guys in the hospital had told him about, a welcoming committee of serious-faced civilians, all wanting to shake his hand.
No.
Thank God, it hadn’t been that.
It had been a manila envelope.
Inside, he’d found a set of keys, directions to a particular parking garage…
And a note, his brothers’ names scrawled at the bottom.
Did you really think you could fool us?
They’d left him his old Thunderbird to drive home.
It had been a crazy thing to do.
A damned crazy thing, indeed, Jake thought, and swallowed past a sudden tightness in his throat.
The car had made the miles through the endless expanse that was North Texas easier….
And, suddenly, there it was.
The wide gate that marked the northernmost boundary of El Sueño.
Jake slowed the car, then let it roll to a stop.
He’d forgotten what it was like, seeing that huge wooden gate, the weathered cedar sign that spelled out El Sueño—The Dream—in big bronze letters.
It was all the same, except for the fact that the gate stood open.
His sisters’ idea, he was certain, a sweet way Lissa, Em and Jaimie had thought of to welcome him and remind him that this was his home. They’d be hurt when they realized home was the last place he wanted to be but he didn’t see any way around it.
He had to keep moving.
He stepped hard on the gas and drove through the open gate, a rooster tail of Texas dust pluming out behind him.
He wouldn’t even have come this weekend, except he’d run out of excuses.
“Yeah. Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Jake had replied, and Caleb had said, very calmly, fine, good plan, and if he decided that what he couldn’t do was come home for a visit then, by God, he and Travis would have no choice but to fly to D.C., hog-tie him and drag his sorry ass home.
For all he knew, they would have.
Jake had thought it over and decided it was time to show his face—and wasn’t that one hell of an expression to use, he thought grimly.
It wouldn’t come as a surprise to his family. They’d all been at the hospital, waiting, when the transport plane first brought him back to the States. His sisters, his brothers, even the General, reminding everybody he was John Hamilton Wilde, General John Hamilton Wilde, United States Army, and he damned well wanted a private room for his wounded son and the attention of the best surgeons at Walter Reed.
Jake had been too out of it to argue but as the days and weeks crawled by, as he came off the painkillers and his head began to function again, he’d laid down the law.
No more special treatment.
And no more family visits.
There was no point, no reason, no way he wanted to watch Em and Lissa and Jaimie trying to be brave, his brothers pretending he’d be back to himself in no time, his father being, well, his father.
That was one of the reasons he’d taken so long to come home, even for a visit.
“You’re an idiot,” Travis had growled.
Maybe.
But he didn’t want to be fussed over, poked at, stroked and soothed and told nothing had changed, because everything had. His face. His sense of self.
Was he even a man anymore?
It was a damn good question.
A better one was, How did you dance between the reality that everything was normal and the brutal knowledge that it wasn’t?
Forget that for now.
Tonight, his job was to put on a good show. Smile, as long as he didn’t terrify anybody. Talk, even though he didn’t have anything to say civilians would want to hear.
Behave as if time had not passed.
He’d figured coming to the ranch by himself would give him the chance to acclimate. Immerse himself in familiar things. Smell the clean Texas air and listen to the coyotes making their beautiful music in the night.
All of that without an unwanted rush of emotion engulfing him in a place like an airport.
Every solider he knew said the same thing.
Coming home was tough.
You went off to war, you were carried away by the excitement of it, especially if you’d been raised on stories of bravery and battles and warriors.
He sure as hell had.
Their mother was dead, gone when Travis was six, Caleb four, Jake two. Housekeepers, nannies and a stepmother, who’d only stayed long enough to bear three daughters, had raised them.
The General, the rare times he was home, regaled them with stories about their ancestors, a hodgepodge of men who’d marched on Gaul with Caesar, raided the British Isles from longboats, crossed the Atlantic in sailing ships and then conquered a vast new continent from the Dakota plains to the Mexican border.
The stories had thrilled him.
Now, he knew they were nonsense.
Not the part about the warriors. He’d been one himself these last years, fighting alongside honorable, brave men, serving a nation he loved.
But his father had left things unsaid. The politicians. The lies. The cover-ups.
Jake stood on the brakes. The Thunderbird skidded, slewed sideways across the dirt road and came to a hard stop. He crossed his hands on the steering wheel, wrist over wrist.
He could hear his heart thumping.
He was heading straight back into that dark place he’d sworn he wouldn’t visit again.
He waited. Let his heartbeat slow. Then he opened the door and stepped from the car.
Something brushed against his face. A moth.
Good. Moths were real. They were things a man could understand.
He took a long gulp of cool night air. Tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. Looked up as clouds hid the stars, as cold and distant as the polar ice caps.
Minutes passed. The stars came out from behind the clouds, along with the moon. He got back into the ‘Bird and drove on until, finally, he could see the outline of the house, standing on a rise maybe an eighth of a mile away.
Light streamed from its windows.
Panic
