The Homecoming (15 page)

Trey looked up at Kara. “Mom?”

She, in turn, looked at Sax. Studied him, as if she were looking for the catch.

“If the situation had turned out different, Jared would make the same offer,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Her lips curved a bit and her eyes softened at Sax’s suggestion. “He undoubtedly would.” She reached down and tousled her son’s hair. “Have fun.”

“Thanks!” His freckled face lit up like a full moon.

“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Thank Mr. Douchett.”

He looked up at Sax, his expression turning serious again. “Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure.” Sax put his hand on the shoulder clad in a navy blue T-shirt bearing the image of a snarling bulldog. Above the dog it read, MY DAD’S A U.S. MARINE. Below it: AND HE’S MY HERO.

He was headed toward the car when Kara caught hold of his arm. “Thank you,” she said.

“It’s no big deal. I meant what I said, Kara. This parade should be for Jared. But I’ll do my best to stand in for him.”

As he’d promised the man who’d become her husband he’d do when Jared and Cole had left town for boot camp. Something that had proven more difficult than Sax ever could have expected.

“Nice car,” Sax told Gerald as he took in the ’59 Ford Fairlane convertible. He’d always believed in giving credit where credit was due, and besides, he was going to need this guy’s approval for the loan to repair Bon Temps. “Looks as good as it probably did when the original owner drove it off the showroom floor.”

The banker/car dealer/mortuary owner puffed up like a pigeon. “I restored it myself.”

“And did a great job, too.” The car had been waxed to a mirror sheen.

“Your name should be bigger,” Trey said as he observed the small black-and-white WELCOME HOME, SERGEANT DOUCHET signs on the back door. In contrast, huge red-white-and-blue Gardner Ford dealership signs covered both front doors, with a third on the trunk.

“Gerald’s got himself something to advertise,” Sax said magnanimously. “I don’t.”

“The dealer banners were already made for other occasions,” Gardner said stiffly. “The ‘welcome home’ signs came that way from the printer.”

“And they’re just dandy.”

Sax decided there was nothing to be gained by pointing out the missing T on his last name. Especially since he suspected it hadn’t exactly been an accident. The guy had always resented the fact that although his father may have supplied the uniforms for the Shelter Bay American Legion baseball team, Sax’s father, the coach, had him riding the bench most of the season.

As Lucien had told both Gardner and his father, it wasn’t personal. The truth was that Gerald couldn’t bat worth beans. And worse, in Lucien’s opinion, he threw “like a girl.”

The Shelter Bay Pipe and Drum Corps led the parade, along with a high-stepping drum major with a tall hat and a trio of pretty high school girls in sparkly outfits tossing their batons up in the air.

Behind the car, uniformed veterans from the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars showed they still possessed the right stuff as they marched in snappy cadence to the loudspeaker blaring Sousa marches from a flatbed truck carrying three surviving Greatest Generation veterans of the Second World War.

People had temporarily abandoned the festivities to line up alongside the road. Those who’d served snapped off salutes as he went by, which was more than a little weird, since, not having served in the officer ranks, Sax wasn’t used to being saluted. Others, including the women, stood with hands over their hearts.

Children waved small flags, and people cheered and shouted out his name as the car drove by. Which was weirder than the salutes.

Gardner drove, while Sherry displayed her sweeping windshield-wiper pageant wave from the passenger seat. Not wanting people to think he didn’t appreciate their coming out to welcome him back home, although he felt like a damn fool, Sax waved, too.

“My dad got a lot of medals, too,” Kara’s son said, looking at Sax’s jacket display.

“Like you said, he was a hero, your dad. It’s only right he was awarded medals for bein’ brave.”

“I’d rather have my dad than any medals.”

“I’d feel the same way. My dad was in Vietnam when I was a boy. I missed him a lot. Worried a lot, too.”

“But he came home.”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Then a long sigh.

Then, “I took them to school. The medals. In the special box that the grief counselor said Mom and I always have to look at together.”

Sax suddenly felt as if he’d been dropped into the middle of a conversational minefield. One false move and he could blow everything to kingdom come.

“Did your mom know?” he asked with a great deal more casualness than he was feeling.

