The Top Gun's Return Read online

  "And don't even think about suggesting Indian," she warned as the suggestive tinkle of temple bells floated from a nearby doorway. "Last time you took me to an Indian restaurant I had to go find a hotdog vendor afterward just to put my stomach right. Whatever happened to good old American?" It was a rhetorical question, asked plaintively of the weeping sky, and had less to do with her food preferences than it did the serious second thoughts she was having about visiting her New-York-dwelling sister in the springtime when the air back home in Georgia was warm and sweet and the countryside aflame with azaleas. "What's wrong with KFC?" she whined, hugging her borrowed raincoat close across her chest. "Bojangles with cole slaw an' biscuits?"

  Unperturbed, Joy Lynn said, "Don't be such a hick," as she whipped her trilling cell phone out of a raincoat pocket. She glanced at the caller ID, said, "Huh," in a wondering way and put the phone to her ear. "Hey, Momma, what's up?"

  "Momma!" Jessie exclaimed. "Why would she be callin'?"

  Joy Lynn's pace had slowed. She flicked a glance sideways at Jessie and said, "Uh-huh."

  Jessie's belly quivered. "She wantin' me?" An alarm had gone off in her head. Sammi June.

  "Uh-huh," said Joy Lynn again, but not to her, holding up a silencing finger. Then she said, "Okay. Hold on a sec-" She grabbed Jessie by the sleeve of the raincoat and hauled her through a warm doorway that smelled strongly of garlic.

  "It's Italian, for God's sake," she hissed at Jessie, who was muttering, "But-but-" and dragging back against the tow. Jessie had nothing against Italian, but butterflies were flopping earnestly in her belly now, and she no longer had any interest whatsoever in eating.

  It's Sammi June-oh God, it must be. Why else would Momma be calling me unless something awful's happened to Sammi June?

  Numb with foreboding, she let Joy Lynn haul her to a table next to a heavily textured wall that was painted dark green with spiderwebs of white plaster showing through. Her sister tugged a chair out with a thump, pushed Jessie down on it, then wedged herself into the one opposite. "Okay, she's sittin' down," she said into the phone, breathless and pink in the cheeks. She went silent, listening. Then breathed, "Oh, my Lord."

  Something's happened to Sammi June, was the only thought in Jessie's head. She had begun to tremble uncontrollably. Panic washed over her; she couldn't breathe. No. I can't bear it. I can't. I can't.

  She'd felt like this only one other time in her life. That day came back to her so vividly now…Dan Rather's voice on the television, the screech of the screen door…her mother saying, "Jessie, you need to come in here." The crunch of tires on gravel, the dark-blue sedan, and two tall men coming toward her across a polka-dot lawn. The way the world had gone silent. The way she'd held out her hands to keep those men from coming on up the steps, the same way she was holding out her hands right now, as if she could push away that phone Joy Lynn was trying to give to her. As if by keeping it away she could keep herself from ever having to hear the words Momma was about to say to her. As if by not hearing them she could make them not be true.

  "Sammi June-" The words burst from her, exploding like a sneeze past the icy fear, the trembling.

  "No, hon', it's not Sammi June." Joy Lynn's voice was gentle, and so was her hand as she took Jessie's and held on to it. Her fingers felt warm, wrapped around Jessie's icy ones. "Sammi June's fine. Everybody's just fine."

  Then what…? Dazed, Jess could only give her head an uncomprehending shake.

  "Jessie, honey, you need to take this." Joy Lynn pressed the cell phone into Jessie's hand and folded her stiff fingers around it. "Momma's got somethin' to tell you. It's okay," she added when Jessie just went on looking at her, dumb and frozen with anguish. Trying her best to smile though there were tears in her eyes, she said, "It's okay, I promise."

  Drained and shell-shocked, still trembling, Jessie lifted the phone to her ear. "Momma? What is it? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong, honey." But Momma's voice sounded way too calm, the way it only did when she was about to deliver some painful news. It had sounded like that, Jessie remembered, when she'd told Sammi June and J.J. the old hounddog, General, had been bitten by a copperhead and had to be put to sleep. "But…this is gonna be hard to hear."

