A Hero to Come Home To (29 page)

He closed the door, then leaned against it. “Like that wouldn’t have changed things?”

“Changed things how?” Slowly his meaning dawned, and the desire to give him a whack with his own crutch returned. “You think it would have mattered to me? That I wouldn’t have been interested? You think I’m so shallow that I wouldn’t get involved with a man missing a leg?”

The bitterness that had been in his voice earlier returned. “You do have this thing about perfection.”

Her own eyes doubled in size. “It’s a word I use, for God’s sake! The weather is perfect, my flower beds are perfect, the colors in my living room are perfect. You’re perfect, too, Dane. You’re a perfect ass. You didn’t even trust me.” Finally a tear slipped free. “How can you care about someone you don’t even trust?”

“Carly—” He dragged his hand through his hair, not as easy to do when he was using crutches to hold him upright. “I meant to tell you. Really. It’s just…I was…The doctors say I have body-image issues. I’m not adapting well to my new reality.” He snorted. “I hated losing my leg. I hate the prosthesis and the sleeve and the stump and the crutches and the pain and everything else, so I don’t tell anyone. I figure if I don’t have to see it or talk about it, and no one else does, either, then I can pretend it didn’t happen.”

Her chest tightened, making air difficult to take in. “You should have told me. You should have given me a chance, Dane. I wouldn’t have let you down.”

Heat flared in his voice. “My own
mother
let me down. She only came to see me once in all those months in the hospital. She calls me crippled and says no woman would want me like this.”

Carly tried to imagine Mia or her own mother ever saying such things to their sons, and the image wouldn’t form. No loving mother could ever be so insensitive and cruel. “Then your mother’s a fool, Dane, because
I
wanted you!”
Want you, will always want you
, was what she meant, but she used the past tense in a petty effort to transfer a little of her hurt to him.

He noticed. His mouth thinned, the muscles in his clean-shaven jaw working. “Do you want to know now?”

She had to swallow a couple times to get the answer out, steeling her nerves, steeling her heart, because she knew his story wasn’t going to be easy to tell, easy to hear. “Yes.”

He walked smoothly, as if he’d used the crutches long enough for them to become a part of him, and moved the prosthetic from the sofa to the chair. Though he looked as if he wanted to throw it, he set it down with restraint, then went to sit at the other end of the sofa. She eased onto the cushion farthest from him, turning to face him.

When he began, his voice was blank, an emotionless recitation of what must have been the worst day of his life. “It was my fourth tour in the desert. We were stationed in Kunar Province. Routine day, routine patrol, until it got blasted all to hell. IED. One minute, we were driving along, arguing about the best place to find pizza back in Vicenza, and the next, I was lying facedown twenty-five feet away. I guess I blacked out for a moment. When I opened my eyes, I saw my boot about twelve feet away. I knew it was mine because it had this oil stain that I couldn’t get rid of. There was dust settling all around, people yelling and running, and that damn boot was just standing there.

“And then I realized my foot was still in it.”

Carly’s throat swelled, and she clamped her jaws together, pushing her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth. Thanks to the media embedded with American troops, she could too easily imagine the scene: the chaos, the urgency, the fear. Injured buddies, probably one or more dead, feeling exposed as if the enemy might pick them off one at a time while they tried to save their friends’ lives.

“By that time in our deployment, some of us were routinely wearing tourniquets when we went out, loosely cinched on our thighs. I didn’t even think to tighten it. I just kept looking at that boot, the sock, the ragged flesh, and wondering how was that possible. It was my
foot
. It was supposed to be
attached
.” A note of wonder, of confusion, came into his voice before the monotone returned. “One of the guys from the vehicle behind us tightened the tourniquet on my leg, and they got us out of there and to the field hospital. I don’t know how it happened, but we all survived.”

It happened by the grace of God, Carly thought, because he was meant to come into her life. Meant to change her life.

God, did it make her ungrateful that she would prefer change without pain?

“I got evacked to Landstuhl, where they did the first amputation, then sent me to Bethesda. But the force of the blast blew debris into my leg, damaged muscles, tissue, and bone, and caused an infection. I’d just gotten relatively ambulatory with my new foot when they said they had to do a below-the-knee amputation. But the infection wouldn’t go away. They treated it aggressively, because having a knee is always better than not having one, but after a few months, they had to go in again.”

He smiled weakly. “And here I am.”