“Yeah. She worried about it, but Grandma drove me to school and gave the box to the teacher. Then she picked me up again, so I wouldn’t lose them.” He rolled his expressive eyes. “Like I’d do a dumb thing like that.”

“Good to be careful, though.”

“After I did the show-and-tell, my teacher got this idea that we’d all collect stuff for the troops and send a box to Iraq.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“That’s what Mom says. . . . She cries sometimes.”

Okay. Make that a minefield in a damn pit of quicksand. “Does she?”

“Yeah. She’s real quiet, ’cause I think she doesn’t want me to know, but I hear her sometimes when I get up to go to the bathroom late at night.”

The idea of Jared’s wife crying herself to sleep in her pillow took a painful slice at Sax’s heart. He rubbed his chest. Which didn’t help.

Even if he had a single clue how to talk about something as serious and personal as this, and had known what to say, this sure as hell wasn’t the place. So Sax decided to change the subject.

“So,” he said as he switched to waving to the other side of the street, “you like whales?”

“They’re cool. My dad took me to Sea World when we lived in California. There were killer whales there that did tricks. Which was way cool. But I felt bad about them not being free out in the ocean.”

“Captivity’s the pits.” And didn’t Sax know firsthand about that?

“Dad said that they’re not named that because they kill people. And that they’re not even really whales, but really big dolphins.”

“Orcas,” Sax said.

“Yeah. But though they got to eat fish and stuff, I still felt sorry for them. They’re not like the kind of animals who are supposed to live with people. Like dogs and cats. Dad promised we’d go to the pound and pick out a puppy the weekend after Sea World. Then he got shot.” His eyes glistened in a way that ripped a few more pieces off Sax’s heart. “I got really mad at him about that.”

“I haven’t lost my dad. But I did lose friends in the war. And yeah, I think being angry is a pretty natural way to feel.”

“That’s what the grief counselor said.” He hugged the plush whale to his chest, as if it were the puppy he’d been so cruelly cheated out of, and looked at Sax with wide blue eyes. “Do you think my dad knows that I didn’t mean to be mad at him?”

“Absolutely.” Having enough problems with his own ghosts, Sax couldn’t imagine how it would feel being eight years old and being haunted by thoughts of what might have been. “I’ve got me a dog.”

“Really?” Boyish interest seemed to burn away the sadness. “What kind?”

“I’m not sure.” Damn, how did Sherry do it? SEALs were tough, but his forearm was starting to cramp from all the stupid waving. Good thing the town was only six blocks long or his hand might fall off his wrist before they got to the end of this dog-and-pony show.

He changed sides again, switched hands. “I think she may be a cross between a wolfhound and a Hummer. But she sounds just like a seal when she barks. Not a Navy SEAL. The kind with flippers, that eat fish.”

The small freckled brow furrowed in a way that was an echo of his mother’s. “That’s a joke. Right?”

“Wait till you see and hear her. You can decide for yourself.”

“We had a lady come talk to us at school. About what it’s like to be a veterinarian.”

“That’d be Dr. Tiernan.”

“Yeah. She runs a shelter, too. For dogs and cats who don’t have homes. I wanted to go check it out, but Mom says that with her and Grandma working all the time, it wouldn’t be fair to the animal.”

He could hear Kara’s crisp, no- nonsense, “mother knows best” tone in those words. For all that she’d always claimed to be the polar opposite of her mother, the two women had far more in common than he suspected either one realized.

“She’s probably right about that. Moms are usually pretty much on the mark about most things. But there’s enough of Velcro to share.”

More brow furrowing. Small front teeth—with a gap where one had fallen out—worried his bottom lip.

Then, “You call her Velcro ’cause she sticks to you, right?”

“Got it in one. You’re one smart kid. Maybe you can help me train her. So far all she knows how to do is fetch. Though she doesn’t always bring whatever I throw back. But she is a champion eater and sleeper.”

“I don’t know if Mom would let me.”

“Your mom and I are old friends. Leave it to me and I think we can talk her into it.”

“Cool!” Beaming again, he pumped a fist into the air. Then, as the loudspeaker began blasting out a deafening “Stars and Stripes Forever,” Kara’s son finally got into the spirit of the day and began waving wildly to the crowd.

