The Top Gun's Return

Chapter 13

Gradually the days returned to more normal rhythms. On Monday Max left to go back to his home in Florida, and Sammi June drove off to school in Athens in the little red Chevy pickup truck Jimmy Joe had fixed up for her to use. Her professors were being understanding about giving her make-up exams and extensions on overdue papers. The last of the media people had left; their interest in Tristan's story had waned rapidly when they discovered he wasn't going to share with their audiences any of the gory details about his POW experience.

On Monday Jessie called the hospital to see how things were going in the NICU and found out that two of her nurses were out with the flu and a third had fallen off of a stepladder and broken her wrist. So on Tuesday she went back to work.

Tristan started running every morning with C.J. and working out with weights in his garage afterward. He'd been putting on weight, and was beginning to look almost like his normal self again. In the afternoon and evening he studied flight manuals and answered some of the hundreds of letters that had been pouring in from around the country, and drank beer steadily until he fell asleep around dusk, which in mid-May was about eight o'clock. By the time Jessie went up to bed he was snorin' like a buzz saw, as Granny Calhoun would've put it. He got up early, though, sometimes as early as four o'clock, tiptoeing around in the dark so as not to wake up Jessie while he dressed in his sweats and went downstairs to wait for it to get light enough to go running.

One evening he'd dozed off in Granny Calhoun's old recliner chair, watching the evening news on the TV in the living room. Not knowing what else to do, Jessie left him alone until ten o'clock, when she was ready to go upstairs to bed. Then she leaned over him and murmured, "Tris? Honey, you need to come to bed now-you're gonna get a crick in your neck." And she put her hand on his shoulder.

He made a wild, grunting sound and shot up out of the chair so fast the top of his head hit her in the mouth, and at the same time he was flailing at the air with his arms. An instant later he was on his hands and knees on the rug, and his face…Jessie had never seen such a look on anyone's face before, and to see it on his-her husband's-was almost more than she could bear. Shattered, tasting blood, she dropped to her knees and reached toward him in desperate apology.

"Oh God-Oh God-I'm so sorry-I forgot. I forgot. I'm sorry…" Tears were streaming down her face. "Tris, it's okay, honey. It's okay…"

He was looking around, not at her, eyes darting here and there like those of a trapped animal. Then, slowly, the bright terror in his eyes faded to dull awareness. He darted one quick, embarrassed look over his shoulder and said in a choked voice, "Your mom-"

"It's okay, she's already gone to bed. Oh, Tris-"

He reached out to brush her lip with his thumb. "I told you not to touch me." His voice was as harsh as his touch was gentle.

She caught her lip with her teeth and sucked it in, hiding the blood from him. "I know…I know. It's just that…you look so…you've been seeming so…"

"Normal?" Wearing a travesty of a smile like a Mardi Gras mask, he got stiffly to his feet, then took her hand and helped her to hers. "I thought this was normal-for someone like me, anyway. At least, that's what they keep tellin' me."

Aching inside, she slipped an arm around his waist. "We just have to be patient, give it time…"

He dropped his arm across her shoulders and drew her close to his side. "Yeah," he said, as they started up the stairs together, "they keep telling me that, too."

Tristan slept in one of the spare bedrooms that night, regretting the pain he knew it was causing Jess, but knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep after all that. He could feel the nightmares lurking still…feel the walls closing in on him even before he closed his eyes. Damned beer must be losing its effect, he thought.

Either that or it's this house. It gives me claustrophobia. It's Jess's place, not mine. There's no room for me here.

It wasn't that it was uncomfortable, this house his wife had grown up in. Just the opposite, in fact. In some sort of complicated, perverse way, it was the very comfort of it, the homeyness of it, that made him feel so alienated. He couldn't seem to get his mind around so much softness and warmth, the clean smells and good tastes, the laughter and the love. The cold and hunger, pain and fear and darkness of prison wouldn't let go of him. In the daylight hours he could convince himself he'd left all that behind him forever, but in the dark of night he knew better. He still hadn't escaped from those prison walls, and he was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

The next morning he told Jessie he was going to start looking for a house for them to rent. "I know your momma's got plenty of room," he said reasonably, "but we need a place of our own." He didn't use the word home. He still felt a long way from being able to do that.

