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BOOK OF THE MONTH: HOMEFRONT
CHAPTER FOUR
“Did you really move here?” Jamie asked after a moment.
The hope in Jamie’s voice chipped away at the stone that encased Melanie’s heart. Even if Gale had moved here, Gale wouldn’t really be here. The Army would always take him away again. Or give him an excuse to leave.
He had never been there when they’d been younger. Oh, he’d been around just long enough to marry her and then it had been off to Kuwait for a year or some other place that had needed him more than his family had.
He’d deployed to Bosnia right after the divorce. She remembered sitting at her mother’s tiny two-bedroom apartment, holding a colicky Jamie while they both cried their hearts out. She’d been so afraid for him, even after their marriage had ended.
She stole a long look at him while he was paying attention to Jamie and her homework at the kitchen table. The years had been good to him. He’d always been tall but he’d filled out. His shoulders were wider than when they’d been younger, his arms bigger. He’d finally grown into those hands she’d loved when she’d first met him.
There were flecks of grey now in the closely shorn black hair at his temples.
His eyes, though – his eyes were so different. They were still the same deep dark brown with impossible lashes that she’d first noticed when he’d been a gawky kid at eighteen and she’d been so impressed that he was going to be a soldier. Now, though, they were lined with fatigue and worry and too much time in the Iraqi sun.
“Yeah, Jamie. I’m going to be stationed here for the next few years.” He cleared his throat and Mel didn’t miss how he was pointedly avoiding looking in her direction. “And then I think I’m going to retire.”
She dropped the spoon. It clattered to the counter, splattering yellow goop across the counter. “Damn it,” she muttered.
She never expected that he would be anything other than a soldier. He’d been born for the uniform. It was part of what made her fall for him way back when. And it was what had made her leave him when she realized that she would never be the priority in his life that she selfishly needed to be. The idea that he would ever be anything other than a soldier had seemed impossible when she’d been up for weeks with a crying baby and she hadn’t seen her husband because he’d been in the field.
She felt his gaze on her back as she cleaned up the mess.
“So where will you settle down?” she asked, not looking at him. Her voice was edgy. Off.
“I was thinking I’d try to find a job around here. Maybe as a contractor or something.”
“Really?” She didn’t need to see Jamie’s face to hear the unfiltered joy in her daughter’s voice. It was instant forgiveness to a father who hadn’t been there. She should be happy that Jamie didn’t hold his past actions against her dad. But that joy burned in Melanie’s heart as something she would never have from her daughter.
Melanie was the one who’d made it to every school play, who’d patted Jamie’s back when she’d been sick, who had taken her to the doctor. Melanie was the one who lay awake worried about her now, terrified that the scars on her arm were hiding a sign of something worse to come.
And Gale was able to just walk in, announce that he was going to settle down in the area, and her daughter was bursting with instant forgiveness. She took a deep breath. This was not a bad thing. She would not be pissy about this.
She turned slowly, schooling her features. “I think that’s really great,” she said cautiously and hoped there was no edge to her words.
It was hard. So damn hard.
Gale watched her silently for a moment then turned his attention back to their daughter, his expression unreadable. “Yeah. I’ve been gone too much. I haven’t been there for you. Or your mom.” He rubbed his big hand over his jaw, darkened with five o’clock shadow. “I can’t get that time back. But maybe I can be here now.”
Melanie focused on scooping mac and cheese into the waiting bowls. “Order up,” she said, forcing a lightness into her words that she didn’t feel. “I’m going to go change. Jamie, please empty the dishwasher when you’re done eating.”
“Ugh.”
The sound was like nails on a chalkboard. Melanie almost snapped at her but bit it back fiercely. She could do without sniping at her daughter for the duration of however long Gale would be here. Gale could have dinner with his daughter without her pissing in it. Just because all Melanie ever did was fight with Jamie didn’t mean she had to do it tonight. Maybe they could have a meal without one of them leaving the table in tears.
“You’re not going to eat with us?” Gale asked.
“I need to…I need a minute to change,” Mel said. It was a retreat and they both knew it. “You should get caught up with Jamie. She’s missed you.”
She padded out of the kitchen and gently closed the bedroom door behind her, surprised by the regret and sadness dancing in her thoughts.