Experiencing the same rush of cooling relief he might if he’d just escaped a potentially deadly firefight, Sax let out a long breath, pasted a returning hero’s smile on his face, and reminded himself that as bad as this was, at least he’d made it home alive and in one piece.

Unlike his ghosts.

And Jared Conway.

Danny Sullivan, John’s nephew, still resembled Donny Osmond. He had the same shaggy hair that flopped over his forehead, puppy-dog eyes, and dimples that creased his cheeks when he smiled.

Which he did, easily and often, as he left the booth where he’d been dutifully selling myrtle-wood sea animals, birds, and lighthouses carved by his uncle to join Kara and Faith.

“Dandy day,” Danny greeted them both with his Osmond grin. “And, Kara, you did a super job keeping things under control.”

“Thanks. But Shelter Bay’s not exactly
Homicide: Life on the Street
. The worst problem John and I had to deal with was Ron Bonham and Jim Flynn getting into that fistfight. Which still wasn’t very exciting, given that they’d been hitting the beer keg a few too many times and couldn’t even manage to stand up.”

“Uncle John said he took them in to sleep it off.”

“For a while. He’s going to let them out tonight after the fireworks, so long as their wives agree to drive them home.”

“If I were Ron, after knocking over that dessert table, I’d be more afraid of my wife than I would you or John.”

“Since Pamela’s state-fair-blue-ribbon-winning blackberry heather pie ended upside down on the grass, I wouldn’t want to be in the car for that family discussion,” Kara agreed.

“So what were they arguing about?”

“They were a bit incoherent, but according to witnesses, they were in disagreement over the best Civil War game ever.” The annual rivalry between the Oregon State and University of Oregon football teams dated back to 1894 and was one of the most anticipated aspects of the season. Every true fan had an opinion as to which trumped them all. One thing everyone could agree on was that there was no neutral ground in this Civil War—the Beavers’ black and orange or the Ducks’ green and yellow were the only available choices. Neither color option, to Kara’s mind, flattered any woman forced to wear them on game day.

“Ron, being an Oregon fan, insisted it was the 2008 game,” she revealed.

“The Fog Bowl,” Danny said. “Even the TV cameras couldn’t follow the ball toward the end of the game. But the Ducks pulled it out.”

“Apparently so. Jim, on the other hand, having gone to Oregon State, insisted it was 1962.”

“OSU’s punter booted a spiral that accidentally hit a Duck’s leg and bounced into the arms of a Beaver. Quarterback Terry Baker threw a thirteen-yard pass, giving the Beavs the victory and a trip to the Liberty Bowl in Philadelphia. Got himself a Heisman trophy in the bargain.”

“What is it about men that they can’t remember to pick up bread at the grocery store, but they can remember every minute detail of a mere football game?”

“The Civil War is not a mere football game. It’s a religion in these parts. And besides, I’m a history teacher.” Dimples flashed appealingly. Unfortunately, they didn’t strike a single chord with Kara. “We like looking back. In fact, I was remembering just this morning that dress you wore to the senior prom. You were sure a picture.”

“It was a nightmare of purple tulle.” Kara still couldn’t decide what she’d been thinking, deciding to go with a vintage fifties look. The color had complemented her red-brown hair, but all those layers of ruffles had been a fright.

“I thought it was real pretty. Feminine . . . You know, I was thinking—”

“Hey, Mom!”

Saved by her son.

Kara’s mind was scrambling to come up with some way to turn down whatever invitation John’s nephew was about to offer, when Trey came running toward Kara, the grin on his face as wide as a slice of the moon that had begun to rise on the horizon. She tried to recall the last time she’d seen him so carefree and happy and came up blank.

He was also soaking wet. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing. But guess what?”

“What?”

“Sax said I could help him train Velcro.”

“Mr. Douchett told you about his dog?”

“Yeah. But he told me to call him Sax. So, can I?”

“We’ll see.”

The moon grin disintegrated like coastal fog burned away by a summer sun. Small shoulders slumped. He was the picture of exaggerated eight-year-old dejection. “Whenever you say that, it always means no.”