The Way Home

Chapter 29

Minnesota, late November

JEFF SAT IN FRONT OF THE T V in the new recliner Jess had bought for him, the dog asleep by his feet.

“To keep that leg up,” she’d said with an overbright smile when the chair had been delivered shortly after she’d brought him home to this apartment above a store he’d apparently frequented but didn’t remember. “Don’t think I don’t notice that it swells up on you if you’re on it too much.”

He’d been back in Minnesota for two weeks. And everything about the Crossroads General Store and the lake where he’d grown up fishing and hiking and hunting and camping remained as foreign to him as a moonscape.

“Did we live here?” he’d asked Jess after he’d painstakingly climbed up the stairs from the store to the apartment for the first time.

“We didn’t, no. I lived here with my parents. You spent a lot of time here, though.”

“Why? Did I work here?”

“No. I did. You hung around so you could flirt with me,” she’d said easily and with a shy smile. “After we got married, you and I lived on several different Army posts. We were at Bragg when you deployed and…” She let the thought trail off.

And went to Afghanistan and got killed, was what she was going to say. Maybe he should have gotten killed. Maybe he should have died over there.

“But then you already know you were at Bragg,” she added inanely.

Yeah. He knew. After he’d been discharged from the hospital three weeks ago, they’d put him and Jess and his brother up at the Fisher House that had been built specifically for rehabbing soldiers and their families so they’d all have someplace to stay during his debriefing. All of them had been relieved when there’d been three bedrooms.

He’d hoped returning to Bragg would help jog his memory, that maybe he’d remember the good times. Instead, it had been pure hell. The debriefing sessions exhausted him. Worse, though, was when his teammates—the ones who weren’t deployed—dropped by to see him. Men he’d fought side-by-side with, drunk beer with.

Men he didn’t remember.

He didn’t know who had been more uncomfortable, them or him.

Maybe I should have died there.

He stared blankly at the TV. Look at the lives he’d ruined by living. Rabia. Her father. His brother, Brad. Jess.

It hurt him to watch her try so hard to be natural with him. So he didn’t watch. He watched TV instead. For hours and hours on end, even though he couldn’t say what he’d seen an hour ago, let alone the day before. Mostly, he watched it so he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain in the eyes of a woman who was still a stranger to him.

Sometimes he looked out the window. He couldn’t see much except the tree line, but he passed time watching the wind blow and the snow fall. In northern Minnesota, the snow fell early and often. The fact that he knew that didn’t count.

What counted was what he didn’t know.

At first, she’d brought him high school yearbooks and photo albums. It made his head hurt to look at them, to see himself as a boy he still didn’t recognize. So he asked her not to bring them anymore.

With a patient but sad look in her eyes, she’d understood. “Sure. No problem. I didn’t mean to bombard you. I thought maybe… I don’t know. Maybe I hoped seeing the photos might trigger a memory.”

“It’s OK. It’s nice of you. I appreciate it. But nothing’s happening. I’m sorry.”

She’d knelt down beside him, covered his hand with hers. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’ll either come or it won’t. There’s no pressure, J.R.”

But there was pressure. Every time she looked at him that way, every time she drove him to a doctor’s appointment in Hibbing or a counseling session in Duluth, or every time she called him J.R. in that automatic way that said she’d called him that since they’d both been little kids, he felt the pressure.

I can’t come with you, Jeffery.

Rabia.

Another pressure. One he couldn’t get out of his head.

He rose stiffly from his chair. “I think I’ll turn in.”

That hurt look again. “Don’t you want dinner? I fried chicken. Your favorite.”

Maybe it was. He didn’t know. “Sorry. It’ll still be good tomorrow, right?”

“Sure. You go ahead and go to bed.”

So polite. They were so polite to each other. Like strangers meeting on a train, passing through each other’s life to get back to their own lives. Only the train never stopped and dropped him off where he was supposed to be. It kept going and going, and he kept searching and searching.

