Chapter Four
“I’m starting to wonder if they really sent my son home, or if you’re one of those science fiction implants who looks like him, but isn’t.” His mother approached. “You’ve never washed a dish without thirty minutes of nagging beforehand.”
Jerry rinsed the bowl and set it to the side. “I guess people change.” He picked up a platter and began washing it, the melancholy of being home finally overtaking him.
“I guess people do.” The teasing look on her face dropped along with the tone of her voice. She bumped her hip against him, taking the platter from his hands. “I’ll wash. You rinse.”
He bumped her back. “Fine, but next time I slack on washing you can’t get mad.” It felt good to be able to let his guard down and know that his mom wouldn’t freak out. “You had your chance.”
She lifted a sassy, teasing brow. “I don’t care if you’re a hardened old soldier. I’m still your mama, and you’ll do what I say.”
A smile crept across his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”
They washed dishes in silence for a few minutes giving him time to appreciate the simple task and letting its simplicity help to heal him.
“Why didn’t you come home sooner, son?” His mom kept her eyes on the dishwater, but he knew she expected an answer.
“I couldn’t.”
“I don’t see why not. They have a V.A. hospital in Salt Lake. You would have been closer to home, and I could have visited.”
It had taken him a good four months to heal from his wound and complete the therapy necessary to allow him to walk normally again. “I just couldn’t.”
“Because you didn’t want her to see you wounded? Because you were afraid she’d see you as less of a man?”
Damn. He’d never figured out how his mom could read him so well, but she did. “It had nothing to do with her. I felt like I could heal better without all of you fussing over me.”
“Uh-huh.” She handed another bowl to him.
He wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but that would be admitting she was right. “Why didn’t you tell me she’d dumped Eric?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
He shrugged.
She lifted a dishtowel from the counter and wiped her hands. “You had enough to deal with, okay? You’d already taken damage to your heart. You had enough healing to do between that and your leg. What if I had told you about her? Then you would have gotten your hopes up. If she spurned you again, what would that have done to you? A man can only heal so much at a time.”
He swallowed and then nodded.
A crushing look of sympathy fell over her features, and she tugged him close to her. “Oh honey. I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t know what to do. I figured if she wanted to tell you, then she would. If she didn’t, then you were better off not knowing. I know how much you love her—”
“Loved,” he corrected.
“Okay, loved,” his mom reluctantly agreed. “But still, now that you’re home and doing much better, the two of you can take some time to figure things out. Sometimes, being apart from each other makes people in love do stupid things. They start to doubt, and...”
“No.” He hugged his mom one more time before he pulled away. “The past is the past. She had her chance, and she made her choice. I’m done.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that the day he’d gotten the break-up email from Kimber was the same day they’d been caught in the booby trap. He still wondered if he hadn’t been so focused on his loss if he would have noticed something was wrong. Maybe he could have spared some of his friends. Maybe Tim wouldn’t have had to give his life to protect Jerry from most of the shrapnel that had sliced apart his friend. He blinked away the haunting image, wishing he could bury it deeper in his subconscious.
