21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (70 page)

“You’ve managed to completely confuse me, and now I feel bad for wanting to say no. How did you do that?’

“A mother’s secret gift. You’ll master it in a few years with your little one. Trust me. As for feeling bad—don’t. Joe should have to work some, but I like that you aren’t intimidated by me. Yes, I do.” Meredith smiled. “And you feel better.”

Oddly enough, she did. She took another bite. “You’re sneaky,” she said after swallowing.

“Thank you, dear.”

“I’m sorry about my mom.” Joe couldn’t figure out how to make it right. The last thing he’d expected when he called to ask for her advice was a drop in from both his parents.
No, I should have expected the visit, but Mom taking over and wanting the chat
?

Melody sat across from him, a hint of amusement on her face, the expression so at odds with the few he’d glimpsed, he wasn’t sure what to say. “You don’t have to apologize for your mother. She’s very sweet—in a velvet tank kind of way.” The corner of her mouth twitched and Joe laughed.

“I think that’s the best description for her I’ve ever heard.” He toasted her with his beer bottle and took a drink. The dinner was simple, but tasty. Burgers and fries from a local restaurant along with a cherry cola for her and a beer for him. They sat in his apartment, with the front door wide open to the cool breeze. Seventy degrees in October…didn’t Texas know how to have an autumn?

“I like her and it’s okay.” She raised her Styrofoam cup and touched it to his beer bottle.

“It’s a little weird,” he teased. But having his parents right next door while he considered all the ways he might seduce his dinner date if she didn’t have emotional hang ups, a lifesaving surgery for her daughter, and his wheelchair in his way, definitely qualified for weird.

Her gaze slid to the right and she laughed. “Yes, it is a little weird. I feel like I should walk over and check on her.”

“You can you know. I don’t mind.” He missed the little bit, too, but he was confident his mother could handle her and they were right there.

“I know and you’re amazing that you don’t mind my distraction—”

“Hey, she’s your baby. That’s not a distraction, it’s a higher calling. Don’t ever apologize for thinking about her.” It came out crisper than he meant it and he regretted the tone. “Sorry, I shouldn’t snap.”

Her expression didn’t waver. “You didn’t snap. You were very authoritative.”

“That’s called snapping.” He grimaced. “And now I’m correcting you.”

She propped her chin in her hand and pulled a foot up onto the chair. She looked sixteen with her blonde hair pulled back from her face. He loved the relaxed smile on her face.

“You’re funny and you don’t have to handle me with kid gloves. I’m not going to break.”

“Who said—”
My mother
. He sighed. “Melody….”

She shook her head. “No. It’s okay. I think I needed to hear what your mom had to say, and I think I have enough courage in me from sleep, food, and velvet tanks to say what I need to say now.”

“Okay.” He tossed the napkin onto the table and tried to sit back in his chair. He could give her space and respect her wishes.

“We just met.” She licked her lips and the quick brush of her tongue distracted the hell out of him. “Realistically, we’re barely acquaintances. You know almost nothing about me and I know almost nothing about you—except maybe some of the important stuff. But I’m messed up, Joe. I made some mistakes, and I’ve been hiding behind a lot of lies for a long time.”

He didn’t interrupt or say anything. Each word seemed to be a struggle to push out.

“I met Tuck in high school. We were crazy about each other—or maybe I was plain crazy about him. He wanted to join the Marines and I wanted to go to college. When he asked me to marry him, it seemed really natural, you know.

“My parents—they were furious. They wanted me to wait at least until I finished school, but I said four years of college can’t change my mind. And I knew he had basic and then training and might be deployed, so us getting married didn’t mean I couldn’t go to school. It wasn’t really any different.” Mouth twisting, she laughed a humorless sound. “It’s amazing the things you tell yourself when you think you know everything.”

Joe allowed a slow nod. She wasn’t the first girl to regret a speedy marriage or a too-young one.

