The Top Gun's Return

'Think what?' Mirabella wasn't inclined to help her out.

'Maybe,' Jessie mumbled, embarrassed to voice the thoughts that had been haunting her, 'he was bored with me.'

She expected another one of Mirabella's patented snorts, but instead her sister-in-law said, with unheralded gentleness, 'Now, why would you think that?'

So Jessie snorted instead, and began pacing restlessly across the porch. 'Because he sure didn't seem to mind being away from me. In fact, it always seemed to me like he was eager to be gone. I think he loved being out there, in the middle of the action. I don't think he was ever happy when he was home.'

She stopped to dash away a tear and stare across the yard at nothing. 'We fought about it,' she said at last, softly. 'Before he left for the Gulf, that last time. I'd stood up to him, for once. I told him he was being selfish and childish, going off to a war zone when he had a wife and child right here who needed him. He didn't have to go. But he'd missed the action during the Gulf War, because of that water-skiing accident, remember? And he figured patrolling the no-fly zone was going to be his last chance at flying combat missions. He was so damn stubborn about it-he just kept saying, 'It's something I have to do.' Like nothing in the world was as important to him, not me, not Sammi June-nothing. It made me so angry, 'Bella. I was actually…I'd started to think-' She put a hand over her eyes and drew a shaking breath. 'Oh God. I was thinking what it would be like…not to be married to him anymore. Not to have to always be saying goodbye to him, then getting used to him coming back. I was actually thinking maybe, when he came back, I'd leave him. That's why I moved back here and got that job at the hospital.'

'Oh, Jessie,' Mirabella said softly. 'I had no idea.' After a moment she added in a thoughtful tone, 'And yet, all those years, you never remarried.'

Jessie angrily dashed away tears. 'Well, it wasn't that I didn't love him. I was just so tired of being alone all the time…seeing Sammi June's heart get broken over and over again. And then he didn't come back, and-' she gave a high, hard laugh '-I'm thinking, Okay, God's punishing me.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' said Mirabella. 'Like God's some sort of puppetmaster with a weird sense of humor? I never have been able to buy that.' She shook her head, and her smile grew softer. 'I think things have an odd way of working out, that's all.' She paused, and then…'Jimmy Joe was angry with me when he first met me, did you know that? He thought I was being selfish because I'd had myself artificially inseminated when I was pushing forty and hadn't found Mr. Right. He thought I was just awful to bring a child into the world and knowingly deprive it of a father. But, you know what? And I told him this later-if I hadn't done that terrible thing, then I wouldn't have been out there on that interstate on Christmas Eve, having a baby in a blizzard, and I never would have met the one man in this world, I swear, with the temperament to put up with me.'

'Oh, 'Bella.' Jessie couldn't help but laugh. Then she was wistfully silent, thinking about it.

Mirabella airily waved her hand. 'Look-maybe it's just a matter of neither one of you knowing what you had before. And now you do. Like…you get a second chance.'

'Do we?' Aching inside, Jessie leaned against a porch post and watched as the motorcycle came zipping back down the road and turned into the lane, making a sound like an angry hornet hooked up to an amplifier. She watched Tristan deftly and gracefully dismount, pull off the helmet and hand it over to J.J. with a grin she could see all the way from here. She threw Mirabella a look. 'Not a second chance-I mean, do we know what we have? Because whatever we may have had before, it's not gonna be the same thing now. He's for sure not the same way he was, and I'm not, either. What do we do if we can't-if he doesn't-'

She stopped, because thinking about it was like looking into a terrifying abyss. After a couple of painful swallows, she gave an impatient, almost angry laugh. 'Oh, hell, I'm just bein' a crybaby, never mind me. I don't s'pose we're the first married couple to have to readjust after bein' separated by a war. What do you think-a few million?'

'I don't know,' said Mirabella with uncharacteristic gravity, 'but I imagine quite a few of those marriages suffered as a result. But,' she added in a more normal, positive tone, 'you two loved each other once, enough that you didn't remarry-'

'Oh, for Pete's sake,' Jessie interrupted, with an angry swat at the air, 'it's not like I wouldn't have, if I'd met anybody I wanted to marry! I just didn't, that's all.'