He forced a smile for her, because she tried so hard, then got up and walked into the bedroom that was supposed to be theirs. Only he slept there alone, and she slept in another room on another bed.

Two strangers on a train.

He lay down, covered his ears with the pillow so he couldn’t hear the soft sounds of her weeping, and thought of Rabia again. Always. On a rooftop under the stars. Bringing him back to life with her soft hands and healing heart.

The soft clicking of paws on the hardwood floor, then the slight dip of the mattress, told him the dog had followed him. Eyes closed, he reached out and found the Lab’s soft muzzle. Bear immediately moved in next to him, lay down, and, with a contented sigh, laid his doggie head on his chest.

“You don’t care, do you, buddy?” he whispered into the dark bedroom. “You don’t care who I am or if I remember. You’re a good dog, Bear. A good dog.”

“WHERE’S J.R.?”

Jess sat down with Brad at her kitchen table after pouring them each a mug of coffee. He’d brought the scent of fresh snow and winter cold with him, even though it was only early December.

“He’s in the shower.”

“Any change?”

He asked the same question every morning when he stopped by to check on J.R. It was the same question her mom and dad asked every day when they called to check on her and on J.R. And Shelley, who’d been so generous to keep Bear for her while she’d been in Texas.

“Physically, yes. The vertigo and the headaches are much better. But mentally, no. Basically, he sits in his chair and watches TV. And he hasn’t remembered anything.”

“He just needs time, right? Just like he needs a lot of sleep. Like the doc said.” Brad nodded his head as if trying to convince himself as much as her. “He’s put on a little weight, though, don’t you think?”

“A little, yes. I think he’s up five to ten pounds since they brought him back to the States.”

Brad glanced over his shoulder, as if checking to see if J.R. was in earshot, but the shower was still running. “I want to thank you, Jess. I… I’ve been meaning to say something. I know this is tough for you… what with your plans with Brown and all.”

Last week was Thanksgiving. She and Ty were to have been married then. Instead, she and J.R. had been in Hibbing, at the VA medical center there, spending the night Thursday so they could be on time for his early-morning battery of medical exams and evals Friday morning.

“J.R. is my husband, Brad. Did you really think I’d turn away when he needed me?”

“I didn’t know,” Brad confessed. “I got to tell you, I don’t know what I’d do if it was me in this situation.”

“I know what you’d do,” Jess reassured him.

“Well, I want to thank you. I love my brother.” Tears welled, and Brad quickly looked away.

“I love him, too, Brad. I’m going to be here for him.”

She got up to get the coffee pot and to give Brad some time to compose himself. J.R. wasn’t the only one struggling. She could sense how tense and fragile and raw Brad felt around his brother. She could sense it because it was exactly how she felt around J.R.

“Maybe today he’ll be ready to get out of the apartment for something other than a doctor’s appointment,” Brad said when she returned to the table. “I can take him down to the shop, let him hang around with me for a while.”

“I don’t know. You can ask him.”

“We can’t keep his return a secret much longer,” Brad said, sounding worried. “It’s been three weeks. People know something’s up.”

They knew something was up because she’d closed the store for almost two weeks without notice and left the state. They knew because Ty was gone. A dull ache swelled in her chest. Everyone had known they’d planned to get married at Thanksgiving. She tried not to think about him. She tried not to wonder about him. She had a husband to heal. A marriage to restore. And she was going to do everything in her power to make things work. But the dog, it seemed, gave him more comfort than she did.

“I know,” she said, pushing thoughts of Ty from her mind. “But that’s a major issue for J.R. It’s not only that he’s uncomfortable seeing people. He wants to keep his entire story secret. The family who helped him, the woman and her father? He’s worried that if the press gets hold of his story, their names will come out, and the Taliban will go after them in retaliation for hiding him.”

Brad considered his coffee cup with a dark frown. “Wish we could thank them some way.”

“You can thank them,” J.R. said, limping into the kitchen, Bear padding along softly behind him, “by never mentioning them again. The way you thank them is to keep quiet.”

