purse and removed her checkbook. “I’m sorry. That sounds like I had a bad childhood, and I didn’t. My family’s eccentric and I love them. I’m average, and they love me, too. We’re just different.”