Kathleen Creighton - The Top Gun's Return

The truth was, though the thoughts, the memories, the desires were all there, they were only in his head. From the neck down he was just a tangle of muscle, bone and sinew, without warmth or feeling. Once upon a time he'd learned to survive by separating his mind from his body, and both of those from his emotions, and he'd been that way for so long, he didn't know how to start putting himself back together again.

He swallowed the bite of cherry pie and said, "We should call Sammi June," forcing the bittersweetness past the tightness of his throat. "Think she'd be in about now?"

Jess put down her fork with a clatter, snatched up her napkin and dabbed at her lips with it as she twisted around to look at the clock on the nightstand. "Um…lemme see, it's Monday…if she doesn't have a class she could be in her room studying. We can give it a try."

He watched her make the call, standing beside her as she sat on the edge of the bed with her little pocket address book in one hand and the phone tucked between her jaw and shoulder. He watched her supple fingers punch in numbers, preparing himself, distancing himself from the remembered tug of a little girl's arms around his neck…the feel of a small grubby hand creeping into his. He listened to Jess's voice, speaking to someone in a thickening Southern accent, asking if Sammi June was there. He listened, preparing…arming himself with the images in the photo album Jess had given him, of a lovely young woman in a ball gown, smiling confidently, her tiara worn at a rakish tilt atop casually upswept blond hair.

"Hang on just a minute, hon'," Jess was saying, "there's somebody here wants to talk to you." With an abrupt, almost angry thrust, she handed the phone to Tris.

He took it calmly; his new crooked smile was fixed firmly to his lips as he put the receiver to his ear and said, "Hello…Sammi June?"

"Daddy?" A high, breaking voice. A little girl's voice.

Something burst, stinging, inside his head. He croaked, "Hey, baby girl…" Suddenly he was sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows braced on his knees, head bowed, one hand shading his eyes. Dimly, thankfully, he heard Jess get up and go into the bathroom, as tears dropped from the end of his nose.

Toddling along in the autobahn's slow lane at 100 kilometers per hour, Jessie flicked sideways glances alternately between the freshly plowed fields of the German landscape and Tris's silent profile. Reassured by the fact that he hadn't made any comments on her driving so far, she edged the Ford's speed up to 110 and settled back in the driver's seat.

"There, now-it's not so awful, is it?" she said lightly, flexing tense fingers on the steering wheel. She said it in a teasing way, but the truth was, she'd been a little annoyed by all the fuss over her driving, with herself more than with Tristan. It was true her driving had always given him fits, but that had been a long time ago. She'd been more than competent behind the wheel of a car for a good many years now, and there wasn't any reason in the world why she should start having doubts about her driving skills just because Tris happened to be sitting beside her. Okay, she'd never driven in a foreign country before, but as Lieutenant Commander Rees said, it wasn't as though this was England where they drove on the wrong side of the road. Interstate or autobahn, they both looked the same, and the signs were pretty much universal, so what was the big deal?

Why do I keep going back to where I was when I first met him? That was eighteen years ago. I'm not-I can't be that person now. It's not who I am.

"You're doin' okay." Tristan glanced at her and a grin flickered. "Long as you don't get us run over."

"I'm doin' 110!"

"Kilometers, darlin'-that's sixty-six miles an hour. That'd get you a ticket for obstructing traffic in Atlanta."

Jessie snorted. "Oh, well-Atlanta drivers are crazy, you can't go by them." She said it in a scoffing tone, but it was hard to hide a smile and a little shiver-of what, hopefulness? Encouragement? Optimism? It had been two days since the phone call to Sammi June, and although Tris still wouldn't stay the night with her, he seemed a little more like himself every day.

But he still hasn't kissed me.

Her heart gave a queer little bump at the thought. She glanced over at him, frowning, but he'd gone back to gazing out the window, silently watching the fields and billboards and the occasional town flash by.

The weather was holding fine and cool, and the sky was a clear and lovely blue between billows of puffy white clouds. It felt good to be out on the open highway, going somewhere together, just the two of them…almost like old times. Freedom, she thought, after the days of being confined to the guest house and the adjoining towns. And her throat tightened as she wondered what it must be like for Tristan, whose days since being rescued from an Iraqi prison had so far been spent almost entirely within the confines of a military hospital, in an unrelenting schedule of tests, therapies and debriefings.

She said softly, "It must seem so strange to you. After…"

He jerked his gaze away from the window, giving her his familiar half smile. "I was thinking how normal it feels."

"Normal! How is that possible?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, there was a period right at first when I was sort of in shock, I guess, when it didn't seem real. It was like it was a dream, and any minute I was going to wake up and I'd be back there… I think I was afraid to believe it. But then…your brain makes some kind of adjustment or something, and where you are, no matter how crazy or terrible or impossible it is, that becomes your norm. Your brain adapts to whatever your reality is." He paused. "That's what people do, I guess. They adapt." His face darkened and he added, "Some better than others, obviously."

She held her breath, waiting for more, but he'd lapsed once again into silence, watching the world flash by the car windows.

You don't have to tell me about adapting, she thought as the lightness and optimism inside her suddenly congealed into a cold, gray lump of anger, and tears peppered her eyes. I know what it means to have the man you love, your husband and the father of your child, go away and then come back…go away and then come back. Go away and then not come back. I've had to go from being a dependent wife and stay-at-home mom to being a single parent and breadwinner. From a woman who deferred to my husband in every little thing to one who now, on a daily basis, holds the lives of the tiniest, sickest babies in my hands. Don't tell me what it is to adapt!

"Hey, now you're cookin'," Tristan said.

Blinking back the tears, Jessie glanced at the speedometer and saw that the needle was hovering around 140. Muttering a word her momma wouldn't have approved of, she eased up on the gas pedal while beside her Tris chuckled softly.

They left the autobahn behind sooner than she'd expected and quickly wound down through woods and hillsides dotted with grazing sheep and into a deep river valley bordered on both sides by vineyards. Now the road followed the river's twisting, looping path, criss-crossing it on medieval-looking bridges, passing through towns of picture-book yellow and white half-timbered houses on narrow, brick-paved streets. The houses all had roofs of slate tiles laid like fish scales, and some were decorated with carved wood or patterns in contrasting brick and stone. Here and there, climbing up walls or creeping across arches, Jess saw the pale-green tendrils of new grapevines.

She wished now that she didn't have to be the one driving. She wanted to be free to look and look and look. Instead, she had to content herself with glimpses snatched from bridge crossings and high points in the road, of the river and its traffic of stately white riverboats and great cargo barges. Vineyards covered both sides of the valley, from gently rolling plains to mountainsides so steep they seemed inaccessible except to mountain goats and eagles. And here and there, high on one of those mountains, above the slate rooftops of a town-and she would have missed them entirely if Tristan hadn't pointed them out for her-the ruins of medieval castles.