It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered how things would be different if she’d had the courage to stay. To be the devoted Army wife while Gale was off being the soldier he needed to be. About what would have happened if she’d stayed married to a man who loved the Army more than her. They’d been poor when they’d first gotten married but they’d been happy because she’d thought she loved him enough for both of them. Then she’d gotten pregnant before either of them realized what had happened and everything changed.
Gale had started working harder, hoping to get promoted early. He’d been worried about money and the cost of the baby. And Mel had been worried about raising the baby right on little money.
And so they’d struggled. And as they’d struggled, things had gotten worse and worse between them until Melanie finally broke and their marriage had shattered in the wreckage.
What if she’d been stronger? She’d tossed the thoughts over in her head and reached the same conclusion she always did¾the divorce had been inevitable. She hadn’t wanted to spend her life waiting for a man who would spend more time at war than he did at home.
Leaving had seemed like the way to protect her heart from the life of disappointment she’d been facing. Looking back now, though, she wasn’t so sure. Things had been hard with Jamie. Harder, too, when she thought about all the nights she’d lain awake watching the news and worrying about Gale when he’d been deployed.
Of course, she’d never admit that she’d worried about him when he’d deployed. He’d always kept her informed of when he was leaving, when he would expect to be home.
When he would pop in for a week or so and spoil their daughter, then escape again into the ether of his latest assignment.
And when he left again, she would try not to miss him. Because she did. She always did. That hadn’t changed with the divorce.
Many things had, but not that.
***
“So how’s school?” Gale asked, chasing a half-moon noodle around his plate. He hated macaroni and cheese. He’d always hated it, primarily because he’d grown up eating it so much when he was a kid.
It had been a cheap way to feed four kids. He didn’t blame his parents. They’d done the best they could by him and his brothers while Mom had worked third shift at the mill and Dad had worked the woods until the mud and the rain and the snow pushed them out of the forest. Still, he hated mac and cheese all the same. It was so funny when people found out about it. It was as if he’d said he hated kittens and kicked puppies.
“Fine,” Jamie said.
“Just fine?”
Jamie rolled her eyes and Gale’s jaw tightened instinctively. The simple gesture struck straight to Gale’s last nerve. He paused. The whole roll-your-eyes thing was the one thing that his soldiers could do to make him completely lose his shit. But Jamie was not one of his soldiers.
“Yeah, Daddy, fine.” She looked up at him from the massive plate of carbs and fake cheese. “You’re not going to start nagging me about school like Mom, are you?”
“Probably,” he said mildly, still toying with that noodle. “School’s important.”
She tipped her head at him and Gale saw a flash of Melanie when she’d been just a little older than Jamie was now. Defiance and spark. God, but she’d been a pistol when they’d been kids.
“Really? That’s why you’re in the Army, right? Because school’s so important.”
Gale set the spoon down with forced gentleness. He couldn’t say what was grating down his spine but something about Jamie’s tone was striking all the wrong nerves.
And that said a hell of a lot about his parenting potential. He’d been around her for all of fifteen minutes and he was having a damn anxiety attack. “Twenty years ago school wasn’t like it is now. The jobs weren’t the same. You need to do well in school so you can get a good job and support me and your mom when we’re old and broke.” He grinned and wished he actually felt the smile on his lips. But he was good at faking things these days. Smile and wave and no one asked any questions. “If you don’t have a good enough job to pay for an old folks home, we’ll have to live with you.”
Jamie made a disgusted sound, completely unimpressed with his sarcasm. Obviously, he needed to learn to speak teenage girl as opposed to teenage boy. He could speak that language. Hell, half his company was seventeen to twenty years old. But talking to a young knuckle dragger was a hell of a lot easier than trying to find common ground with this mysterious member of the female species sitting across the table from him.
He was suddenly acutely aware that he had no idea how to act around this particular female. It was like his little girl had been replaced with an alien life form of rolling eyes and bad attitude.
“Yeah, ’cause work is the most important thing, right?” She pushed her plate away and slid her chair back. The conversation was going from bad to worse and Gale couldn’t figure out what the hell he’d done to derail things so badly.
“Your mother asked you to do the dishes,” he said.
“I have homework.” She made that sound again and stalked from the room while Gale sat there, stunned and speechless.
What the hell had just happened? He hadn’t seen her in years and she was rushing off to do homework? How the hell was that for a welcome home? He was not used to people walking away from him. He was a first sergeant in the U.S. Army. People did not just walk away.