'Maybe,' said Mirabella, 'that's because you never found anybody who could measure up to Tristan.' Jessie looked at her and didn't say anything. 'So what was it about him, do you remember? What was it that made you fall in love with him, all those years ago?'

Jessie gave a gulp of guilty laughter. 'Oh Lord-the sex. No-I swear, it was. Sex, hormones, chemistry…what can I say?'

Mirabella made an impatient face. 'Yeah, sure, right. At first, maybe. Look-I know Tristan's got great eyes and a killer smile, but the sex-appeal thing doesn't last. I mean, what did you love about him?'

'Oh Lord.' Jessie thought about it, hugging herself because, in spite of the warmth of the afternoon, she could feel herself shivering deep inside. 'God…when I think about him back then, all I seem to be able to remember is the way he smiled…his eyes…he seemed so happy-go-lucky, so arrogant, so confident and cocky…' She laughed shakily. 'Stubborn to the point of being bullheaded…opinionated…convictions as unshakable as his jaw.'

Her sister-in-law shook her head and made a clicking sound with her tongue. 'Hmm…not exactly an easy person to live with,' she murmured, and Jessie caught a glimpse of the laughter in her eyes. Because, of course, Mirabella herself could have been that person Jessie'd just described.

'Well, no,' she hastened to add, 'but he was strong and brave and loyal, too. He wouldn't hesitate to risk his life for somebody, even a stranger. And he was about as softhearted as they come. I don't know if anybody knew it, but he was really sentimental. And gentle. And-' her voice choked and she finished in a whisper '-he really, really adored his little girl.'

'And her mother, too, certainly.'

'That I'm not so sure about,' Jessie said with a bleak little smile.

'Oh, come on.' But for once Mirabella wasn't going to have a chance to argue, because Tristan was coming toward them across the lawn. Max was with him, and the two men were talking and laughing and grinning like little boys who'd just done something incredibly foolhardy and gotten away without a scratch.

The sight should have warmed her heart…shouldn't it? Here it was, a beautiful day, much like when she'd stood on this very porch and watched those two officers in dress blues come across the lawn with the news that had blown her world apart. The climbing rosebush was in full bloom, the lawn was yellow-polka-dotted with dandelions, just as they'd been then. From the other side of the house she could hear somebody hollering that the ribs were 'bout done and for Momma to send somebody out with a platter. A screen door slammed, and laughter and conversation rippled and floated on the warm, humid air.

Home. This is my home…my family. And here in the midst of it all was Tristan…alive, laughing, grinning his old familiar Tristan grin. It was a miracle…beyond anything she could possibly have dreamed of. She should be overflowing with happiness. Giddy with it.

* * *

Later that evening Jessie stood before the antique oak chest of drawers that had belonged to Granny Calhoun, and gazed at the gold wedding band in the palm of her hand. Outside, the brief Southern dusk had deepened into its soft and velvety darkness, and somewhere out in the woods a whippoorwill had begun its frantic song. The food leftovers had been packed up and distributed, and one by one the families had drifted away-Troy and Charly were on their way back to Atlanta, and Tracy and Al to Augusta, and C.J. and Caitlyn to their little house down the road. Summer and Riley were staying overnight with Mirabella and Jimmy Joe; it was a long drive back to Charleston. Tris and Max and Sammi June were still out in the backyard, dismantling the tables and putting away the barbecue.

Jessie had finished helping with the last of the kitchen clean-up and had come upstairs to the room that had been hers alone for eight and a half years, and which, for the past two days, and for the first time in her life, she'd been sharing-sort of-with Tristan. With my husband. She'd been putting lotion on her hands when she remembered her wedding ring, still in its little velvet box where she'd put it years ago, in the old rosewood humidor that had served as her jewelry box ever since she was a teenager. In the hectic time since they'd been home, with all the demands of family and television interviews and tapings, neither she nor Tristan had