Page 4 of A Hero Comes Home

What does it mean?

What is the worst thing these people could tell me?

Jake is dead. He can’t be declared dead again.

Maybe it’s some posthumous medal he’s being given. Well, forget that. She’d had enough with the military long before Jake had left for his last deployment. But Jake had been gung-ho Uncle Sam and God Bless America to the end, bless his patriotic soul.

“Mrs. Dawson?” the general said when she got close enough to notice the grim expression on his face, which matched the one on Kevin’s face, as well as that of the senator who had a cell phone in one hand, which he was tapping away at with an expert thumb. How rude! But then, maybe it was an important call he had to make. Direct line to the president, she joked to herself.

But then she heard him say, “Yes, Mr. President.”

Holy frickin’ hell!

“Yes. I’m Mrs. Dawson,” she said to the general.

Kevin walked away, leaving her on her own.

It was all so strange. If she’d felt like Alice falling through the Graceland rabbit hole before, now it was more like Alice in Woo-Woo Land.

Only seconds had gone by, but her brain reacted like it was viewing a series of slides. Pictures on the walls of her brain that went click, click, click.

Kevin greeting her before she reached home, a warning of sorts in his caring eyes.

The black sedan with the government plates in front of her house. Didn’t they see the no parking sign?

A high-ranking military man waiting. For me!

And a senator, for heaven’s sake. In Bell Cove! The townies will have him over at the Elvis diner doing the Shag, if they find out.

The surprisingly absent sound of three boys laughing and shouting at the same time, each vying to get her attention, especially after a day fishing. What does it all mean?

The military man coughed to clear his throat and said, “I’m General George Parker from the Joint Chiefs. In Washington.”

She tilted her head to the side and waited.

“I have some good news for you, Mrs. Dawson,” he said, though the tone of his voice didn’t sound like it.

“That’s great. I could use some good news.”

Was it ironical, or what, that the bells of Bell Cove began to ring then? A drumroll couldn’t have done it better. Bong, bong, bong, bong! Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong! Clang, clang, clang, clang!

When the reverberation of the bells stopped, into the silence General Parker announced, “Your husband is alive.”

Chapter 2

He could “go home again,” but he didn’t want to . . .

“Oompfh!” The muscles in Captain Jacob Dawson’s scarred back screamed with agony as he lowered the bar on the weight machine. The compact multifunction gym station, which probably cost a cool fifty grand, worked every part of the body imaginable. Today, Jake was concentrating on lost upper body strength. An uphill battle to say the least . . . and painful!

“Jake, my man, you are sweating like a fisherman hauling in two-hundred-pound gill nets under a blistering Outer Banks’ sun.”

Surprised, Jake twisted around on his seat, too quickly, and about passed out at the lightning bolt of pain that struck the back of his skull. Even so, he reached, reflexively, for his trusty Ruger, which, of course, wasn’t there. All this happened within a split second, and he was about to duck for cover when reality hit.

It was just his longtime friend, second lieutenant Isaac Bernstein, who’d walked, unannounced, into his private room at the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany. “And, dude . . .” Izzie sniffed the air in an exaggerated fashion, ignoring Jake’s reaction, “you stink like bad tuna, too.”

“Bite me!” Jake said and stood, taking a moment to get his balance. He still wasn’t used to the soft brace on his left leg. He limped over to the bench where he grabbed a gym towel and began to wipe the sweat off his brow and bare chest.

“How’s the leg doing?” Izzie asked after watching his halting progress.