And here he was. Carly didn’t know what to say. She understood in her head that the loss of a limb was traumatic, though she couldn’t begin to know just how traumatic it was to
him
. But he was
alive
when so many others had died. He should celebrate that, he should be grateful every day, not embarrassed, not trying to hide what his service had cost him. Jeff would have been so thrilled to come home that he would have danced her through the streets of Tallgrass, prosthetic leg and all.

But Dane wasn’t Jeff, and Jeff had known she loved him.

Jeff had trusted her totally, completely, utterly.

And Dane didn’t.

He stared toward the television, and she followed his look to a photograph standing beside it. It had been taken in the desert, a bunch of guys in khaki T-shirts and DCU pants, all with high-and-tights, some wearing dark glasses, some holding weapons that seemed almost as big as they were. She wondered on which deployment it had been taken, which of the men in it had come back, which hadn’t, how much loss they had suffered.

Realizing her cheeks were wet, she raised one hand to swipe away tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then spoke louder. “I’m very sorry.”

Then…“Is that why…last night…? It really wasn’t me, it was you.”

He gave her a dry look. “We couldn’t have gone much further without having to take our clothes off. I may be an ass, but even I know that dropping my pants with a surprise like that is going to put one hell of a damper on the mood.”

Yeah.
Even with her limited sexual experience, she knew shock wasn’t exactly a great turn-on. She would have been horrified—not by the prosthesis but by everything he’d gone through.

On the other hand, her fourteen extra pounds didn’t seem so worrisome in comparison.

“I’ve been celibate a long time, but I think I remember a lot more to foreplay than what we did last night,” she said, trying to match his dryness.

His response could have been a laugh or a cough. “I’ve been celibate a long time, too. Trust me, I don’t have the self-control to wait much beyond what we did last night.” His glance her way was awkward, self-conscious. “I was going to tell you today. Honestly. I want—I want
you
. I want to—to be with you. To spend the future with you. I was just cleaning up before going to your house.” He gestured toward the prosthesis. “I was even going to wear the pretty leg.”

She believed him. She just wished it had happened the way he’d planned.

She really just wished he’d told her right up front. Even if he’d been uncomfortable telling the truth the first time they’d met, at some point after that, after he’d gotten to know her, hadn’t he realized she wouldn’t care? Hadn’t he had a little bit of faith in her, just enough to know that she was a person of substance? That she was honest and genuine and would never, ever judge him on his physical limitations?

If he hadn’t learned that much about her, had he learned anything at all?

She didn’t realize how long the silence had gone on until he broke it, his words little more than a whisper. “This makes a difference, doesn’t it?” Grimly, he grasped a handful of his pants leg in the middle of his thigh, bunching the empty fabric.

“It doesn’t. I don’t care that you don’t have a leg.” She swallowed hard, then took a couple deep breaths for strength. “I care that you didn’t trust me, Dane. That you didn’t think enough of me to give me a chance.”

The words hung in the air between them, heavy and sad and accusing. She imagined she still heard their faint echoes when she stood. “I need…time.”

The bleakness in his eyes when he nodded just about broke her heart. Instead of walking to the door, she wanted to go to him, wrap her arms around him, convince him that her feelings for him didn’t have anything to do with the number of body parts he had or lacked, that it was the man he was inside that she loved.

But the man he was inside was ashamed of himself and unsure of her.

She stopped at the door, but didn’t look back. “I—I’ll call you.” She opened the door, stepped out into the warm afternoon air, then closed it quietly behind her.

As she crossed the parking lot to her car, she thought about how good she’d become at keeping herself under control. Army widows were expected to show restraint in public. They rarely sobbed through their husbands’ funerals. They didn’t collapse with grief at the grave sites. They maintained control, then fell apart in private.

That was what she did on the drive home: maintained. Her jaw was clenched, her fingers taut, her muscles stressed to the max to keep her erect and composed. She would cry when she got home, with the door securely shutting out the world, letting her grieve and get as sloppy sad as she wanted.

But when she got home, she didn’t throw herself on the couch and sob. She didn’t seek the shadowy sanctuary of her bedroom. She stood in the hallway for a very long time, lost and confused and heart-sore but, to her surprise, still hopeful.

“Every journey starts with one step,”
Jeff used to tell her. She and Dane had taken a hell of a lot of steps on this journey. Was she going to throw it all away because of one misstep early on? Was she going to stop loving him, wanting him, needing to be with him because of something he hadn’t said when he should have?

