The Top Gun's Return

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.