  Jessie's heart was beating so fast she wondered if there was something seriously wrong with it. She pressed a hand against her chest to hold it still and whispered, "Okay."

  "Jessie…honey." There was a single high musical note of laughter or perhaps a sob. "Honey, it's Tristan. They found him. In Baghdad. Oh, sweet child. He's alive."

  April, Landstuhl, Germany

  Jessica Ann Starr couldn't remember a time when she hadn't loved Tristan Bauer, so it always came as something of a shock to her to realize he'd actually been present in her life for so few of her thirty-six years. Now, sitting in the back seat of a car speeding sedately along a German autobahn, memories of those few, those golden moments…hours…days, seemed to fill her whole existence. Her mind flipped through them like the photographs in the album she'd assembled to share with Joy Lynn and now held in her lap, clutched in nerveless fingers.

  She'd been in high school when they'd met, vacationing on a Florida beach with friends, spring break her senior year. Almost exactly eighteen years ago-half her life-though it shamed her to admit she couldn't recall the exact date. He'd seemed to her unattainable as a movie star, impossibly handsome, wonderfully tall-always a plus for a girl who'd hit her current height of five feet ten inches in seventh grade. His thick black hair, brown eyes and olive skin had seemed thrillingly exotic to her, since she was sunshine-blond and wholesome as grits.

  There on the beach that morning she'd listened to the lies that came floating out of her own mouth, effortlessly as blowing smoke from a forbidden cigarette, tacking on a couple of years to her age and some mythical college experience to get past his grown man's scruples about dating a high school girl, and hadn't even cared if she went to Hell because of them.

  That night he'd kissed her, and she knew it had all been worth the risk. He'd kissed her outside her motel room door, pressing her up against the hard stucco wall so that she'd felt the whole sinewy length of him all up and down her front, and everywhere he'd touched her she'd felt her body tingle and burn as if a million stars were exploding inside her. Or as if millions and millions of cells in her body had waited for that moment to wake up and burst into exuberant life. That was the way it had seemed to her, as if she'd only been partly alive until Tristan, and after that night she'd known she would never again be completely alive without him.

  She'd told him the truth about her age before she'd left him to go back home, though, because by that time she'd known she was going to marry him one day. She hadn't known, then, that less than three weeks after her high school graduation she'd be Mrs. Tristan Bauer, wife of a naval aviator, and already well on her way to being someone's mother.

  "Ma'am?" The gray-haired, bespectacled naval officer in the front passenger seat broke his respectful silence, turning his head and leaning slightly in order to make eye contact. "We'll be taking you directly to the residence, which is adjacent to the medical center where your husband is receiving treatment. After you've checked in, I can take you to see him there, or you can wait for him in the residence, if you like. Lieutenant Bauer should be cleared to join you shortly. Whichever you prefer."

  His manner was deferential to the point of awe, which Jessie found disconcerting. "Thank you, Lieutenant Commander-" She searched her befuddled memory for her casualty assistance officer's name and came up empty. Exhausted by the effort, she was about to fall gratefully back into the cocoon of her own musings when the expectant look on the officer's face registered on her consciousness. He was waiting for her decision. Her forehead tightened as she struggled with it; any logical, reasoning thought was hard work for her today. And this-whether to meet her husband, returned from the dead after eight years, for the first time in the cold antiseptic environment of a hospital room with doctors and nurses all arou
nd, or confront him alone in privacy, this man she'd loved and given up for lost long, long ago, now a stranger to her-seemed utterly impossible. Which was better? Or worse?

  For better or worse…in sickness and in health.

  She tried to smile for Lieutenant Commander-Rees, she remembered now. Rees-with-two-es, he'd told her. "How are these things usually handled?" She thought of the return of the captives taken during Desert Storm, of television pictures of gaunt men in flight suits engulfed in loved ones' embraces while flags waved and bands played "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree." She'd been active in the wives' support group on the base at the time and had worn a bracelet with a POW's name engraved on it.

  The Lieutenant Commander's military bearing melted into a smile of pure irony. "Ma'am, there isn't any precedent for what happened to your husband. As far as the Navy's concerned, you can have this just about anyway you want it."