His biggest problem, he soon discovered, was going to be transportation. There seemed to be plenty of vehicles around, but no spares, and even if there had been, it went against his grain to borrow a car from one of his wife's relatives. The obvious solution was to buy himself a car-he was going to have to, eventually. And money wasn't going to be an issue-he'd been given the first installment of his back military pay before he'd left Washington, which had amounted to a pretty sizable sum. But it was only one more confusing thing about his return to "normal" life that he found the idea of buying a car both thrilling and terrifying.

He didn't know where to begin. There were too damn many choices, that was the problem. After having someone else direct every aspect of his existence for eight years, he wasn't used to making decisions. Used or new? Foreign or domestic? Should he go for power and performance or fuel economy? He sort of liked the idea of the SUVs, but they were really more car than he needed. Sports cars tempted him, naturally, but that seemed a little too much like he was trying to overcompensate. On the other hand, everyday run-of-the-mill cars…hell, how would he ever decide on one? There had to be hundreds of them, all more or less alike.

In the end he said "The hell with it," and went out for his morning run. He was pumping iron over at C.J.'s when J.J. came ripping up on his shiny new Honda motorcycle. Tris stopped what he was doing to watch J.J. put the kick-stand down, take off his helmet and hang it on the handlebars, then dismount with a seventeen-year-old's flexible grace and come sauntering toward them, pulling off his gloves.

"Hey," J.J. said, grinning, the thrill of the ride still bright in his eyes.

Tris could feel that thrill himself, remembering his own brief spin on the bike. He felt it again now…a humming under his breastbone and a tingling in his thighs.

"Hey," C.J. grunted back to his nephew, between lifts.

Tris muttered something, he wasn't sure what. He was smiling and looking past J.J. at that black-and-yellow motorcycle.

"You did what?" Jessie couldn't believe what she was seeing with her own eyes. A motorcycle? But it was-a very big, very shiny, royal-blue motorcycle. And standing beside it was her husband, wearing a huge grin and a snug-fitting black leather jacket that seemed to have zippers everywhere.

"I bought it." He said it in a casual, offhand way, but the glow of pride in his eyes made her heart quiver. She tried to swallow the fear that had jumped into her throat and search for something positive to say.

"It's…" But it was no use. She shook her head helplessly.

"It's a BMW," Tris explained, as if she couldn't see that for herself. He was as enthusiastic as a boy. "It was between this and a Gold Wing-didn't want a Harley-I'm thinking, too much vibration-might be hard on my knee, you know? This hasn't got much vibration at all, just a nice, sweet hum… Hop on. Let's go for a ride."

"Oh, God, no…Tris-" She couldn't stop an involuntary recoil. She was remembering the autobahn, Tristan behind the wheel of a Euro-model Ford, and the wild light in his eyes and the twisted bitterness of his smile. Remembering her terror, her anger, she felt her breath grow shallow.

"Here, I even got you a helmet. And look-there's a backrest-and you can have armrests, too, if you want. It's like sitting in an easy chair."

He was imagining her there already, thinking how it would be with her behind him, arms locked tight around his waist and breasts pillowed against his back, and all that power under him and the wind pummeling his face and tearing the breath from his lungs. Power, speed and sex-all the things he'd been denied-right here, in one sleek, sexy package.

"Come on, Jess…ride with me," he murmured, folding his arms around her and nuzzling her neck with his sweetest voice and most seductive smile. Making a conscious point of doing what once had come as naturally to him as breathing. He felt her body expand with her indrawn breath, and her heart flutter inside her hospital smock, printed with alphabet blocks and Teddy bears in primary colors. Her skin was warm and damp and smelled of lotion and powder and disinfectant. "Just a short one…I'll take it easy, honey, I promise."

