A Hero to Come Home To (22 page)

“Yeah. Lucky me. Lucky
us
.”

Dane had met First Sergeant Chen eight years ago, when they were both stationed in Korea. They’d been friendly enough, though not the kind of buddies who hung out together. They’d been through a lot since then. Chen had gotten married, Dane divorced. Chen had three little girls no more than a year apart in age, their photos decorating the desk. Dane wasn’t sure kids were in his future. They’d both gone to Iraq twice.

Chen had lost his left arm from the elbow down and his left foot on his first tour in Afghanistan, and Dane had lost his leg on his second tour.

Chen was coping. Dane wasn’t.

“There’s a woman.” Dane blinked. He’d intended to say no, nothing pulling him either way, but the words had come out on their own.

“Isn’t there always.”

“She doesn’t know.”

“About your leg?” Chen waited for him to nod. “Yeah, I’ve noticed you tend to avoid any unnecessary display of the prosthesis.”

“I can’t pretend it’s not there if I have to look at it all the time.” Though at the moment, even with his pants leg and boot covering it, he couldn’t forget it for a second. “She’s got this thing about perfection.”

Chen’s chair squeaked as he rocked back, hands folded across his stomach. His left hand was so similar in skin tone and he was so comfortable with it that people who didn’t know it was a prosthetic wouldn’t notice the difference. “Is
she
perfect?”

Wishing he hadn’t started this conversation, Dane managed a weak grin. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Is she pretty? Smart? Nice?” After Dane muttered “yeah” to each question, Chen grinned again. “Then what’s she doing with you?”

Getting over Jeff? Taking a step back to some semblance of a normal life? Maybe falling for him, too?

“There comes a point where she’s got to know.
Seriously.
I mean, you can’t”—he shrugged—“without her finding out. If she’s smart and nice, it’s not going to matter. If it does make a difference, better to find out before it’s too late, right?”

That all sounded good and logical. But…“How can I ask her to accept something I haven’t gotten used to yet?”

“I’ll tell you something my wife told me back at Walter Reed, Staff Sergeant. There’s only two ways to look at the situation you’re in. You can be grateful for what you’ve still got and make the most out of life, or you can mourn what you’ve lost and miss out on the rest of your life.

“I know it was hard losing your foot. I know it was even harder when they had to take you back and do the second amputation, and I can only imagine how tough it was when they did the third one, because they’re not just cutting off tissue and bone then, they’re cutting off hard work and hope. But you’re
alive
. You can still do just about anything you want. You just have to make adjustments, and the mental adjustment is the hardest one of all. But do you want to guess how many people buried in those cemeteries all across the country would have loved to trade places with you?”

“Yeah,” Dane murmured. “One in particular.” At the first sergeant’s look, he went on. “Carly’s a member of this group in town. They call themselves the Tuesday Night Margarita Club.”

Recognition flashed across Chen’s face. “The widows’ club. How long has it been for her?”

“A couple years. A helicopter crash in Afghanistan.”

“Any kids?”

“No.”

“You’ve got to tell her at some point, Staff Sergeant, even if you don’t know where things are going. Like I said, better to find out if it matters before it’s too late.”

“Before it’s too late.”
The words kept echoing in Dane’s head long after he’d gotten home, showered and dressed for dinner. How was he supposed to tell her? It wasn’t something he could just drop into casual conversation.
This is a great meal. The paint job in the living room
looks really good. By the way, when I mentioned I’d torn up my leg, what I meant was they amputated three-fourths of it. Mind if I grab another Coke?

Yeah, that would go over well.

He was kicked back on the sofa, the television on but muted, when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen to make sure it wasn’t Carly, then silenced the phone. Two minutes later it rang again, and once more two minutes after that. Anna Mae didn’t give up once she decided to do something, and apparently today she was determined to talk to him.

With a sigh, he answered.

“You know, you should really keep your phone with you all the time,” she said in place of a greeting. “I mean, in your condition and all, having so much trouble getting around, it would be easier if you kept it in your pocket. And what if you fell or something? How would you call for help?”

