Page 20 of A Hero Comes Home

“Like that matters! Do you think my appearance on Good Morning America was my idea? No way! I blame Laura Atler at The Bell. You remember her, don’t you? She took over the weekly when her grandfather went to the great tabloid in the sky.”

Jake did know Laura from back in high school. She’d been dating Izzie at the time. More important, there had been several text messages on Jake’s phone this week from Laura wanting an interview. When tuna fly! How she’d gotten his private number was beyond Jake. Note to self: change cell number. Neither Sally nor his father would have given it out. But then, the people in Bell Cove had their own network of sleuths. The FBI could learn a few things from them.

Jake remembered something else. “Hey, man, I was sorry to hear about Beth Anne dying.” There had been a scandal right after high school when Ethan had been forced to marry a pregnant Beth Anne, despite being in love, for years, with someone else. “She must have passed right after I was last deployed more than three years ago,” Jake remarked. “I told Sally to send flowers or a mass card. I assume she did.”

Ethan acknowledged his expression of sympathy for his deceased wife with a nod.

“But then, you just got married again a few weeks ago. Good for you! Guess you and Wendy finally got your acts together, huh?”

“Between the Rutledge trees and my dumbass moves with Wendy all those years ago, I’ve given Bell Cove more than enough to gossip about.” Ethan grinned. “Your turn now.”

“Great!”

“My sympathies, too, on your mother passing. She was a good woman. A great teacher.”

That was one of the many painful aspects of Jake’s return to Bell Cove. His mother not being there to greet him. When she was alive, his favorite spicy crab and sweet corn chowder would be simmering on the stove, no matter the weather, with fresh-baked hot biscuits cooling on the counter. A chocolate layer cake sitting on the milk glass pedestal in the center of the kitchen table. Freezing-cold milk in a glass bottle in the fridge.

Sally had never been much of a cook, or she hadn’t been before. But then, she’d always greeted him in other ways that had been equally sweet and hot. He doubted that would be the case today.

He had no chance to react to Ethan’s remarks about his mother because they were descending now, not to one of the busier wharfs around town, but a deserted, rocky shore, at Jake’s suggestion. Ethan brought the float plane down into the shallow water and dropped anchor. They would both get wet wading through the lapping surf, but no big deal. Better that than making his reentry to Bell Cove in a public way.

Just then, he heard a horn toot. Glancing to the right, a short distance away, he saw his old pickup truck. God, the thing must be twenty years old by now. Sally hadn’t sold it, as she’d threatened many times over the years. Why?

But then the truck door opened, and there she was.

Her hair . . . the long, luxurious chestnut hair he’d loved . . . was super short and spiky now. Not unattractive. Just different. She wore a red tank top and white shorts and athletic shoes. Her body was average to her, perfect to him, but gave the appearance of being petite because she was so fine boned and delicate. Childbirth, three times round, hadn’t changed her much, although her breasts had gained a cup size, to his delight and her embarrassment.

He knew every inch of that body . . . every ticklish spot, every erotic trigger point.

Or he used to.

Jake was different now.

Sally would be, too.

He was still in the open doorway of the seaplane, watching her walk closer. The shoreline was rocky and uneven; so, she didn’t rush. Maybe she wouldn’t anyhow. Maybe she had as many mixed feelings as he did about this “reunion.”

Now, only a few yards away, she stopped. He could see a few freckles on her bare arms and her fresh-scrubbed-looking face. Sally was twenty-eight years old, or would be soon, but she could pass for a teenager, or the college student she had been when they first met. As for the freckles, which she hated and he adored . . . he’d dreamed about those damn freckles more than once these past three years.

At just that moment, the bells began to sound out the hour, the bells having been a feature of many of his POW dreams, too. First, Our Lady by the Sea Catholic Church. Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong! Then, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong! And finally the clock in the town hall tower. Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!

Sensing his predicament, Ethan came around the side of the plane to help him out. Even with a cane, Jake would need to jump down the few feet into the shallow lapping waves. A jarring exercise in torture that would no doubt result in his falling flat on his face, sucking salt water. With Ethan’s hands under Jake’s elbows, practically lifting and lowering him, Jake managed to steady himself in the thigh-deep surf. He was wearing athletic shoes with no socks, and cargo shorts with a T-shirt; so, the wet didn’t bother him. Then, using the cane Ethan handed him, he hobbled up onto the rocky shore. He waved Ethan off, after he dumped Jake’s duffel bag in the back of the truck, mouthing “Thank you,” knowing Ethan needed to return to the mainland for some business. Only then did he glance over to Sally again.

She was staring at him with horror. Or was it pity? Either one was equally unpalatable to Jake.

I knew this would happen. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

Thus it was that the first words out of his mouth were: “So, Sally, how soon do you want a divorce?”

Still an ass! . . .

Sally was shocked at Jake’s appearance.

She’d been warned, but somehow she must have expected the same old Jake, with a few bruises and, of course, the eye patch, which was actually kind of appealing. She hadn’t expected him to be so thin . . . and . . . and . . . so helpless. At least twenty pounds lighter, which made him appear almost gaunt. And the limp . . . well, that wasn’t just a limp. My God! He couldn’t get out of the plane on his own. He wore some kind of soft brace that ran from his thigh to his calf. And he needed a cane! How would she ever get him into his pickup truck with its high chassis? And up the stairs at home?

She was not prepared for this!

Most shocking of all, of course, were his words to her. A divorce? Really? That’s the way he wanted to greet her after all this time? Really? Once an ass, always an ass, I suppose, she thought. In the later years of their marriage, he’d often blurt out such nonsense in the midst of an argument, or for no apparent reason.