His blood pressure spiked, and he took a deep breath. In through the nose and out through the mouth like the anger management coach had taught him the first time he’d been sent there by his commander. That had been five years ago, when he’d thrown his helmet at some young, smart-mouthed lieutenant who’d refused to listen and had gotten three of their boys shot up as a result. Then came the incident downrange last time. Clearly his training wasn’t worth a damn if it failed when he needed it most.
He’d never been a believer in the deep breathing techniques, but hey, it was better than his instinctive reaction might have been. What he wanted to do was yank her little ass back into the kitchen and make her do the dishes and then some. If he had his way, he’d have her cleaning the kitchen grout with a toothbrush and scouring powder.
What he actually did was sit at the table and take deep breaths like the deadbeat father he was.
“That was fast,” Mel said from the doorway to her bedroom. “She knows how to push all the right buttons, doesn’t she?”
It was amazing the transformation a simple change of clothes could do. Mel was wearing a plain white t-shirt and well-worn jeans. The clothes hugged the curve of her hips. Hips that used to fit perfectly in his palms, once upon a time¾and where the hell had that thought come from?
Still, he couldn’t look away. Melanie was a beautiful woman, sophisticated and so far out of reach it wasn’t even funny.
He cleared his throat, pulling his thoughts away from the dangerous detour they’d just attempted. “Is she always like that?” He picked up Jamie’s plate and slid the rest of the mac and cheese into the trash.
“Pretty much since puberty,” Melanie said as she started emptying the dishwasher. “I’ve seriously considered boarding school. Possibly the Citadel.”
Gale didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or be horrified. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”
Mel deliberately looked away, avoiding his eyes. Finally, she looked up and her eyes were filled with a kind of regret. “She’s always been difficult but—” Melanie pressed her lips together into a flat line and looked toward the living room where Jamie had vanished. “This is going to make me sound like the worst mother in the world but she’s been a monster since she started getting her period. Days go by where she doesn’t speak to me at all. And after…”
Gale stood rooted to the spot. He didn’t know what to do, what to say. He paused, looking over at her. There was a deep sadness around her eyes, in the tension around her mouth.
Because he could think of nothing else to do, he reached for her, covering her hand with his own. Her skin was smooth and soft, the bones fragile beneath his touch. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here, Mel.” A hesitant admission.
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with unsaid things. Her gaze flicked to their hands and he was suddenly conscious of the roughness of his palms, the grate of calluses on her skin.
She slipped her hand from his. “We can’t change anything now, can we?” Soft words that slid between his ribs and sliced at his heart. She started taking the dishes from the dishwasher while Gale stood there helpless and mute.
He wanted to help. He needed to do something. But there was nothing for him to do but stand there and feel useless while she emptied the dishwasher. He glanced down at the trashcan. Maybe…nope. The bag was fresh and empty.
“Why are you here, Gale?” She didn’t turn back to look at him when she asked the question that tore out his heart.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Because I haven’t been.”
She flicked the dishwasher closed and leaned against the counter, folding her arms over her chest. “Why now?” No anger in those words.
Gale rubbed his thumb against the cool granite countertop, swiping at an imaginary spot. A far cry from the cheap Formica they’d had in that trailer once upon a time. “I had the opportunity to come to Hood and I took it.” His answer felt lame and amateurish but he could find nothing better. He didn’t need to tell her about the assault or Sarn’t Major Cox saving his ass by getting him down here. Funny, he could walk around in the middle of a shit storm with the world blowing up around him, but right then, standing in his ex-wife’s kitchen, anxiety clutched at his insides and squeezed his lungs. “I figured maybe I could be closer to Jamie and—” You.But he didn’t say that out loud. Fear choked the word off. “I wanted to try to be a father while I still had the chance. You know, before she moved out and went to college and started doing body shots on the weekends.”
“That is a terrifying visual.” Melanie braced her hands on the counter. Gale tried not to notice how the movement stretched the fabric across her breasts. Because nothing said trying to make amends by staring at your ex-wife’s tits like a lovesick puppy.
He kept waiting for the argument to start. The same argument they had year after year.
She would slap at him for being gone. He would slap at her for leaving. She would blame him for never being there. He’d apologize for the U.S. starting the wars that took him away.
They’d end up at the same bitter impasse.
Instead, Melanie sighed heavily, her eyes closed, her expression weary. “I’m glad you’re here.”
It was not a response he’d expected.
***
“Come again?”
