Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

“I can understand that.” And she could. Maybe not in his precise terms, but in her own... Yeah, she could understand.

But the curling inward wouldn’t stop, and finally words burst out of her. “Sophie is the best thing in my life,” she said, tears starting to run down her cheeks. “My God, if something happened to her...”

He moved closer, drawing her into a gentle embrace, rocking her as if he knew how soothing that motion could be. “Nothing’s going to happen,” he murmured. “We’ll take care of her.”

The tears flowed silently, as if she couldn’t release the pain and terror enough to sob. Water seeping over a dam that held back the huge lake of terrible things that had never ceased to haunt her.

She felt guilty. The man holding her had been through far worse. Endured far worse. That thing about not being able to drive a car was only the tip of his iceberg, and she knew it. Yet he had the strength to try to protect her daughter. To hold her and offer comfort.

In the midst of it all, she realized what a crabbed soul she had become.

“My God,” she said, pulling away and hunting for the box of tissues she always kept on the end table. Finding it by feel, she pulled out a wad and scrubbed her face.

“What?” he asked.

“Sophie... She’s never known her father. It’s like with you. I took her away from him and made sure he couldn’t even see her on supervised visitation. What if she’s not as understanding as you? What if she grows up to hate me for that?”

Several heartbeats passed before he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with care. “Do you think,” he asked slowly, “that it would have been good for her to visit her father in prison? Good for her to ask questions about it at such a young age?”

“God! How did you know about Leo going to prison?”

“Micah.” He touched her shoulder briefly. Then he moved back to his end of the couch, giving her space.

She needed that space, and she hated needing it. She wanted the comfort he offered, yet it terrified her. Finally she asked the most dreaded question. “Did you ever hate your mother for what she did? Ever? Did you ever resent your father for not knowing?”

“I’m human,” he said. “I felt some ugly things, sure. Mostly when I was younger. As I grew older, I understood better. My mother used to have a saying. It helps.”

“And that was?”

“The secret to happiness is wanting what you have, not what you wish you had.”

Connie nodded, wiping her face again. “That’s good advice.”

“Not always easy to follow, but it’s a good guidepost.” He fell silent and thoughtful as the golden light began to fade from the living room. When he spoke again, it was to express volumes in a few words. “Sometimes it’s impossible to want what you have.”

She drew a sharp breath, sensing the anguish those calm words covered. The urge to try to soothe him in some way nearly overwhelmed her, but she didn’t have a clue what to do or say.

“I guess,” he said after a moment, “the thing you need to keep in mind is that even the worst things pass eventually. Everything passes.”

She suspected he might know more about that than most, given what he’d done and where he’d been. Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. He didn’t pull away but let her squeeze his fingers gently.

At that exact instant, Sophie bounded into the room, waving her cell phone and nearly hopping up and down. Connie swiftly released Ethan’s hand.

“Mom, Mom, Jody wants me to come over to spend the night tonight! Can I, please?”

Everything inside Connie shrieked no! but she held her tongue, trying to deal with the terror that swamped her and respond rationally. “I don’t know...”

“Aww, Mom, I’ll be safe there, and we’ll have so much fun.”

Connie fought the battle that every parent faces sooner or later, though in this case the threat was real, not imagined. In the end, after nearly biting a hole in her lip, she said, “Okay. But I’m driving you over there and picking you up in the morning, and under no circumstances are you to go anywhere without Jody’s mom.”

Sophie let out a shriek of delight and began babbling to Jody on the phone that she’d be over as soon as she got her pajamas and sleeping bag. A second later she was running up the stairs.

“That was brave,” Ethan remarked.

“Or foolish.” Connie shook her head. “I’m overreacting. She’ll be okay with Jody’s family.”

“Of course she will. One thing you can say about creeps like this is that as a general rule they prefer their victims to be alone and unprotected. She’ll be neither.”

Gratitude warmed Connie. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re doing the hard job.”

“I just hope I’m doing it right. I guess you get the night off. Want me to take you up to see Micah?”

He shook his head. “We talked some this afternoon. Some things just take time, Connie. We’re taking our time.”

“All right, then. Help yourself to anything you want.” She rose. “It’ll only take me ten minutes to run Sophie over there.”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine. You just go.”

She thought about inviting him to ride along, then realized that would mean getting into a car, and she suspected that being a passenger probably was only marginally more comfortable for him than driving, despite all his hitchhiking. As a passenger, if he had a flashback at least he couldn’t be in control of the vehicle.

Sophie came bouncing down the stairs with her sleeping bag and backpack. “I’m ready!”

Ethan smiled. “I guess so.”

Connie looked at Sophie and started smiling, too. This child was so precious, so full of life. Her heart swelled with love. “Let’s go, sweetie.”

Behind her, Ethan sat staring into the darkening living room.

Chapter 10 (#ulink_aeeacf02-8104-5e82-b8ac-70ea3514a7a4)

While Connie was gone, Ethan stepped outside to walk around the house again. His training had built a restlessness into him, and he still struggled to realize that war no longer surrounded him. The thing with Sophie was keeping him on his toes, which he supposed was delaying his readjustment a bit.

Not that he blamed anyone for that. He actually felt good about having something useful to do, something he’d been lacking since he’d been shipped home on a stretcher from Afghanistan. He didn’t remember much about being wounded, and the pain that plagued him had become a background noise to his days.

He still didn’t fully understand why he was receiving a discharge. People with worse injuries returned to combat or took support positions of some kind. But somehow, because of the decision of some review board, he was out.

He struggled with that. He worried about his unit all the time. A sense of failure pervaded his every waking moment, just as nightmares haunted his dreams. He didn’t feel as if he had a problem of that magnitude, but apparently others thought differently.

You have inoperable shrapnel embedded near your spine. It hadn’t affected him yet, other than to cause pain, but one of the doctors had said that it would be years, if ever, before the body’s protective mechanisms immobilized it or even ejected it. Until then, the wrong move could paralyze him.

And maybe that was all it was. Maybe they felt he could endanger his unit. One wrong move and he could become an instant paraplegic. Yeah, that could be a problem, all right, but no more of a problem than if it happened because of a wound on the spot.

He paused, looking up at the stars, noting that here in town he couldn’t see very many. Not nearly as many as he had seen at night in Afghanistan. Most people in this country probably had almost no idea anymore of how many stars were up there, how many could be seen in the inky blackness of true night. He knew he’d been amazed when he’d looked up from the mountains of Afghanistan the first few times.

Sighing, he continued his perimeter check. He wondered if the good memories would ever begin to replace the bad. These days, his brain functioned like a bad TV show, with almost subliminal flashes of people being torn apart, buddies dying, and all the rest of it. It was as if no matter what he was doing or thinking about, some nasty director would flash up an image so fast he almost didn’t catch it.