Of course not. She just needed time to get over the hurt that he hadn’t confided in her, that he hadn’t trusted her with information that was such a part of him.

Twisting the band on her fourth finger, she realized that she also needed time to say good-bye. Jeff would be in her heart forever, but it was time to move on from parts of her past and to open herself fully to the possibilities of the future.

With one last twist, she removed her wedding band, then stared at her hand. Every moment, waking or sleeping, she’d worn that ring, ever since Jeff had placed it on her finger at the minister’s behest. It left a groove at the base of her finger, pale, shiny skin so rarely exposed.

Her hand felt naked.

Her heart felt lighter.

She slid the ring onto her right hand, then clenched her fingers. “I love you, Jeff,” she whispered. But she loved Dane, too.

Jeff was all right with that. She knew it deep down in her heart.

Sighing out a bit of heaviness and stress, slowly she went down the hall to the guest room, where she opened the closet and took out an armful of Jeff’s uniforms. Gently, reverently, she began packing them away.

T
he first day of spring break should have meant sleeping in late, lounging around in pajamas with a cup of coffee and something truly decadent for breakfast, like sticky, cinammony, nut-laden monkey bread, but instead Therese had gotten up at her usual seven a.m. She showered, dressed, and put on makeup, adding extra concealer under her eyes to cover the shadows there. Before heading downstairs for coffee and yogurt, she knocked sharply on the kids’ doors, getting a grunt from Jacob, nothing from Abby.

Granted, she and Abby hadn’t exchanged five words since the incident Saturday.

The reason Abby hadn’t answered was apparent when Therese reached the kitchen: The girl was sitting at the island, dressed and ready to go, her luggage next to the doorway. She’d gotten a bottle of pop and a yogurt from the refrigerator, but didn’t seem to be making headway on either one, instead running her hands restlessly over her hair, her clothes, her cell phone.

Therese stopped in the hallway before Abby saw her and just studied her. She was so pretty, so delicate. There was much of her mother in her, but Therese could recognize a lot of Paul, too.
Baby girl
, he’d called her, and
Scooter pie.
She’d loved the first and rolled her eyes at the second—the reason he’d done it, of course.

Where would she go if Therese insisted on giving her up? Catherine and both sets of grandparents had already made clear they didn’t want custody of her, but that was when they’d known she had a home with Therese. If they knew her only option was entering the foster system, surely—maybe—they’d change their minds.

Considering Catherine had called yesterday to try to weasel out of this visit—
“
I don’t know that I’m ready for this”
—Therese wasn’t hoping for help from her.

Clunky steps plus the
thud-thud
of a bag being dragged sounded from the stairs, forcing Therese into motion. She walked into the kitchen, avoiding Abby as studiously as Abby avoided her. By the time she’d filled a travel mug with coffee and adjusted it to her tastes, Jacob was coming into the room. He tossed his lone backpack onto the floor next to Abby’s two suitcases, then headed for the refrigerator.

Weren’t they a cheery family?

When her nerves were strung as tightly as she could take, she put her coffee down and got her purse. “Here’s your IDs.” She laid the Department of Defense dependent ID cards that entitled them to medical care, among other benefits, on the island. “Spending money.” Two equal piles of cash. “And a power of attorney allowing your mother to get medical care for you if you need it.” After a moment’s hesitation, she laid the folded piece of paper with Jacob’s things.

Abby’s eyes widened, then her entire face narrowed in a sneer. “Oh my God, you’re giving her
permission
to take her own kids to the doctor? She’s our
mother
. She has that right. She doesn’t need your okay for
anything
.”

Therese was debating whether to respond or bite her tongue until it bled when Jacob matter-of-factly said, “Yes, she does.” He stuck the money and ID in his left pocket, then folded the power of attorney into a small square and stuck it in his right pocket. “Therese is legally responsible for us. Mom doesn’t have the right to do anything. She gave up those rights when she gave us up.”

Abby glared at her brother as if he’d betrayed the family bond by speaking up. Therese turned away from them to hide her sad smile. She fully believed siblings should be raised together whenever possible, but if no one in Abby’s family stepped up to take both of them, surely it would be all right for Therese to keep Jacob, wouldn’t it? He didn’t deserve the foster system just because his sister was out of control.

