Page 27 of A Hero Comes Home

Fishing . . . Mommy’s friend K-4 had taken them, Matt revealed, causing Sally’s face to pinken.

The upcoming Lollypalooza, in which Mommy was going to sing, which caused Sally’s face to grow even pinker.

“It’s just for fun,” she explained.

“Uncle Kevin is gonna play the guitar while she sings,” good ol’ Matt added.

Uncle Kevin? Okaaay. Jake arched his brows at Sally.

But she was looking the other way.

Deliberately?

And the kids were off and running in another direction.

“Are you still a captain in the Army?” Mark wanted to know, speaking around a mouthful of cake.

“Sort of.”

His father and Sally gave him pointed looks.

“They want to make me a major.” If I take their freakin’ DC job.

“Is that bigger than a captain?” Mark wanted to know.

“Um, sort of. It’s a higher rank, son. That’s the correct word, not bigger.”

Mark ducked his head, and Jake could tell that he’d embarrassed him by correcting his language. Hadn’t Sally mentioned that Mark was the sensitive one?

“It’s a mistake lots of people make,” he elaborated.

And Mark’s head went back up.

“Do you have an eyeball, or ith there juth a hole there?” Luke wanted to know, pointing at his eye patch.

“Yes, I have an eyeball.”

“Is it a glass one?” This from Matt. “I saw a video on YouTube where a guy could pop out his glass eye. It was so cool.”

“Matthew Dawson!” Sally chided. “What did I tell you about watching YouTube videos without my permission?”

“It was a long time ago. At Bobby Allison’s birthday party, and everyone else was looking. I couldn’t not look and be a dork.”

“Dork is not a word we use in this house, young man,” Sally said.

Jake listened with amusement at this exchange between mother and child. Then answered Matt’s question. “No, I don’t have a glass eye. I wear the patch so I don’t creep people out, although I should probably keep it off more often so I can force the eye to exercise. In fact, the doctor suggests I wear the patch over my good eye sometimes to force my injured eye to work, in an attempt to regain mobility. That’s its main problem. The injured eye doesn’t move up and down or to the sides the way it should.”

“You can exercise an eye?” Mark honed in on the least important part of what he’d said.

All three of the boys pondered that idea then as they did a pretty good version of the Three Stooges attempting to roll their eyes in various directions, including cross-eyed.

His father was chuckling, and Sally was shaking her head with resignation at their antics.

Jake figured it was now or never. He couldn’t hide it forever. “Here goes,” he said and flipped the eye patch upward. To his surprise, no one gasped or looked like they were about to vomit.

“It’s still blue,” Sally remarked.

What? As if the eye color were important! But she said it in a nice way—he knew how much she’d always liked his blue eyes—so, he forgave her.