Page 40 of A Hero Comes Home

“Are you still in the military, Jacob? I know you reupped for another four years before your last deployment, but does that mean you’re still considered active duty?”

“I’m on medical leave at the moment, and with all the rehab I need, my term of duty will end in March, like it would normally. It will be up to me to decide whether to reup again then.”

Shock appeared on her face for a moment before she masked it over. Still, she glanced at his leg and his eye, and Jake knew what she was questioning. How could he ever engage in battle again?

He couldn’t.

“They want me to work in the Pentagon, some kind of public affairs position.” In other words, a propaganda puppet.

The shock was back, or was it anger now? “Please don’t tell me you accepted without discussing it with me first.” She’d said almost those exact words when he’d told her he reupped for four years before his last deployment.

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t accept, and I have no intention of moving to the capital.”

The expression on her face revealed nothing about her feelings at that news. “What will you do?”

His head was beginning to hurt, along with his leg. “Do we have to discuss this now?”

He could tell that she wanted to, but she conceded. “No. But we do need to talk sometime, Jacob.”

And she wasn’t just referring to his career plans. He knew that.

For a few moments, there was just silence between them as they looked at each other. The pretty peach dress was hiked up to her thighs and he noticed once again how bronzed she was, all over, or at least what he could see, and that was a lot. “How is it that you’re so suntanned, Sal? Don’t you spend your days indoors at the bakery?”

“The bakery doesn’t open until eight, but I usually go in at about four to start the ovens and begin baking. I stay until after the lunch hour, and then I leave the bakery in the hands of one of the clerks who work for me. The rest of the day I spend with the boys, usually on the beach over by the lighthouse if the weather is nice. I go in again, after the kids are in bed, to prepare the breads and rolls so they can rise overnight.”

He nodded, though he had to wonder how she juggled so many hours. Very efficient, his wife had become. Maybe she always had been, and he’d just never noticed, or hadn’t been home to notice.

His bad!

Or more of his bads!

As if she’d read his mind, she added, “Your dad, and your mom when she was alive, helped me a lot. Your dad still does. He, or Old Mike, come over in the evenings for those few hours I’m gone. I don’t know how I would have survived without them . . . all of them. And the townsfolk, too. Your mother probably instigated the help from that quarter, everything from volunteer cleaners and painters when I first bought the bakery to, yes, the yellow ribbons. Your mother’s rosary society came in for coffee and donuts every morning after mass, religiously.” She smiled at her pun.

The pain of his mother’s death hit him with a sharp stab to the heart. The loss was still new to him.

“Your mother prayed for you every day, you know. And she was always doing novenas for ‘special intentions,’ but everyone knew they were for you.”

That shocked him, for some reason. “Because she thought I was still alive.”

She shook her head. “No. The military was definite in declaring you dead. She just prayed for you, wherever you were.”

“In hell,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He used his cane to help propel himself up out of the chair. When he stood, he said, “C’mon. Let’s go outside before everyone starts speculating about what we’re doing in here.”

“No one would think that.”

“Are you kidding? They’re probably taking bets on how many times I need to boink you to make up for three years in a cave.”

“Boink?” She laughed. “Just out of curiosity, how many boinks would that be?”

“Five hundred, at least.”

She had nothing to say to that, but she did blush, which he kind of liked. Nine years of marriage, and I can still make my wife blush. How about that?

As he began to walk beside her down the hall toward the kitchen, he said, “I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”