Guilt turned the coffee sour in her stomach, but she stubbornly pushed it away. She
wouldn’t
take the blame for this. Yes, it was her decision, but Abby had made it for her. She’d pushed Therese into a corner where giving up custody was the only hope for her own future.

She was
not
at fault.

And she would keep repeating it until she believed it.

A grand gesture. Justin had spent the rest of Sunday, all day Monday, and most of Tuesday telling Dane that was what he needed. Something seriously romantic, to make Carly swoon, to make her go all soft and warm and forget that he hadn’t been open with her. Trouble was, neither of them had a clue what kind of gesture would sweep Carly off her feet, and Dane wasn’t any good at gestures anyway. They seemed phony to him—an insincere attempt to make up for what he’d done wrong, when he’d never been so sincere in his life. Like he’d told her, he wanted her, wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

Like he hadn’t told her, he loved her.

And he was pretty sure she loved him, too, even if he wasn’t perfect.

It had been hard, but as of five Tuesday afternoon, he hadn’t called her. She’d said she needed time. He’d given her that. She’d said she would call him. He’d waited. He’d kept his cell phone right next to him all day; he slept with it in his hand at night. He’d had a couple calls from his mother that he let go to voice mail, and a couple from Justin with more suggestions for grand gestures. But not one from the only person who mattered.

The only person…
He hadn’t treated her that way. Yeah, he’d been scared, but she was right. That day at the cave, it should have been so easy to say,
I’m at Fort Murphy at the WTU.
She would have known what that meant. All Army people did. Little words, big meaning, awkwardness avoided.

Either she would have cared and they wouldn’t be where they were right now, or she wouldn’t have cared and they wouldn’t be where they were right now. Either way, heartache avoided.

When his phone rang, jerking him out of his thoughts, for an instant his heart pounded and his palms grew clammy, even though in the next instant he knew from the ring tone that it wasn’t Carly. Since Anna Mae didn’t give up easily, he might as well get this over with and get a head start on a little peace until the next time she called. He settled more comfortably on the couch and said, “Hello.”

“Did that accident cripple your dialing finger, too, that you can’t even pick up the phone and press return?”

He smiled faintly. The only thing accidental about his injury was that the enemy had intended to kill him and instead they’d just maimed him.

Just
maimed him. The thought made him go motionless. His heart was still beating. His brain was still functioning. His spirit was beaten but intact.

His future was still ahead of him, not buried in the losses of his past.

He believed that as completely as he believed the sun would rise tomorrow. Too bad, though, it had taken him so long to get to that point.

“Hello, Mom. How are you?”

“Wondering if my son’s still alive. What keeps you so busy you can’t call me? And don’t say physical therapy. You’ve been using that excuse for months. If you’re not walking good by now, it isn’t ever going to happen. You should just settle for what you’ve got and be happy with it the best you can.”

Something was different this time, but it took him a moment to realize what: His muscles hadn’t gone tight the way they usually did when Anna Mae said something rude or insensitive. The bitterness wasn’t seeping through him.
“
Your mother’s a fool,”
Carly had said, and in the ways that mattered, she was right. He’d known that even as a kid. He’d never turned to his mother for approval or advice or anything else. All that had come from his father, his grandparents and coaches because his mother simply wasn’t capable of it. Never had been.

Why, in the toughest situation he’d ever faced, had he begun accepting what she said as fact? Because he’d been weak. Well, hell, he’d had all the weakness, cowardice and self-pity a man could stand. Like the slogan said, he wasn’t just strong. He was Army strong.

“I’ll tell the doctors you said that.”

Of course she missed the irony in his voice. “They’re just delaying the inevitable, if you ask me. Instead of all this rehabilitation, they should help you find a job you can do and put all this behind you.”

“I have a job, Mom. And when I’m ready to get out of the Army, there are plenty of other jobs I can do. Pretty much anything I want.” With the right attitude, the right adaptations, and a little support. He’d never get that from Anna Mae.

But he’d get it from Carly. Had gotten it already from Carly just by knowing her.

“How’s your baby quilt coming?”

Anna Mae hesitated a moment. He could picture her, the prettiness that was steadily giving away to bitterness, eyes narrowed the way they always did when she suspected him of mischief. “I’ve picked the fabrics—the most adorable stripes and polka dots and prints in pastels. They remind me of the cotton candy you used to get at the fair when you were little. I never did figure out how sugar crystals ended up in your ears and down your back and even inside your shoes. Anyway, I showed the fabric to Sheryl today, and she thought it was just beautiful.”

