Page 97 of A Hero Comes Home

“Something’s been happening with his eye,” Izzie blurted out.

“Dammit, Izzie! Stop beating around the bush.”

“There have been changes lately. Little things that might be promising.”

She threw her hands in the air. “And he couldn’t share that good news with me?”

“It might not pan out.”

She breathed in and out for patience. “Where did he go? Home?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“I’ll go talk to him.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Actually, it might be.”

She cocked her head in question. Sometimes a ball of dough needed a good punch to get it to work.

“The red mist might have taken over, which makes him unpredictable.”

“The red mist?” More secrets that I don’t know about?

“Uh-oh! He didn’t tell you about the red mist?”

She shook her head.

“It’s a kind of rage he goes into where he sees a red mist behind his eyelids.”

“What triggers it?”

“Who knows? Stress. Extreme anger. The last one I know about occurred when he learned that you and the public were going to be told about his rescue. I mean, after three months in that hospital with him being in control of when or if the big reveal would happen, suddenly that decision was taken out of his hands.”

“Wait a minute. Three months?” Sally asked. “Are you saying that Jacob was rescued three months before I was told?”

“What? Yeah. You didn’t know that?”

“Actually, I did know, but it didn’t sink in until now. The question is why.”

“Do you really think that’s important in light of today’s events?” Izzie was clearly squirming now.

But she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “I do. It’s all part of a pattern, in my opinion.”

“How so?”

“I know Jacob. If he’d wanted to tell me that he was alive from the get-go, he would have found a way to do it, the Army or hospital rules or Uncle Sam be damned. So, it had to be his decision to keep me in the dark. The ass! But worse than that, what I’m beginning to suspect, is that Jacob never wanted to come home at all.”

The blush that seeped into Izzie’s cheeks told her all.

For a moment, her heart felt like it was in a vise. She could barely breathe. “So, he was planning to leave from the moment he came back.”

“Maybe,” Izzie conceded. “But give him a break, Sally. He’s been through hell, worse than anything you and I can imagine. God only knows what’s going through that brain of his. Bottom line, he loves you and the boys. That’s the most important thing.”

Sally tried to assess the situation, to make some sense of it. Jake had found out that she knew he was hiding the story of his three missing years and that she’d been researching the guy who presumably handed him over to the US government and that she’d discussed her suspicions with his best friend. Then, the major had instilled a fear in him that the terrorist might be a threat to him and his family. Top that off with his unwarranted embarrassment, rather than pride, in the musical performance she and his sons had put on for him.