  Jessie nodded, too distracted to return the smile. The representative of the Defense Department who'd taken charge of her in New York had said much the same thing: There was no protocol for resurrection. There'd been no yellow ribbons or POW bracelets for Tristan. No support groups or letter-writing campaigns petitioning for his release. For all intents and purposes he'd been abandoned, forgotten, given up for dead, and the country he'd served and sacrificed eight years of his life for now seemed eager-almost desperate-to make amends.

  Which was no doubt why Tristan's somewhat unusual request to stay in Germany for part of his treatment and recovery period rather than being sent home to the States as soon as he was deemed fit to travel had immediately been granted. So had his request that his wife be allowed to join him, rather than wait at home for his return. Jessie had been given the choice of waiting in New York for Tristan's phone call or taking the next flight to Germany. She'd chosen the flight, and had been whisked off to the airport by her DOD assistance officer, one jump ahead of the media stampede.

  It had been decided that Sammi June would stay and wait with her grandma Betty and the rest of the family back home in Georgia. Jessie wasn't sure who had made that decision, but she knew it was the right one. She'd been told Tristan was still very weak and sick, and she knew he wouldn't want Sammi June to see him like that. Not to mention that she was mightily glad not to have Sammi June's emotional baggage to deal with right now. Her own was burden enough.

  * * *

  Morning was only beginning to thin the darkness when Sammi June slipped out of bed. She made little effort to be silent; her roommate slept like the dead and was snoring peacefully, as always, an arm's reach away in the tiny University of Georgia dorm room they'd shared since last September. Sammi June hadn't slept at all, peacefully or otherwise, since Gramma Betty's phone call yesterday afternoon.

  Baby girl, your daddy's alive.

  Baby girl. Nobody had called her that in years, not since her dad had gone away to fly F-16's over Iraqi deserts, eight years ago. Daddy had still called her his "baby girl," then, even though she'd been ten years old at the time. Would he still call her that now, she wondered, even though she was no baby, hardly even a girl? She was eighteen, an adult in the eyes of the law, old enough to vote and get married without permission and be responsible for her own choices. A grown woman.

  Although she didn't feel the least bit like one at the moment.

  Uncaring of the morning chill, wearing only the boxer shorts and tank top that served her as pajamas in all seasons, she slumped into the hard-backed chair at her study desk beside the window and fingered apart the blinds. Out there on the still-slumbering campus the other buildings were dark shapes, street and yard lights blurred and haloed by a thin gauze of fog. Flowering trees were beginning to take lacy form among the darker grays of azaleas and new-leafed trees. Stars were few, pale pinpricks in the lavender sky. Search as she might she couldn't locate the Evening Star, the one she'd wished on so many times, all those years ago.

  * * *

  Starlight, star bright,

  First star I've seen tonight,

  I wish I may, I wish I might…

  * * *

  Anger surged unexpectedly, trembling through her, stinging behind her nose and eyes. I wish my daddy would come home. How many times had she wished that when she was little? Wished it so hard sometimes it felt as if all the cells in her brain were vibrating, as if her head might explode. And…nothing.

  Instead one day they'd told her her dad was dead, that he wasn't ever coming home again. She hadn't believed them. She'd begun to wish on the Evening Star again, a different wish this time. I wish my daddy would be alive. And still nothing. For eight years.

  Nothing. How angry she'd been, deep down inside where nobody could see it, angry with her dad for leaving her, for not being there when she needed him to see her in her class play, to cheer at her soccer games, congratulate her after speech tournament victories, walk her across the field when she was elected Junior Homecoming Princess. To comfort her when she had to get braces, and when she'd missed being selected for the freshman cheerleading squad. How angry she'd been, though she'd never let anybody see it, not even Momma.

  And now? Now that she was practically grown-up and didn't really need parents anymore, it seemed all those pathetic little-girl wishes had finally been granted. Her dad was alive. He was coming home. Was God playing a joke on her? She didn't know how she was supposed to feel.

  The blinds clanked softly as they slipped back into place, and a tear left its silky track down Sammi June's cheek.