“How’s Sheryl?”

Another silence, this one potent enough to make him smile. He
never
asked about Sheryl, not once since the divorce, and said little more than grunts when his mother brought her up.

“She—she’s fine. Doctor said she’s the healthiest mama-to-be in town.” Anna Mae cleared her throat, then cautiously asked, “How are you? Is everything okay?”

Mark this day on the calendar: Mom
finally
asked how I was doing.
“The docs say I’m the healthiest amputee in town.” And he had the opportunity to be the happiest.

Anna Mae made her usual shushing sounds. It was her philosophy of life.
Ignore the ugly, and it will go away. Never stop wishing for what you want. Pretend for all you’re worth.

It was sad. He hadn’t wanted to be part of that when he was a kid, and he didn’t want to now. She wasn’t about to change. She’d always gauged life—success, happiness, love—by her own standards. No matter what she had, it was never enough.

He’d spent his last day pitying himself for the leg he’d lost. From now on he would be grateful for the life he’d kept and the future he’d gained.

He waited until she took a breath, then said, “Hey, Mom, I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’ve got to change clothes, then go ask a girl a question. I’ll call you.”

She snorted. “You haven’t called me since your last Mother’s Day in Afghanistan.”

He’d missed a Mother’s Day in between, and another one was coming up in a few weeks. He would make a note on the calendar. “I’ll call you,” he repeated. “I love you.”

Before she could respond to that, he hung up.

When Dane had mentioned the support group Sunday, Dalton had pretty much brushed him off like he brushed off everyone who wanted him to talk.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Usually he said the words and immediately put whatever it was right
out
of his mind.

That hadn’t been the case this time. At odd moments while he was working, showering, trying to sleep, the thought came unbidden into his head: A group of people who’d been through what he had, who’d felt what he felt.

More or less, he added with a scowl. It wasn’t likely any of those women’s husbands had chosen suicide over coming back home to them. It wasn’t likely they’d meant so damn little to their husbands.

Still, they knew what it was like to plan to spend the rest of their lives with someone and have that plan blown all to hell. They knew how it felt to wake up in the middle of the night and forget just for a moment, to reach to the other side of the bed expecting to find their spouses’ warm body, only to suddenly realize they were alone. They knew how to live with the loss and the anger and the despair and the loneliness.

He wanted to know how to live.

The clock on the kitchen wall showed five twenty-five. He’d knocked off work early, showered, shaved, put on his newest jeans and best boots. And still he paced the kitchen.

This group of Dane’s girlfriend was all women. Though Dalton had paid nearly zero attention, Noah had even mentioned them before—the Fort Murphy Widows’ Club. How the hell was he supposed to approach a bunch of women he’d never laid eyes on and bare his private sorrows to them?

He wasn’t. It was unnatural. There were other ways to deal.

Like letting a pretty stranger pick him up in the cemetery, for God’s sake, and getting so drunk that he barely remembered having sex with her?

Grimacing, he snatched his keys from the hook near the back door and headed for his truck. He would drive in to The Three Amigos. Have a drink, maybe dinner. Maybe even look up an old friend to join him. There must still be a few of them around. If he spoke to the women, that was fine. If he didn’t, well, that was fine, too.

The miles passed in a blur, his stomach knotting. It was six o’clock when he passed Pansy’s Posies. Six oh five when he caught the red light at Main downtown. Six ten when he walked through the door of The Three Amigos.

“How many?” the pretty hostess asked.

“One.”

“Bar or table?”

“Bar.” The way his gut felt, booze would go down easier than food.

She flashed a smile. “Inside or out? Our patio is officially open for summer.”

He glanced around the dining room and saw no more than four women in any group. “Out.”

The patio was on the east side of the restaurant. Dining tables filled three-fourths of the area, with a small portable bar at the north end providing seating for five. Three of the stools were occupied. Dalton chose the one nearest the building and ordered a beer before slowly turning his attention to the women who dominated the area.

There were seventeen or eighteen, ranging in age from very young to mid-fifties. They were white, black, Asian, Latina, underweight to overweight with a stop at every ten pounds on the scale in between, with hair that was blond, black, brown, gray, and red, and they—