A Hero to Come Home To (19 page)

“I’m proud of you, sweetie.” Lisa’s voice took on a wheedling tone that sounded much like her kids when they wanted something. “So who helped?”

“Helped?”

“Last week you said it was too big a job for one person. Who helped?”

“Oh, um, well, Therese and her stepson came over to help move the furniture, and, um, another friend helped with the moving and the painting.”

“Male friend or female?”

“What does that matter?” Carly’s voice cracked, and she cradled the phone against her shoulder while she wrapped both hands around the coffee mug to warm her suddenly chilled fingers.

Silence, then…“Carly Marie Lowry, do you have a boyfriend?” Lisa whispered excitedly.

Was she ready to tell? The margarita club members all knew something was going on, but that was different. They were everyday friends. Lisa, on the other hand, was family, and if she told her family about Dane, then sooner rather than later she’d have to tell Mia, and that was going to be so hard.

But Lisa was a friend, too, and she would keep any secret Carly entrusted with her.

“It’s kind of early to say,” she hedged. She didn’t want to jinx anything.

“Have you seen him more than once?”

“Yes.”

“Told him about Jeff?”

“Yes.”

“Have you participated in a physical manifestation of your feelings?”

Carly smiled in spite of the anxiety inside her. “You’re going to have to use bigger words than those if you don’t want Isaac to understand what you’re saying.”

“He might understand the words but not the meaning. So…any slumber parties without the slumber?”

“No.” Honesty—and the giddy desire to share her newest experience—pressed Carly on. “But he kissed me last night. After I kissed him, granted, but still—”

Another shriek pierced her ear. “Was it wonderful?”

Carly gazed around the room and realized that no matter what happened, now it would always remind her of both Jeff and Dane. Her first love…and maybe her next.

Maybe her last.

“It was,” she agreed softly.

“Sweetie, I’m so glad.” That was one of the great things about Lisa: Her emotion came through so clearly in her voice. She really was happy for Carly, and she didn’t diminish her own pleasure or Carly’s by offering warnings.

Lord knows, Carly could provide herself with more warnings than a woman needed.

“One thing, though, Leese. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

“Not a word. One more thing from you: What’s his name?”

“Dane.”

“Dane. I like that.”

“Staff Sergeant Dane Clark.”

In the moment of silence before Lisa responded, Carly could hear her sister-in-law’s reservation:
Oh no, another soldier who could get sent into combat.
But quickly Lisa said, “Sounds handsome and strong. I hope I get to meet him someday.”

“I hope so, too,” Carly murmured, and she really meant it. She hoped it lasted long enough. She hoped it wasn’t one-sided. She just hoped.

“Leese? You don’t think…” She breathed deeply. “Sometimes when I think of me with any other man but Jeff, it seems impossible. Disloyal.”

“Oh, sweetie, no one would ever consider you disloyal. We know how much you loved Jeff, how much you still love him. We’re so sorry he died and left you alone. But we also know he was the last person on earth who would want you to stay alone, grieving him forever. Carly, you have the capacity to love two men in your lifetime without diminishing either one.”

Silence settled for a moment. The only sounds on the phone besides Carly’s and Lisa’s soft breathing were Isaac and Eleanor arguing over who could eat the most. It was such a normal scene for Lisa, and one Carly had thought she’d never get to experience herself.

She could never have Jeff’s babies.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have someone else’s babies. Maybe Dane’s.

“You’re a good friend, Lisa.”

Lisa’s laugh was warm. “I know. Your brother and family got a great deal when they got me.”

“We certainly did. Make sure Roger never forgets that.”

“One of the things I live for. I’ll let you go, Carly. I’ve got to clean up this disaster that passes for a kitchen and get these kids over to their grandparents’ house before I hit the grocery store. Keep me filled in on all the juicy details with Dane.”

“You bet.” Fingers crossed that there would be more juicy details. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, sweetie.”

Slowly Carly set the phone down.
“
Love you more”
had always been Jeff’s response to her words. Sometimes they’d argued like kids.
“
I love you more than anything in the world.”

“I love you more than that.”

“There
is
no more than that.”

Her sigh echoed in the room. “I’ll always love you, Jeff.”