"Oh…" Her laugh was weak and fragmented, and he could feel her body softening…trembling…responding to him the way she always had…always would. It was one of the things that had made her so irresistible to him, back then. He chuckled and rocked her in his arms, rubbing himself suggestively against her, shameless in pressing his advantage. "Come on, darlin'…don't you trust me?"

And even as he said it, even before she laughed again and finally gave in, he knew that she didn't. Once she would have-utterly, completely, implicitly. And now she didn't.

He kept his smile in place as he helped her climb into the BMW's rear seat, showed her how to adjust the foot-and armrests and strap on the helmet. Then he took her for a ride, down the lane and onto the paved road, past C.J.'s place and then left onto the dirt track that ran between timber groves and came out on another paved road, this one curving around past Jimmy Joe and Mirabella's house and eventually back to where they'd started, taking it easy, the way he'd promised. He kept the BMW's speed to a sedate ramble that barely tapped its power potential, and erotic fantasies were far from his mind.

She was smiling when she took off her helmet and shook her hair loose on her shoulders, but more, he thought, from relief than any real joy in the ride. Her eyes were bright and her laughter breathless, and as he helped her dismount and get her feet steady under her, he was careful not to let her see how badly she'd disappointed him.

After a week or so, when Tristan hadn't managed to kill himself or suffer any other major calamities with the motorcycle, Jessie began to relax, a little. It was, she told herself, only a bike, and a rather sedate one, as bikes went. A BMW, for heaven's sake. After all, Tristan was a responsible adult, not some hotheaded, speed-crazy kid, and he really did seem to be getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. How could she begrudge him that?

Anyway, he'd been putting it to good use. For the past week, he'd been out and about almost every day, looking at properties for rent. So far, he told Jessie, he hadn't found anyplace that felt like home to him. She'd suggested that houses generally didn't come to feel like home until you'd lived in them awhile, but Tris had insisted he'd know the right place when he saw it.

The week before Memorial Day, Jessie came home from the hospital to find him waiting for her in the kitchen. It had been an unusually grueling day in the NICU. Rosie Johnson, a twenty-four-week preemie who'd weighed less than a pound at birth, after three months in the NICU, most of that in the high-risk unit, had finally been moved into an open crib, which was the last stage before release. Today her ecstatic parents had given her her first bath. Another long-termer, Kyle Rojas, had been rushed into surgery to repair a hernia, and for the Rockingham baby it had been one crisis after another. There'd been two new admits; one hadn't made it. Jessie had sat with the devastated parents while they'd held and rocked their impossibly tiny son, until they could bring themselves to say goodbye. It had been a gut-wrenching, roller coaster of a day.

Jessie was used to having some quiet time alone to decompress after such a day, maybe take a shower and wash the hospital smells out of her hair, or just sit on the porch with a glass of sweet tea and close her eyes and listen to the happy and unregulated sounds of birds and insects. She never liked to bring her job home with her, or burden anyone she loved with the emotional toll it sometimes took on her. Now, as she dropped her pocketbook on the table and saw Tristan's eyes glittering with poorly suppressed excitement, she could feel herself closing up, like a book interrupted at a particularly gripping spot and reluctantly put aside for later.

"Hey," she said as she went to kiss him. "You look like the cat that ate the canary." She didn't add that the last time he'd had that look, he'd just brought home a motorcycle.

"Mmm…" his lips curved and stretched, smiling against hers. "I bet I know what'd taste better."

"Tris-stop that! What if-"

"Your momma went to the grocery store. We've got all kinds of time. And right here's a perfectly good kitchen table…"

She squirmed out of his arms and gasped, "Tris!" But she was laughing, knowing he was teasing her. Knowing he could have worn down her resistance and her tiredness and taken her on that kitchen table if he'd tried, and in about half a minute, too, if he hadn't had something more important on his mind.

"Oh, right-so I guess this means the honeymoon's over," he muttered in feigned disappointment as she turned away and opened the refrigerator. He waited until she was pouring herself a glass of sweet tea before he said, with a definite air of smugness, "I think I've got us a place."