She almost smiled at the surprise in his words but she didn’t. Because her heart was bruised and tired tonight and it was nights like this that she often found herself dreaming of stupid, foolish things.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she repeated. She could have lied and changed her words but she doubted that he really hadn’t heard her. Besides, part of her wasglad he was here. “Maybe you can be the bad guy once in a while.”
She finally dared to look up at the man standing in her kitchen. He was so different from the man she’d married once upon a time and a lifetime ago. The changes were more than the thickness in his body or the weariness etched into his skin. There was something darker about him now. Not tainted, but no longer innocent. Something that made her wonder at the things he’d seen and done in the name of God and country.
The house was silent around them. She’d worked hard to provide the trappings of a nice life for her daughter. Polished and gleaming and hollow. Empty of the toys Melanie used to trip over when Jamie was younger. Empty of signs that a family lived here. Instead, it felt like two ships passing in the night and Jamie was pulling further and further away from her every day.
Maybe with Gale here, things could be different. Maybe they could draw her back from the precipice she balanced on. Make their daughter hate her a little bit less and try to recapture the hints of a family that she’d always tried to provide.
Melanie offered a watery shrug. She was just tired today. That’s all. “It’s just that everything is a fight with her. Getting her to school in the morning, doing her homework.”I’m afraid, Gale.But she didn’t say it. She couldn’t give voice to the fear that choked her. “I’m just tired of fighting with her.” She smiled weakly. “You should move in and I’ll move out for a little while. Have at her.”
Gale folded his arms across his broad chest. He was a massive man, still in his prime, and he was standing in her kitchen. “Is she still going to counseling?”
Mel closed her eyes, hating the elephant in the room. “Twice a week.”
“Meds?”
“Anti-depressants.” Her voice broke. Rationally she knew that Jamie’s mental health issues were not her fault, but the guilt wasn’t buried deep enough that she could avoid the hurt.
“Mel.” She opened her eyes and he was there, in her space. Close enough that she could see the small scar on the edge of his lip, the five o’clock shadow against his jaw. “It’s not your fault.” Quiet words overlaid on steel.
Her throat constricted and it was suddenly difficult to swallow. She waved one hand, trying to fake flippancy and failing miserably. “Oh, you know, mommy guilt and all that.”
Her cheeks heated beneath his gaze but he didn’t step away. Neither did he move. “What about you?” he asked softly.
“What about me, what?” He was standing too close. She should move or make him. It was her house. And yet she didn’t.
She had no claim to this man. No, she’d given that up years ago when she’d walked away, taking a colicky baby and sentencing herself to hard years alone. There were plenty of men interested in the ex-wife but once they discovered the little girl, no one had wanted to take on the baggage of someone else’s kid. So Mel had embraced the solo life and done her best by her daughter.
“How are you dealing with everything?” His voice rumbled deep in his chest.
“Fine,” she said, because there was nothing more she could say without spilling everything. And she was so damn tired of carrying the load alone.
If there was one thing she knew with absolute certainty it was that Gale was good at making promises, not so much on delivering. She was sure that the moment she leaned on him, she’d find herself alone, leaning into the wind.
He was still watching her, still too close. Finally, he shifted and leaned against the island, creating at least the idea of breathing room between them.
“I’m holding a first sergeant job in the First Cav so I’ll be busy but it’s not my first time doing it.” He adjusted his feet, crossing them at the ankle. “I’d like to come around more,” he said.
Melanie’s heart sank with his words. “You won’t have time, Gale.”
“I’ll make time.”
She folded her arms over her chest, mirroring his position. Needing the barrier between them. “Why now? What’s this big impetus for showing up and wanting to be a father to a kid who’d rather spit at you than talk to you?” She held up a hand. “Oh wait, that’s me.”
His dark eyes were filled with sympathy and something she couldn’t identify. “Maybe I’ve been doing it all wrong.”
She tipped her head. “Doing what wrong?”
“Life. The Army. All of it. Maybe I’ve been doing all of it wrong.”
There was more there. Things he wasn’t saying. Regret stood between them, empty and hollow and filled with aching things.
Melanie looked away from the intensity looking back at her. She scuffed her toe against the tile. “I guess I don’t know what to say to that,” she mumbled finally.
“How has she been?”