  * * *

  Jessie's fingertips stroked the image in the snapshot album she held in her lap-Sammi June, in her ball gown, head held high and tiara gleaming, radiantly smiling against the backdrop of an indigo sky. So lovely, so grown-up at not quite seventeen, and in her high heels already almost as tall as her escort, her uncle Jimmy Joe. And, Jessie remembered, she'd even managed to look graceful during that walk across the football field, in spite of high heels that kept punching into the damp turf.

  A young woman. Would Tris even know his daughter? She'd been a knobby-kneed tomboy in ponytails when he'd seen her last.

  The image blurred and wavered inside its protective plastic envelope, and Jessie hurriedly blotted her eyes with the sleeve of her heather-gray blazer. Her hand lingered there, lightly pressing her cheekbone…her temple, smoothing back wisps of hair. There was gray in those wisps now, that hadn't been there eight years ago. She'd changed a lot-lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth…her neck. Her breasts weren't as firm, her belly a bit more rounded. I've changed. Will he know me?

  Lieutenant Commander Rees was waiting politely for her reply.

  "I think-" Her voice shook and she drew a breath to steady it. An image rose in her memory of the only other time she'd ever seen Tris in a hospital bed, pale and groggy after the surgery to set the fractured leg that had grounded him during Desert Storm. It was the only time she'd ever seen him vulnerable and helpless. He wouldn't want her to see him like that again. "I think Tristan would rather I waited for him at the residence. He's never been crazy about hospitals."

  She struggled to produce a smile for the officer before turning to gaze, unseeing, upon the German countryside.

  He's been like that-vulnerable and helpless-for eight years, the man I knew and loved for his strength, his pride, and yes, even his arrogance. What did they do to him? How did he survive, all those years? How could he survive, without being irrevocably changed? Will I know him?

  Butterflies danced and shivered inside her, and she thought, Yes. That's where the biggest changes will be, in both of us. There, deep inside.

  Chapter 2

  The guest residence had been privately built by a nonprofit foundation to accommodate the families of military personnel undergoing treatment at the medical facility. It was an imposing structure of stone and slate made hospitable by the boxes filled with tulips, daffodils and hyacinths that adorned every window. As Tristan drank in the sight, the lump that seemed never far away these days cam
e back into his throat. It had been a long time since he had seen daffodils.

  The sedan in which he was riding, a modest Mercedes, rolled to a stop beside the building's main entrance. Its driver, a young airman whose name Tristan could not remember, got out and came around to open his door for him.

  The man sitting beside him in the back seat touched his arm. Al Sharpe, the air force major assigned as his escort, or "shadow," asked quietly, "Would you like me to see you inside?"

  "Thanks, I'll take it from here." Tristan's attention was engaged with employing the cane he'd been given to lever himself out of the car. He wasn't happy about the cane, but the knee he'd injured punching out of his exploding Hornet eight years ago never had healed properly, and the unaccustomed activity of the past few days seemed to have aggravated it. The doctors had told him that, with good physical therapy and possibly some surgery, he'd likely get most of the use of it back. Eventually.

  Most of it. Eventually. He wondered what that meant, and whether it applied to other things he'd lost. Eight years with his wife…watching his little girl grow up. The person he'd been. Nobody was ready to assure him so easily and carelessly about his chances of getting those things back.

  Upright, he flashed Major Sharpe his out-of-practice smile. "This is one mission I'd like to fly solo, if you don't mind."

  "I understand. We'll be back here for you at twenty-one hundred hours, then." He paused to hold Tristan's eyes for a long moment. "Remember what I told you-don't expect too much of yourself. One step at a time. And meanwhile, if you need anything, you just give me a call."

  "I will. Thanks. I'll be okay." He nodded at the airman, who saluted briskly, then shut the door and got back in the car.

  As he watched the Mercedes drive away it occurred to Tristan that for the first time in nearly eight years he was on his own. Completely alone. Unsupervised. It was a strange feeling. He turned and made his way slowly along the walkway to the door, thinking about the fact that those limping steps were his first without an escort since he'd regained consciousness in an Iraqi desert to find himself surrounded by gun-toting soldiers with hatred in their eyes.