Page 13 of A Hero Comes Home

“For what?”

“The things I said before you left. That’s the one thing I regretted after we were told that you died, how I sent you out with bitter words.”

“‘You selfish bastard!’ Are those the words you’re referring to? Yep, those were definitely not the three words you usually said before I left.”

“You didn’t say them, either. The three usual words, I mean.”

“You could say them now,” he noted.

“So could you, Jacob.” Although everyone called her husband Jake, Sally had gotten a kick the first time she was introduced to his mother to hear her refer to him as Jacob. In the beginning, she’d started calling him Jacob, too, in a teasing way, but then it became her pet name for him. By using it now, she might not be saying that she still loved him, but it introduced an intimacy to their conversation. He had to be thinking of those times when he’d relished hearing her breathy sighs of “Oh, Jacob!”

“Anyhow, I’m sorry, too,” he said. “This was no way for you to get the news that I was alive.”

“Three months, Jacob! You should have called. You should have come home. I can understand how you might not have been physically able to at first, but . . . three months!”

General Parker had explained that Jake had serious injuries when he was first rescued, that he was in fact unconscious for a while, but Sally knew her stubborn husband. If he’d wanted to come home, he would have, or at least found a way to contact her. With his Special Forces training, he had skills.

The fact that Jake remained silent at her condemnation was telling. “You do want to come home, don’t you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he replied.

The flutters in her chest turned to stone and dropped to her stomach, making her nauseated. He had to have heard her gasp.

“Wait. Don’t hang up,” he said quickly.

Which was precisely what she’d been about to do.

“I’m not the same, Sally.”

“Well, hell’s bells, neither am I. But forget about you and me. What about your kids? Don’t you want to see them?” She’d like to remind him that he hadn’t seen much of his kids in the past, when he’d had the chance, with all the active duty crap he’d engaged in, some of it voluntary. He’d parked her in boring Small Town, USA, then gone off to his other life of excitement and adventure.

But now was not the time for that argument. They’d had it enough before.

“Of course I do, but . . .” He paused as if unsure what to say next, then revealed, “I don’t want them to see me like this.”

All of this was so unlike the Jake she knew and had loved at one time. He would be tossing out swear words like bullets. Arrogant on occasion. Always sure of himself. And, yes, selfish.

“Like what, Jacob? Do you think kids care about a limp, or an injured eye? They already have you built up into this larger-than-life Superman hero.”

“See. That’s what I mean. I’m no hero.”

“Tell that to the town of Bell Cove. They’ll have a marching band waiting for you at the ferry. Billboards, at the least. Yellow ribbons from every tree for miles around. A celebration to outdo their Grinch madness last Christmas, or the Independence Day wedding they put on last month, or Pirate Madness, or today’s Elvis-Comes-Back-to-Bell Cove, or the upcoming Lollypalooza.”

He groaned.

“Don’t you dare say that you’re not coming home,” she continued. “You are not going to humiliate me, or disappoint your boys, or break your father’s heart by staying away.”

“Is that an order?” he asked.

“You better believe it, soldier. As I told that General Parker today, ‘I’m a civilian, but you work for my government. Therefore, you work for me. You do not tell me how to handle my husband’s homecoming.’ What an ass he was!”

“You gave a general his marching orders?”

“You better believe it.”

He chuckled.

“One more thing, Jacob,” she added. The tears she’d been holding back all day finally let loose in a torrent. She was about to say, “I do still love you. Dammit!” But the words wouldn’t come. They might not even be true anymore. Instead, she said, “Welcome home, soldier.”