“Funny thing about the Army. They keep tabs on us soldiers who need extra help—you know, the brain-injury patients, the ones with PTSD, and the people missing arms and legs.”

Anna Mae’s response was what his dad had always referred to as her “miffed sniff.” Bill had been good at teasing her into a better mood, but Dane had never had the gift. “As they should, considering they’re responsible for crippling all of you.”

“Mom, I’m not crippled.” Like First Sergeant Chen had pointed out, a lot of people would rather have lost a limb or two than died. And a whole lot of people would have thanked God to get their child, spouse, or parent back in his condition.

Another sniff. “Disabled, then. Do you prefer that?”

Closing his eyes, Dane rubbed his temple with his free hand. It was the place where his patience resided, he decided, and Anna Mae could drain it empty with laser-guided accuracy in a matter of seconds.

How many times had he told her he wasn’t disabled or handicapped? A dozen, at least. His brain still worked fine, and so did most of his body.

So why did he care so damn much about the part that was missing?

“I’d prefer not to be labeled at all.” Not that he expected her to listen, much less hear. “How are you?”

“I’m just doing the usual stuff. Oh, and I’ve started volunteering at the church with the preschool program. I figure since I’m never going to get grandkids from you, I’d better find substitutes somewhere. Though, of course, there’s always Sheryl’s babies. They’re practically mine.” Her tone turned a hundred shades lighter, more enthusiastic. “She’s just
glowing
with this pregnancy. Her doctor’s got her doing yoga, and she’s looking more beautiful every day.” She heaved a longing sigh. “I do wish you would have tried to work things out with her.”

“Sorry. It wasn’t meant to be.” Sheryl hadn’t liked monogamy, and he wasn’t cut out to ignore her affairs. His dad would have understood, but his mom had a different outlook. Yet Bill had loved her until the day he died. Some mysteries were never meant to be solved.

“When can you come for a visit? You know, the baby’s due—”

Startled by the question, Dane tuned out the rest. Sure, he’d have to go home sometime before his mother died, but he was figuring on at least another ten years before he had to worry about that. He didn’t
want
to go home. Didn’t want to stay in the house he’d grown up in, where he’d had such big plans. Didn’t want to see his ex-wife and her children.

Didn’t really want to see his mother, not until he had a better grip on his life and his future.

“We-ell?”

He knew that voice:
I asked you a question and I want an answer.
Though he’d blocked out everything after “baby’s due,” he knew the question hadn’t changed. It never did with Anna Mae. “I don’t know when I can get time off.”

“Texas and Oklahoma are neighbors, you know, and we’re talking about a weekend. You can’t spare a weekend?”

“It’s still kind of hard for me to travel.” That was true. More than a few hours on the road, and he began hurting in places that hadn’t even been injured.

“You managed to travel from Washington, D.C., to Oklahoma just fine.”

“Mom, I flew here on an air evac flight. There were nurses and medics on board. I could lie down if I needed to.”
I could take drugs if I needed to.

“Well, if you can’t make even one short trip to visit your mother…”

He noticed she didn’t offer to come here to Fort Murphy. She hadn’t bothered to fly to Washington, either, beyond one two-day visit right after he’d arrived. The other months, nothing.

“I’ve got to go, Mom.”

“Me, too. My quilting club meets tonight, and I need to put some work in on the baby quilt. You take care of yourself.”

That was the closest she ever came to voicing any good feelings about him. The last time he’d heard
I love you
from her, he’d been about twelve years old and sick with the flu.

The last time he’d said it back to her had been at least that long ago.

“You, too.” After sliding the phone into his pocket, he stood up, pain spasming through his leg. The stump had looked a little chafed when he’d showered—not unusual, but something that tended to freak him out since the infections that had led to the second and third procedures had started with a little chafing.

Tired, annoyed, and more than a bit ashamed of his own cowardice, he limped toward the door. He really needed a quiet evening with Carly tonight. No confessions, no dwelling on the negative, no confusion.

Just Carly, dinner and, if he was a lucky man, a few kisses.

