Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover. Merline Lovelace
but adequate for a twin bed and dresser, if little more.
The house’s only bathroom was downstairs, behind the kitchen. The house had all the earmarks of a place that had been built a bit at a time, the mudroom tacked on like an afterthought next to the kitchen. When the weather was bad, it was the way to enter. Otherwise Connie preferred the side door, between the kitchen and the driveway.
By the time they finished the tour, Julia had a pot of coffee brewing and invited Ethan to join her. He seemed willing enough, so Connie sat with them. She could barely hold still, though. Her eyes kept straying to the clock, counting the minutes until she went to pick up Sophie. Counting the minutes until she could hug her daughter and assure herself that everything was all right.
“What time do we pick her up?” Ethan asked.
“Two-thirty.”
“Okay. When I finish this wonderful coffee—” Julia beamed “—I’ll walk down to the school and scope things out from cover. After I get back, I think we ought to walk back down together to pick her up.”
“Why not take the car?”
“Because if anyone’s watching your daughter, I want to know it.”
“All right.” She wondered how he could be so sure, then decided he’d probably developed a sixth sense for such things where he’d been. It was probably the reason he had survived.
“All right,” she said again. “What if I take a ball and we stop at the park on the way back? Let her get some exercise.”
He nodded. “Soccer ball?”
“I have one, yes.”
“Good. Bring it.” He smiled then, a real smile. “Soccer is an international language. It was a great way to break the ice in Afghanistan. All I had to do was take out my ball and start kicking it around, and pretty soon I’d have a dozen or more kids with me, everyone having a great time. Some of my best memories are of kicking a ball around in that dirt and dust.”
Connie felt herself smiling with him. She could see the pleasure the memories gave him, and she felt relieved to finally see a softer side to him.
But then her eyes strayed to the clock again. The minutes couldn’t possibly move any slower.
* * *
Ethan and Connie left early to pick up Sophie at the school. Ethan carried the soccer ball under his arm, and they strolled along as if they had all the time in the world.
Ethan wanted it to look exactly that way. His eyes moved restlessly, noting every detail of the streets, the cars, the houses that lined them. Connie found herself doing pretty much the same thing, seeking anything that seemed out of place.
Ethan spoke. “It must be hard, being a single mother.”
“Easier than being married to an abusive jerk. Safer for Sophie and me both.”
“I’m sorry. What happened?” He paused. “I guess it’s none of my business.”
“I don’t mind discussing it. I’ve given some courses in anger management, and I’ve used my personal experience to illustrate. My ex beat me. As in most cases, at first he was just controlling. It didn’t seem too bad. Then he started to object to my friends. Classic. Cut me off from my support network.”
Ethan nodded.
“But even though I was a cop, I couldn’t see what was happening to me. It’s odd, isn’t it, how you can see something happen to someone else but not see the same thing happening to you?”
“I think that’s pretty much normal.”
“Maybe. Anyway, he undermined my self-confidence, made me feel responsible for everything that went wrong. Then he hit me a couple of times. He always apologized and swore it would never happen again. I was too ashamed to tell anyone. Cop as abused wife. Sheesh. Talk about humiliating.”
“So what got you out?”
“When he knocked me down and started kicking me. I was pregnant. That’s standard, too. It’s like they resent the intrusion, the loss of control. Regardless, I had someone to think about besides myself. That time I didn’t take it.”
“Good for you.”
She shook her head and sighed. “It wasn’t pretty. After I managed to get to my feet, I knocked him down and got my gun. After that it was a restraining order and divorce. I never saw him again.”
“He couldn’t stand up to the gun, huh?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it was a dangerous time. Thank God for my buddies on the force. They got me out of the house and into a shelter, and for a long time I never went anywhere alone.” She looked over at him. “That’s the time when most women get killed. After they stand up to their abuser and decide to get out. I’ll forever be grateful to my fellow officers.”
“That’s the way it should be. If we don’t take care of each other, who will?”
She figured he was thinking about his own unit and a very different set of circumstances. Sometimes one’s own scars ached in response to similar scars in others. It was as if like recognized like.
“You’re a strong woman,” he remarked.
“Sure. That’s why I’m coming apart. Sophie needs me, and I’m coming apart.”
He touched her arm tentatively, as if afraid of her reaction. “You have to allow those feelings,” he said. “The important thing is that you allow them when it’s safe to have them. That’s what you did in the office this morning. Sophie was safe at school, you were in a safe place, and it hit you. Good timing, actually.”
“Yeah.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “There’s this level I was operating at, where I was in control and focused on doing what I needed to. Then, bam, I lost it.”
“That’s okay. Now you’re back in control.”
She glanced at him. “I guess you know about this stuff.”
“Too much about it.”
Surprising herself, she took his hand, feeling its strength, size and power. It was a toughened hand, callused and firm. She squeezed it gently. “Thanks, Ethan.”
He didn’t pull away. “Nothing to thank me for. There have been times when I wanted to beat my head against a wall until it hurt so bad I couldn’t feel anything else. I never gave in, but I think you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
All of a sudden she felt a whole lot better about things. She had an ally. An ally who understood. “So Micah is...your father?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, but I never heard about you before.”
“He didn’t know about me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Can’t say that I am.” He shrugged. “I never knew him, so I never knew what I was missing. A few times when I was a kid I got angry at my mother for never giving us a chance, but I finally understood. She was scared.”
“Scared?”
“Micah was in special ops. He’d go away suddenly, without warning, and she never knew when or if he’d come back. She couldn’t handle the strain.”
“I guess I can see that.”
“Eventually so did I. She explained to me that she just couldn’t see raising a kid that way. That she couldn’t live that way.”
“Did you have a stepfather?”
“That was the interesting thing. She’d date once in a while, but she never married. I don’t know why.”
They were talking about some