"Really?" Her guilty longing to be quiet and alone fled. "Where? In Athens?"

He shook his head and picked up a letter that was lying on the table. "I've been working through those letters, you know, trying to get them answered, a few at a time. Don't know when this came-it's from Tom Satterfield-remember him?" Jessie shook her head, but he hadn't waited. "We knew them in…I think it was Bremerton-or maybe Norfolk-oh, hell, I don't know. They were younger, but we got together with them because his wife was from South Carolina, and we sort of had that in common. Later on, he and I served on the Teddy Roosevelt together. He was a hotshot, just coming up back then."

Jessie took the letter from him and sat down at the table to read it while he went on. "Anyway, he's a Lieutenant Commander, now, back in the Gulf, probably be there for another six months, at least. They've got this lake house-his wife isn't using it, she's staying in Norfolk because she doesn't want to take their kids out of school-and he says we're welcome to stay there until we figure out where we're gonna be. Maybe even buy the place, if we like it and decide we want to stay in the area. So…what do you think?"

"Lake?" Jessie frowned at the letter without seeing it. So many alarm bells were going off in her head, she felt as if she were flashing back to her day in the NICU. Figure out where we're gonna be? But I want to be here! I don't want to go back to that life, always moving, moving, moving… "What lake?"

"Uh, somewhere in South Carolina. Lake Russell, I think. That's over on the Savannah-"

"I know where it is. Tris, how far is that from here? It's got to be at least forty miles." She was still staring at the letter; she didn't dare look at him.

"Yeah, probably. About that. That's closer to your mom than either Troy or Tracy-easy visitin' distance."

She pushed the letter away. Her hands wanted to shake, so she pressed them flat on the tabletop as she looked up at Tris. A frown was hovering around his eyebrows, as if not sure whether it should stay or not. "What about work? Tris, I'd have to drive an hour to get to the hospital. Maybe more. Each way."

The frown settled in to stay, and she saw his jaw tighten in a way she remembered all too well. He was about to dig his heels in. He'd got his mind set on this lake house, wherever it was, and nothing she said was going to change it. And wasn't this where she'd always given in and let him have his way? Wasn't this where she was supposed to swallow hard and go along with whatever he wanted, because she wanted to make him happy?

"Why do you need to work?"

Even though she'd been half expecting them, the words hit her like an electric shock. She felt herself go cold, and there was a singing in her ears that made all other sound seem as if it came from far, far away…

"I have eight years' back pay coming. Why don't you just quit your job? Then we can live anywhere we want to."

Anywhere you want to…that's really what you mean, isn't it?

Her heart was racing and her breathing was quick and shallow-classic symptoms of panic, she realized, and yes, every impulse, every nerve in her body wanted to jump up and run away from there, away from danger, away from him. It took every ounce of control she had to make herself sit still. With her hands resting on the tabletop to help still their trembling, she forced herself to think calmly…rationally. It was like counting to ten, she thought, without the numbers.

Danger? Yes…oh, yes. I'm in danger of losing something important to me…something I love. But is it him I'm afraid of, or myself?

I'm afraid I'll give in, she thought, cold now with an old familiar bleakness, trembling with an old familiar anger. I thought I'd changed, but I haven't. Not all that much.

"It's not about needing money," she said carefully. "Tris, I love my job. I don't want to quit. It's important, what I do." It's important to me.

She watched him, feeling wretched and ashamed, watched the frustration swelling inside his chest and stiffening his jaw. Saw his eyes glittering with the words he didn't want to say. More important than I am? Please don't let him ask, she prayed. And it occurred to her that she'd asked him that very question once, long ago. Her stomach writhed at the memory of it.

"I'm not asking you to quit," he said, gripping the back of a chair and leaning on it. "Can't you just…I don't know, take a leave of absence, or something? Just until I…" He stopped, and she could see a muscle working in his jaw.