But she prayed Lisa was right, that it was all right for her to love again.

D
alton roused long enough to roll onto his side and was about to drift off again when the light outside registered. Sitting bolt upright in bed, he checked the clock, then swore. He hadn’t slept until ten since he was a kid, if even then. Life on a ranch didn’t allow for lazing around in bed.

He found a clean, ragged pair of jeans in the closet and tugged them on before shoving his feet into socks and boots, then dragging on a work shirt and buttoning it on his way into the bathroom.

Five minutes later, he was taking the stairs two at a time, smelling coffee, bacon, and—he sniffed deeper—Mom’s fresh bread. She’d filled the freezer with loaves of it before she and Dad had left again Tuesday morning.

He expected to see Noah sprawled at the table with a heaping plate of food in front of him, but the kitchen was empty. There was a plate on the back of the stove, though, covered with foil, and another on the counter. Leaning against the coffeemaker was a piece of notepaper, covered in Noah’s scrawl.

Take the day off. I’ve got things covered here.

His first impulse was to crumple the note, gulp down some food, and head out to the barn. But as he filled a travel mug with hot coffee, he tried to remember the last time he’d taken a day off.

Not even Sandra’s funeral had been a true day off. He’d fed the stock that morning before the service and had been back out there afterward, leaving his parents to deal with hers. Noah had come along uninvited, helping with the chores and saying nothing.

There hadn’t been anything worth saying.

A day off. Twelve hours or so with nothing to do except what he wanted. The problem was, what did he want to do?

He mulled that question as he ate the still-warm eggs and bacon between two thick slices of Mom’s bread. All in all, not a bad breakfast, especially considering Noah fixed it. His younger brother didn’t have many more skills in the kitchen than Dalton did, which was why they lived on sandwiches most of the time.

The problem with an unexpected and unasked-for day off was that there was nothing he wanted to do, no place he wanted to go. Maybe Tulsa. He wouldn’t run into anyone he knew there, that was for sure. He could see a movie, eat at a restaurant, maybe buy some new clothes. He hadn’t done any of that since Sandra deployed.

It was a little early, but he could buy some flowers and go to the cemetery.

Noah would make no secret of the fact that anyone else in the world could find something better to do on his one day off, but since he didn’t get a vote on it, it didn’t matter.

Grabbing a pen, he added a note to Noah’s—
Back later
—then got his keys from the hook next to the door and headed out to his truck.

The miles into town passed without Dalton really noticing. Before Sandra, he’d found two dozen things to appreciate on the four miles of dirt road and another two dozen reasons to be grateful for where he lived once he’d turned onto the paved road.

Before Dillon had taken off, both those numbers would have been doubled.

Pansy’s Posies was the first flower shop heading into Tallgrass from the north, the primary reason Dalton used it. The owner was a woman about his mother’s age and twice as round, with hair the red of a Hereford only a dozen times more intense. She’d come to Tallgrass with her husband when the Army assigned him there thirty years ago, and they’d chosen to stay when he retired. And she was usually a big talker. He’d experienced that.

All she knew about him was that he bought flowers every three or four weeks and paid cash. She teased him about his girl, and he found it easier to let her believe that than tell her the flowers withered on a grave.

There was one other customer inside the shop when he went in, a slender woman whose red hair was as natural as Pansy’s wasn’t. Waiting at the counter, she gave him a polite smile. He intended to return it but honestly couldn’t say whether his mouth had cooperated or not.

He looked around at arrangements to welcome babies, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, to say thanks or sorry for a loss, winding up at the refrigerators that held fresh flowers in buckets of water along with premade bouquets.

“Pansy will be out in a minute,” the redhead said.

“Okay.” He slid the cooler door open and chose a vase with flowers the shade of a child’s sun. Sandra had liked yellow. Practically half the clothes in her closet had been that color, a bright contrast to the camouflage, green and khaki uniforms in the other half. Had she found much of the color to cheer her in the drab of the desert?

“Those are beautiful,” the redhead said. Her gaze flickered to his left hand. “For your wife?”

“Yeah.”