Brad nodded quickly. “I know. I know that, bro. No one’s going to hear about it from me. But I was thinking. Like I was telling Jess, people are starting to wonder what’s going on. You know, this store is like the watering hole for everyone who lives around the lake.”

“So I’ve been told,” J.R. said.

After a brief hesitation, he joined them at the table.

Jess knew he was still not comfortable around either one of them, but she tried to act natural so that maybe it would start to feel natural to him.

“I’ve got water hot for tea. I’ll get you a mug.”

Jess sprang up from the table, then slowed herself down, so J.R. wouldn’t see how unsettled she felt. He used to be a coffee drinker but had developed a taste for strong tea and honey. The woman who hid him got him started on it, he’d explained.

“Thanks,” J.R. said absently.

“So,” Brad began again, “how about we tell them the partial truth? You were held captive all these years and managed to escape. End of story. People aren’t going to pry, J.R. They’ll respect your privacy, especially if we put the word out that you’re still recovering and don’t want to talk about it. To anyone.”

“He’s right, J.R.” Jess returned to the table with his tea and honey. “Yes, they’re going to be excited for you. In fact, they’ll probably want to throw some kind of a party. But we’ll make it clear you’re still recovering, a party is out of the question, and privacy is essential, to keep it under their hats until you’re back on your game.”

She covered his hand with hers and blinked back tears when he slowly withdrew it, rejecting her touch, still so very, very uncomfortable with physical contact.

Bear, it seemed, was the only thing to have breached that barrier. J.R had loved the dog on sight. The feeling had been mutual. Jess had read that Labs had very sensitive radar concerning human feelings. She was fully convinced it was true. The dog rarely left J.R.’s side. Whether he felt protective or sensed J.R.’s fragile state, she didn’t know. She was glad the dog had penetrated the wall J.R. had built around himself and his feelings and had given him an outlet for affection.

“Do whatever you have to do,” he said, not looking at either one of them.

“Thought maybe you might feel up to a drive today,” Brad said hopefully. He had been suffering, too, not knowing how to reach his brother. “Take a loop around the lake, maybe? Stop by my shop, show you my business. You used to help me guide, you know. We had some good times and real laughs on some of those fishing trips.”

“Maybe another day,” J.R. said, not unkindly but with a tone so dismissive Brad knew not to coax. “Thanks, though. I appreciate the offer.”

“No. No. It’s OK. I understand.” Brad stood then, trying not to look like a little boy who hadn’t been picked for a team. “Guess I’d better get moving. You, ah, you let me know if you need anything, OK?”

“Sure thing,” J.R. said without looking at his brother.

“You, too, Jess,” Brad said, and headed for the door.

The kitchen felt suddenly empty and a little scary. She wasn’t afraid of J.R. She was afraid for him. She was afraid for them.

She stared at the walls Ty had painted for her, and a memory of him making love to her on the kitchen table flashed, so vivid and real her abdominal muscles clenched.

“I’m sorry,” J.R. said, still staring at his untouched tea. “I don’t mean to hurt him. I wish I could respond to him. He… he tries so hard.”

“He understands,” Jess said, even though she knew Brad didn’t understand. He wanted his brother back. He’d pinned all his hope on some miracle happening to jog his memory once they brought J.R. home.

“I wish I did. I wish I understood any of this.”

Tears formed in his eyes, and her heart went out to him. “I have an idea. After breakfast, why don’t I cut your hair and shave off that beard for you? Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe a change would be good for you. What do you think?”

He gave her a half-smile, then looked down at the dog who had parked by his feet. “What do you think, Bear? Think maybe it’s time you’re the furriest critter in this house?”

Bear wagged his tail.

J.R. looked up at her with a hint of a light in his eyes. “Bear says it’s time.”

“Then we have a plan. First I feed you. Then we do a makeover.”

And for the first time since she’d heard the news that her husband was alive, Jess’s smile wasn’t forced. For an instant, a very brief instant, she’d seen a glimpse of the old J.R. That half-smile, that silly sense of humor, and it made her heart glad.