He thinks I'm being selfish, she thought. Just as I thought he was then. And he was. And, oh God, I am, too. Here he'd suffered so terribly, and for so long, and how could she be worrying about a stupid job? What kind of person was she? What kind of wife? Didn't Tristan deserve every possible happiness? Shouldn't she be willing to make just about any sacrifice in order to help him find that happiness?

The answer was of course she should. She knew that. She knew she was being selfish and awful, and it didn't help.

It didn't stop her from saying, in a tight and trembling voice, "You know, Tris, you aren't the only one who's suffered." She looked at him, and her eyes burned, needing the relief of tears. "As horrible as it must have been for you, at least you knew you were alive. You knew we…were alive. Sammi June and I thought you were dead. We had to learn how to live without you. And we did. It wasn't easy, but we did it. And now…you're back in our lives. You had eight years of your life stolen from you, and that's horrible. It's not fair. But the thing is, you can't ask us-Sammi June and me-to give back those eight years. Even if we could. That wouldn't be fair, either."

There was an aching, shivering silence. Then Tristan tightened his hands on the chair back. "You're right-it wouldn't." He let go of it and walked out of the kitchen.

A moment later the screen door whacked shut, and Jessie jumped as though it had hit her. She closed her eyes, body tensed and waiting. It was only when she heard the brum-brum of the motorcycle's engine that the tears began.

It was late when Jessie heard the BMW's well-mannered thrum again. She was in bed but not asleep-Momma'd gone to bed hours ago-and the clock radio on the nightstand had just flipped from p.m. to a.m. She watched the pattern the single headlamp cast on her bedroom wall, and her heart thumped heavily in her chest.

I'll apologize, she thought. I'll tell him-not that I'm gonna quit my job…not that. A leave of absence, though…We'll talk about it. If he's got his heart set on that lake house, we'll work something out.

She lay like a board, listening for the quiet sounds of doors opening and closing…someone moving around in the kitchen…footsteps coming up the stairs. The footsteps passed her door and a moment later she heard the click of a door closing farther down the hallway. Tristan was sleeping in the spare room again.

Jessie put an arm across her eyes and let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating…aching…and she didn't know whether it was with disappointment or relief.

Tristan was still asleep when Jessie left for work the next morning, which surprised her a little; he'd been getting up faithfully at the crack of dawn to go running. It was probably just as well, she thought. They needed to have a good long talk, which there wasn't going to be time for before she had to leave. And with things the way they were between them, it was bound to be awkward and uncomfortable. She was sorry about that, she really was.

I'll apologize, and then we'll talk about it.

But even as she thought it, a bleak little kernel of hopelessness was forming in her belly. Talk? But that's the whole trouble, isn't it? We don't seem to be doing very well in that department. Tristan won't talk at all-not about anything important. And I can't seem to get my own feelings across to him, even when I try. What hope is there for us?

God, help me. I don't know what to do.

It was 11:36 that morning when Irene, the NICU receptionist, came to tell her she had a phone call. She knew that because she glanced up at the clock before she said, "Take a message for me, will you, hon'?" She was showing the Johnsons how to hook up Rosie's heart monitor and oxygen tubes, and Rosie wasn't at all happy about it.

"Uh…you might want to take it," Irene said. "It's Alysha, down in the E.R.?"

"Okay-be just a minute…" Jessie motioned to Ray, one of the staff nurses, to come and take over for her. A call from the E.R. wasn't unusual, and meant she'd most likely be getting a new patient soon-anything from an abandoned infant to an unexpected delivery in somebody's car or maybe the EMS wagon.

At her desk she stripped off her gloves and picked up the phone. "Hey, 'Leesha, whatcha got for me today?"

"Jessie?" The E.R. supervisor's voice sounded unusually restrained. "Honey, can you come down here, ASAP?"

"Uh…sure. What-" It took that long for something in the other nurse's tone to set off warning sirens in Jessie's head. Shocks, like electrical charges, zapped through her and sizzled inside her skin. She sucked in air. "Oh God. What's happened?"

"Honey, it's your husband. EMS just brought him in. There's been an accident."