Thankfully Pansy chose that moment to return from the workroom, an arrangement of deep red flowers in her arms. “Morning, young man,” she greeted Dalton, then showed the bouquet to the customer. “You want me to deliver this?”

The redhead delicately touched one flower, her hand pale against so much color. “I think I’ll take them myself this time, Pansy.” She settled up, picked up the flowers and gave him another polite nod on her way out.

Pansy chatted as she rang up the yellow flowers, but few of the words registered with him. “Lovely weather…busy around here with Easter coming…daisies…carnations…lucky woman.”

If Sandra had been truly lucky, she would have lived to see her twenty-eighth birthday.

He said as little as he could without being rude, paid thirty dollars and carried the heavy-duty plastic vase to the truck, along with a cardboard box to hold it upright in the seat.

Fort Murphy National Cemetery was on the east side of Tallgrass, its main entrance half a mile past the Fort Murphy gate. He tried not to look at the statues, the flags, the neat rows of marble headstones as he drove to the section where Sandra’s marker stood.

He’d visited her grave at all hours of the day and didn’t think he’d ever seen the place empty. Today was no exception. Probably half a dozen vehicles were parked alongside the roads, including one right where he always parked. Its driver was bent over at a gravesite, placing deep red flowers in the grass, a mix of straw yellow and spring green. The sunlight danced on her hair when she straightened and swiped her cheek.

His muscles tight, he collected his own flowers and cut as wide a path around her as he could without going into the next section.

Though as a kid he’d accompanied his mother to the area cemeteries on Memorial Day, when he couldn’t wriggle out of it, he’d never seen much sense in visiting graves. If you couldn’t take time for a person when they were alive, what did it matter when they were dead?

That was before he’d buried anyone really important to him.

He didn’t stay long. She was dead, after all, and he didn’t talk to the dead…or to most living people these days. He put the flowers down, stared at the name, rank, and dates inscribed in the marble, said his thousandth mental good-bye, then took a deep breath and headed back to his truck.

He was almost there, head ducked, hands shoved in his pockets, when a shadow shifted across the ground in front of him. It was the redhead, leaning against her car, watching him.

“Hi again,” she said.

It was too late to avoid her and too rude to ignore her. Whatever faults he had, rudeness wasn’t usually one of them. His mother had taught her boys to be polite when they could and respectful when they should.

If a cemetery didn’t require respect, what did?

“Was Sandra your wife?”

Frowning, he looked over his shoulder and could barely make out the writing on the stone, and then only because he knew what it said. The grave bearing the red flowers was nearer so he could read the name easily: Aaron Lawrence.

“She was,” he said at last, then nodded toward the red flowers. “Your husband?”

“Yeah. He died two and a half years ago. What about Sandra?” She raised one hand to brush her hair back. “I’ve got great vision, but the dates are smaller.”

It was strange, someone talking openly about Sandra’s death. His family tiptoed around it, probably because he’d taught them to do so by his responses. “Nearly four years. She died in Afghanistan.”

“Aaron, too.” She sighed, turning to gaze across the cemetery. “So many people…”

Dalton looked, too, at the nearby sections with their obviously newer stones. Rows of them, and this was just one cemetery. Just one very small group of the service members who had died in the most recent conflicts.

Before the full impact of that could sink in, the redhead moved again, coming closer, extending her hand. “I’m Jessy.”

He looked at her hand as warily as if it were a copperhead. He hadn’t really talked to any woman besides his mom since Sandra’s death—hadn’t touched any woman besides his mom once he’d tolerated all the hugs of condolence at the funeral or here at the graveside.

“Dalton,” he said, finally accepting her hand. Her fingers were soft, her nails a ridiculous shade of purple, not a pale Easter-y shade but loud, bright.

“Nice meeting you, Dalton.” She drew her hand back, then suddenly seemed as if she didn’t know what to do with it. Sliding it into her pocket, she took a few steps backward before turning to circle her car. There, she looked back at him. “Hey, I’m headed over to Aaron’s favorite bar to get a burger and drink a beer in his honor. I don’t suppose…I wonder…Would you like to join me?”