Melanie looked away from the raw ache in Gale’s eyes—from the fear that mirrored her own. The unspoken question in those words that he couldn’t voice. The question that haunted her dreams and twisted them into nightmares. “I haven’t caught her again.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I hope?” She rubbed her hands against her upper arms. “She scares me. What kind of parent am I that I’m terrified of what my daughter can do to herself?” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “All I keep thinking about is when she was in the hospital. I came home today and she’d locked herself in her room. Gives me a heart attack every time she doesn’t answer right away.”
Gale stilled. “What do you mean, locked herself in her room?”
Mel sighed heavily. “Every time I find her door locked, I get this bolt of fear that I’m going to find her—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Cutting again,” she said after a moment.
Her heart jammed in her throat as familiar anger rose from a place she’d been unable to cleanse. He hadn’t come home. Oh, on an intellectual level, she’d understood that his commander hadn’t allowed it. But as she’d sat in that hospital room and done battle with a daughter who’d sliced her own skin, she’d been angry that he’d left her alone. Again.
The upstairs door slammed again and Melanie’s mouth pressed into a hard line. Gale looked up at the ceiling with her.
“Is it wrong that I want to go upstairs and check the bathroom?” Her voice cracked on the words.
“I don’t think so.” Gale took a single step closer. Close enough that when he lifted his hand to her shoulder, she could see the stubble on his jaw. This time when he reached for her, she didn’t pull away. She simply stood there, drawing strength from the man in her kitchen. It was weak and it was foolish but at that moment, she didn’t care. “She certainly knows how to go for blood, doesn’t she?” Gale mumbled after a moment.
“It’s the same fight, Gale. Every. Single. Time. She’s so stubborn.” A strand of hair fell from behind her ear and she tucked it back, not missing how his eyes followed her movement.
Mel cleared her throat. It was tempting, so tempting to stand there with him and pretend like everything was normal. That the last fifteen years and some change hadn’t happened. Bigger things were at stake here than any latent feelings that being around Gale might stir up. Still, the validation that her fear and concern weren’t unreasonable felt nice for a change. Far better than the cruel abuse she levied on herself for not doing better with Jamie.
“I want to help,” he said. He swallowed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I know it’s late and I should have been here years ago and I don’t deserve it but I’d like a chance. You know, to be around.”
She looked up at him. “I’ve never stopped you from seeing Jamie.”
“I know. I just…I want.” He glanced toward the stairs where their daughter had flounced off. “It looks like I’m going to need some pointers on how to handle her.”
Melanie smiled softly and for the first time, a hint of the shadows in his eyes faded a little. “I’m probably not the person you need to ask. I’m not doing very good at this whole parenting thing.”
He slid his hand up to cup her cheek. “You’re doing the best you can.”
The tenderness of the gesture overwhelmed her. His hand was big and strong and gentle, so gentle. Like he was afraid she was going to shatter beneath his touch.
In truth, she might. Because in that single touch, her heart swelled, breaking free of the stone she’d deliberately built to protect herself from her feelings for this man that had never gone away, no matter how much time and distance she’d put between them.
***
He stood there looking down at her, at the beautiful, tired woman his ex-wife had become. Her lips were parted, just a hint. He could lean down and close the distance between them. And it was tempting, so tempting to taste her again. To see if she was all that he remembered, all that he’d dreamed about for so many years.
This wasn’t why he’d come here tonight. He’d long ago given up hope that there could be anything between him and Melanie again. There was too much pain, too much bitterness.
But in that moment, he felt something he’d thought long dead.
He felt hope.
Almost, he leaned in closer. Almost, he could taste her lips on his.
A muffled vibration broke the tension. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as his cell phone broke the mood and shattered it on the polished granite countertop.
“Do you have to get that?” she said after he made no move to answer it.
He met her gaze, not bothering to hide the stark regret that burned in him at that moment. “Yeah.” He looked down at the phone. Sarn’t Major Cox.
He turned to step outside to answer it because it was work. It was always work that took him away from her.
“I need you and the other first sergeants in my office, time now,” was Cox’s greeting.
“Roger, Sarn’t Major.” Because there was no other response he could give. He hated himself when he stepped back into her kitchen. “I have to go,” he said.
“Of course you do.” Resignation laced her words.
“I’m sorry, Mel.”
She hesitated, long enough that he turned to go. “I know,” he heard faintly as he let himself out.
She didn’t stop him. He didn’t blame her. There was too much hurt and bitterness.
And he was unable to find a way across the chasm of fifteen years and the many disappointments that stood between them.
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