Page 7 of A Hero Comes Home

“They miss you.”

The kids might. He wasn’t so sure about his wife. They’d exchanged words before his last deployment. Harsh words. As for the kids, three years was a long time in kid land. They probably didn’t even remember him.

Jake had been sent recent pictures of his kids . . . and of Sally. The boys, Matthew, Mark, and Luke—yeah, he’d been on a Bible kick back then, and hoping for a John, eventually—were eight, seven, and five now. Luke had been only two the last time he’d seen him. He saw no resemblance to himself in the gremlins, except for their blue eyes . . . and maybe their mischievous grins.

The boys, even the littlest mite, had attached themselves to Jake like leeches—adorable leeches—whenever he’d been home on leave. And wailed like banshees every time he’d had to leave.

As for Sally, her long hair, a luxuriant light brown with golden sun highlights that he’d loved to wrap around his hands when—Not going down that road!—had been chopped off to an almost boyish style. The flighty girl’s parents had been artsy-fartsy Broadway set designers and had raised their only child with only one aspiration, to sing on the Great White Way someday. Until she’d met him, that was. Sal did have a voice like an angel . . . a powerful alto for such a petite woman, like that singer Adele.

How had the girl who couldn’t boil water or balance a checkbook managed to open and operate a successful bakery? And why hadn’t she gone back to Manhattan and her parents and a possible singing career when he’d “died”?

In answer to Izzie’s statement, though, about his family missing him, he replied simply, “They’ll get over it.”

“But why? I just don’t understand why you’d want them to.”

“I’ve changed.”

“We all change. Hell, if you must know, you’re probably better looking with that broken nose.”

“I’m not talking physical changes. Inside”—he pounded his own chest—“inside I’m like an unpinned grenade. The least jarring and I might explode. And don’t you dare tell that to my doctors or they won’t ever release me.”

“You do know you have a serious case of PTSD, don’t you?”

“No shit!”

“PTSD isn’t terminal, my friend.”

“Really, Dr. Bernstein? Now you gonna give me the talk? Boot Camp 101. ‘The Perils of Warfare.’ Blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard that lecture before. Next you’ll be telling me about STDs and the need for condoms, especially in foreign countries, complete with gory gonorrhea pictures. Did you bring pictures?”

Izzie sighed. “So, what . . . ? You gonna go off and live in the woods by yourself, or something?”

“Something like that. Maybe I’ll be like one of those new frontier Alaska guys. Alone in the wild. Just me and the bears and wolves.”

“You hate the cold. You’re an Outer Banks boy to the bone. A sun lover.”

“Well, maybe some warmer frontier,” he conceded. “A jungle, maybe. Aren’t there still frontiers in the Amazon?”

“Sorry, bud, but you gotta go back to Bell Cove. At least for a while. They won’t release you if you don’t agree to that.” A slow smile twitched at Izzie’s lips as he seemed to think of something. “Actually, you’ll fit right in back home with that eye patch.” Izzie went on to fill him in on the latest antics in their crazy-ass hometown, this time involving some shipwreck discovery which was being celebrated with a pirate theme during the Labor Day Lollypalooza, whatever the hell that was. They were even trying to get Johnny Depp to come, dressed in a Captain Jack Sparrow costume.

“Figures,” Jake said. “I hope they don’t expect me to play the part.” Another reason for him not to go home.

Which brought them to the big elephant in the room.

“Don’t you want to know about Sally?” Izzie asked.

Jake remained silent, working hard not to show any emotion. It wasn’t as hard as you would think, being as dead inside as he was.

“My parents moved to Seattle to be near my sister Leah. So, not much reason to return to Bell Cove.” Izzie sighed deeply and said, “I do talk to Sally occasionally on the phone, but that’s kind of awkward, y’know what I mean.”

“Because I was dead?”

“Well, yeah. Anyhow, I haven’t seen her in three years, ever since they declared you dead and a memorial service was held, but . . .”

Izzie’s nervousness raised some alarm bells in Jake’s aching brain. He needed a Vicodin, or five, which he wouldn’t take. The painkillers dulled his senses too much. “What?” he demanded.

“She just started dating.”

Jake felt like he was kicked in the guts, even though three years was a long time for a wife to stay loyal to a husband she thought was dead. He shouldn’t care. He didn’t care. Still, he asked, “How do you know?”