A burger and a beer; Sandra’s favorite combination. He could get it at any of a number of restaurants between Tallgrass and Tulsa, eat it by himself, and wish he’d stayed home. At least around here, he wouldn’t be far from home when he needed it.

“Yeah. Sure. Where?”

She perked up, her green eyes flashing with a smile. “Bubba’s on Main Street. You know it?”

“Yeah.” He and Dillon had been thrown out of it often enough back after high school. The burgers and fries were the only things on the menu, and they were greasy. The beer was cold, the country music loud, and the clientele mostly oilfield workers or cowboys. Even though she wore jeans and boots, he wouldn’t have figured her for a Bubba’s fan. She looked too classy for cowboys and beer-crying music.

“Then I’ll meet you there.”

He climbed into his truck and followed her to the cemetery exit. There she caught a break in traffic a couple minutes before him. It would be easy for him to turn off anywhere along the street and head on to Tulsa or back home. It wouldn’t be a disappointment to Jessy. Within five minutes of her walking into the bar, Bubba’s regulars would be hitting on her. She wouldn’t be lonely.

But he didn’t turn off the street and head to Tulsa or back home. He kept driving west, through downtown, past the fringe of businesses as Main Street turned into a highway. More than a mile outside the town limits, he turned into Bubba’s parking lot. The bar was a log building, with a porch that ran the length of the front. Steps climbed both ends and in the middle, and a split-log rail did its best to keep patrons from pitching headfirst into the gravel lot. Even in midday, neon beer signs glowed in the windows.

And the redhead waited at the top of the stairs. For him.

Maybe for a little while, he wouldn’t be lonely, either.

“You heading anywhere special?”

Dane stopped at the sound of Justin’s voice and turned to watch him swing out his front door on his crutches as naturally as if he’d been born with them. Carly was expecting him to pick her up in fifteen minutes, but she wouldn’t mind if he was late, especially if Justin was the reason. “You need to go anywhere special?”

“Nah, not really. I was just thinking about maybe catching a ride downtown—go to the movie or something. It’s one of those days, you know?”

Dane knew those days: When the pills weren’t enough to knock down the pain, or when you would give anything you owned just to be like you were before, or when you wondered if you were working your butt off for nothing, if you were ever going to get better. Times that on occasion left you so tired, so down, that you started wondering if you wouldn’t have been better off dead.

According to the shrinks, most guys in the program went through it sooner or later. The cadre was always watching for signs of depression, the inability to cope or anything remotely suicidal. Those guys could go downhill really fast—
not them, us
—from fumbling along, trying to find their way, to dead in no time.

In the early weeks after being wounded, Dane had caught himself sliding on that slope a few times.

“Forget the movie,” he suggested. “Carly and I are going to Tulsa to do some shopping and have dinner. Come with us.”

Justin’s look was skeptical. “Man, you’ve been out of the dating world too long. You can’t invite another guy to tag along on a date unless you’re looking to dump her on him or you’re just weird. And I know you ain’t looking to dump Carly.”

“I’m not weird, either. At least, not in that way. She’s just looking for a new rug and a few lamps or paintings or something. It’s a shopping trip with dinner thrown in. She wouldn’t mind at all.”

Justin came a few steps closer, leaning on his crutches. There were lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth. He was always so positive that sometimes Dane wanted to punch him, but now he just looked tired. “You ever tell her you’re missing one leg?”

“Not yet. And if you do, I’ll beat you with your crutches.”

Justin scoffed and slowly started toward the parking lot. “You’ve got to get ’em away from me first. Even in this shape, I bet my sorry ass can outrun yours.”

It wasn’t a bet Dane was willing to take.

When they got to his truck, Justin passed the passenger door for the rear door. “What? Am I your chauffeur now?” Dane popped off as he got into the driver’s seat.

“Carly should sit up front, and it’s easier to get in once than twice.” Justin carefully eased himself onto the running board, then into the backseat, stowing his crutches across the rest of the seat.

This was good, having Justin along. It would ease any awkwardness from the way they’d said good-bye the night before. Dane hadn’t expected her to kiss him, and he really hadn’t expected to kiss her back. It was normal, considering how much time they’d spent together, but not given who they were: Carly who loved perfection and him, hiding his imperfection.