Carly heard Dane’s truck pull into the driveway, the finely tuned engine a quiet rumble before he shut it off, and she smiled. That was a sound she could become used to—someone coming home to her. Though some snotty little voice in her head warned her not to be so anxious, she opened the front door before he had a chance to knock, and her smile stretched ear to ear. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He wore jeans as usual with a faded T-shirt that she thought had once pretty closely matched the burnt orange of her walls. He stepped inside, shut the door, then closed the distance between them and kissed her. It felt like a quick kiss that suddenly decided to linger, and she was glad it did.

When he finally lifted his head, his expression was dazed and hers was unsteady, along with her entire body. She wanted to wrap her arms around him for a moment, just to regain her balance, but he took her hand and walked down the hall with her to the kitchen. “I was going to bring a bottle of wine, but since you’re not much of a drinker, I got this instead.”

She hadn’t even realized he had something in his hand. “You didn’t have to—”

Reaching inside the bag, he pulled out a tub of ice cream. Braum’s vanilla-caramel, wonderful on its own and way better on pecan pie than Cool Whip. “Ooh, thanks. My favorite.”

He opened the freezer to put it inside, then slowly turned back, two plastic-wrapped items and an incredulous look on his face. “You froze the paint brushes?”

Her cheeks warmed as she slipped past him to check the sweet potatoes in the oven. The marshmallows were melted and starting to brown nicely. “I sealed them in plastic wrap first,” she said in her defense.

“That is not how you clean brushes.”

“I read somewhere that if you seal them in plastic, it would keep the bristles from getting stiff for a while. I also read that if you froze them, the paint wouldn’t set up so you could clean them later, at your convenience. And I was tired when we finished painting. So were you. So I put them away to clean later.” She swallowed. “At my convenience.”

He tried to wiggle the bristles. “Look how stiff they are.”

“Well, of course. They’re frozen.”

He stared at her a moment longer, the corners of his mouth twitching, before he gave in to the laughter. “Before we start our next paint job, I’ll buy my own brushes and you won’t be allowed to touch them.”

Tossing her head, she sniffed. “I bet mine thaw out to be just as good as your new ones.” As he returned the brushes to the freezer, she changed the subject. “If you’d get the glasses and drinks, I’ll get the food on the table.”

She removed a package of CaraCakes yeast rolls from the top rack of the oven and emptied them into a napkin-lined basket, then carried the sweet potato casserole to the table with silicone mitts. She unwrapped the foil from the turkey, moist from the slow cooker, then blasted it in the hot oven to brown the skin, and pulled the dish of dressing from the microwave where she’d stuck it to keep it warm.

“One of these days, I want to remodel the kitchen, and the top thing on my list is a double oven,” she said on a trip back to the kitchen for serving utensils. “Both Mom and Mia have them. Mom’s never touched hers, but Lisa uses it when the family gets together, and Mia loves hers. She’s a big-time baker. She used to send more cookies, brownies, and candy to Jeff than his entire company could eat.”

She turned back to the table to find Dane staring at it. The expression on his face was odd—surprised, pleased, intense with something she couldn’t recognize.

“You made Thanksgiving dinner.”

If she hadn’t been standing close, she might not have heard the words at all. She certainly wouldn’t have caught the tiny tremor at the end of the words.

Her smile was shaky. “You said it was your favorite meal—turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and pecan pie. I added the bread because, well, you have to have bread with gravy or what’s the point? And it’s just a turkey breast because there are just two of us, so again, what’s the—”

His mouth cut off her words, his arms sliding around her waist, his body hard against hers. Warmth bloomed through her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, one hand sliding up to stroke his hair. She’d almost forgotten that the best thing about a high-and-tight haircut was the velvety smoothness of the bottom part, where the hair was clipped impossibly short. She loved that feel almost as much as she loved the sensation of strong arms around her, of a strong body to lean on, almost as much as she loved the idea that she had someone to care for who cared back.

Dane drew his hands along her spine, back up to her face, where he cradled them to her cheeks. His tongue dipped inside her mouth, and a faint whimper of need and hunger and satisfaction echoed in the air around them. It had been so long, and she had been waiting for this practically since the day she’d seen him in the cave. It made every other kiss they’d shared seem insignificant, made her want…