“And it seemed great, you know? We got married the summer after graduation, he left for basic in July, and I didn’t see him again until almost November. I went to college locally, a good school. I could have gone somewhere else, but I like Philadelphia and wanted to be close to our families. But I had tests the day he came home and I wasn’t there to greet him and I’d been carrying a pretty heavy load in classes—so I was really tired and I forgot to throw a party. It seems so stupid and trivial now, but he was really disappointed and I felt bad. He only had the week and I had so many projects due. He went back to base right after the holiday was over and suggested that I move there in January and change schools.” She stirred a french fry in the ketchup on her plate. “We talked all the time and he said how much he missed me and how tough it was and how much he enjoyed it. He promised we could get a little apartment near the base and be together. He still had his work and I could still go to school. So in January, as soon as the semester was over, I moved.”

“I can make a lot of excuses and say I was young, but we weren’t there two months when his orders came down for his assignment. He didn’t tell me that the base we were at wasn’t his final destination, and when I said I’d need to stay to finish at this new school, he said I couldn’t because we were in base housing and they wouldn’t cover it. So I had to withdraw and I can tell you what that did for my credits. It was too late in the semester to start again so I thought I’d wait for summer. Then he was deployed, and I was living in North Carolina and didn’t know anybody.”

Marrying a Marine could be hard on the spouse. “Didn’t any of the other wives or spouses reach out to you?”

“Yeah, but I was pretty focused at first and didn’t really seem to fit in. Tuck was always worried about what impression I gave and used to tell me it was better to let people think I was a little slow, rather than open my mouth and prove it.”

Joe’s fingers curled.
Dick
.

“His first deployment was a few weeks, well—like twelve—for training and then he was back. I was in the middle of trying to get accepted back at school. He insisted that I put it off again because he needed me. He was only home for three weeks then went on his first deployment to Afghanistan. Nine months, four days, and twenty-one hours. I managed another semester, but my grades struggled. It was weird, Tuck’s emails were short and grew terser the longer he was there and when he came home….” She blew out a breath. “When he came home, I made the mistake of doing homework instead of fixing dinner one night, and he threw my books in the trash. When I tried to get them out, he yelled at me. He’d said hard things before—but not like that.”

She went silent for a long time.

“He grew abusive.” Not that he didn’t sound abusive before, but something in the way she held herself told him that was the first time her husband had hit her. “A hand grab here—bruises on my arm—or a broken plate and I got cut—nothing really mean, but when he came home from his second deployment, he was a stranger.” Her voice remained remarkably strong despite the quaver he could hear beneath the words. “I was still in school and I asked teachers to help me advance, finishing the semester early when he let me know he was coming home, because I didn’t dare have any homework in the house. I thought it would be better if he didn’t think he was competing for my attention.”

“But it wasn’t. Sweetheart, why didn’t you talk to his commanding officer? Or someone on the base? We know some men come home changed—and they need help.”

“I couldn’t do that to him.” Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “The first time he hit me, he didn’t mean it. I know he didn’t. He actually seemed stunned. I chipped my tooth and my nose was bleeding. He apologized and promised it would be better and it was, for a long time. But his nightmares never went away. I had to slip out of bed after he was out and sleep on the floor because he-he attacked once. And he didn’t mean it….”

He wouldn’t argue with her, not when she shook her head so hard.

“But when they wanted him to deploy again, I told him he should stay and see about getting help and….”

Joe sighed. He’d seen cases of it—too many. Combat was hard on everyone in the family, harder still when the Marine struggled with it.

“That time, deployment lasted eighteen months and I finished my degree. I got a job and was ready for when he came home, ready to take it on and fix it, but nothing got through to him. He only understood sex, food, and when he got upset he would just lash out. He always promised to get help, and sometimes we could go a whole week and then it would start over again.” She sat up, slid her foot back to the floor, and rubbed her face. “God, I sound like some
Lifetime
movie.”

“No, you sound like a strong woman determined to stay with the man she loved even when he didn’t treat her well.” Understanding that combat and stress damaged the man didn’t make him want to beat him any less for taking it out on his wife.

“His unit was reassigned, and he didn’t get a promotion he thought he was due, and when his contract came up for renewal, he signed it and volunteered to go back. The night he told me was the same night I found out I was pregnant. He was shipping out in two days—” She bit her lower lip and dropped her attention to the plate. “And for the first time I was a coward, I didn’t tell him. I made sure the meal was perfect, I didn’t argue or give him lip, I took his insults and I let him—we had sex—and I kissed him goodbye when he left. I was glad that he was deployed because it meant he wouldn’t hit me while I was pregnant. I hoped the baby would be there by the time he came back and….”

“And everything would be different.” Joe rubbed a finger to the side of his nose. The little act kept him from clenching his hands into fists—fists that would only scare her.

“Yes. I told him in an email about the baby and he was really excited. He got a chance to Skype me and for a few minutes it was like talking to my Tuck again. He was so full of plans—”

Joe knew what was coming, he’d gotten the report.

“And then he died. An IED and we didn’t have a body to bury.” She exhaled and lifted her gaze, staring at him as though she stared into the eyes of a firing squad. “And I was relieved.”

He sat forward and held his hand out to her, resting it on the table and waited. She looked down at his outstretched fingers and back up with far more trepidation than he thought he could stand before resting her fingers on his. “It’s okay.”

“But it’s not—he died. The man I was supposed to love, the man I defied my parents for, I gave up all these things for—he died. The father of my baby, a Marine, serving his country and I was relieved. Now I’m here and taking the charity of all these fine men and women because Tuck was a Marine, and I’m a liar and a fraud and a….”

“A survivor.” Joe held her hand gently. “You’re a survivor, Melody. You didn’t wish him dead, and you sure as hell didn’t kill him. You suffered and you are allowed to feel relief at the end of your suffering.”

“But he’s dead….”

“He died doing his job. Right, wrong, or indifferent, he died leading the life he chose to lead. We all know what can happen to us over there, we all know that we may come back in pieces, if it all. You married your high school sweetheart and lived in hell to stay with him. You didn’t leave him, didn’t walk away, didn’t report him or ask for help even when you had every right to it. Do not be upset with yourself for being relieved. Hell, I’m relieved for you.”
Because I don’t have to kill the son of a bitch
. He could rationalize that getting the man help would have been sufficient, but a man didn’t beat his wife.

Period
.

“I told you, I’m a mess.”

“Okay.” Joe brushed his thumb along the side of her hand. Her skin was soft. “Well, as you can so readily see, I’m one-hundred percent tip top perfect.”

“Well….” Her weepy smile turned up. “You kind of are.”

Masculine pride bloomed in his chest, but he kept his focus on the prize. “We’re all damaged, sweetheart. Some scars you can’t see. I like you. I can live with messy.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

And there was the kick in the gut. He half-expected it. “Well, like you said, we just met. And we have a lotta time to work on it.”

Her laugh was a breath of fresh air in the dark conversation. “You’re a bit of a velvet tank, too.”

“I learned from the best. But I tell you what, I know someone I want you to meet, and I want you to seriously consider talking to him—about everything. Libby. Tuck. You. Hell, you can talk to him about me. We can put anything back together. We only have to want to.” He’d heard that enough over the last few weeks, maybe he finally could believe it.

She squeezed his hand and the sensation went all the way to his heart. “After her surgery.”

“Okay.” He would give her all the time she needed.

Melody couldn’t have been more prepared for Monday morning. She slept hours at a stretch. Meredith and Joe took turns sitting with her and Libby, making sure she could shower, eat meals, and watch more football—although the night before, Meredith insisted on a movie and Melody had fallen asleep on Joe’s arm watching an old black and white film noir. The Marine captain and his parents took her and her daughter under their wings and as profoundly grateful as she was, she didn’t want to get used to it.

What happened when Joe got better? Or if she couldn’t be more than friends? Her attraction for the man overwhelmed her, and she constantly had to remind herself he was still in recovery and she should be worried about her daughter, not thinking about what his lips would feel like.