The Summer Hideaway by Susan Wiggs Page A

Shelby, Alabama, he was finally sent on his way. He felt out of place on the commercial airliner to Newark, unfamiliar with the culture after so many months in the service. There were a number of soldiers aboard, and they chattered madly the whole way, revved up by nerves and excitement as they prepared to reenter civilian life.
    Ross found himself seated in an exit row between two other soldiers—a woman who had not yet turned twenty-one, and a guy in his thirties who drank and talked the whole way, preoccupied with the taste of beer and a girlfriend named Rhonda.
    “I don’t know why I’m so excited,” he confessed. “We did a lot of Skype and e-mail, so it’s not like we’ve been totally incommunicado. I guess it’s just the seeing-in-person thing, huh? There’s no substitute for it.”
    “Makes me glad,” said the female soldier. “Youdon’t want technology to take the place of everything, right?”
    Ross paged through an old copy of the New Jersey Star-Ledger . Gang murders, sports reports, community news. A headline about the state prosecutor’s office caught his eye; he scanned a story about corrupt state troopers. One of the prosecutors mentioned was Tyrone Kennedy. Father of Florence, the last friend Ross had made in Afghanistan.
    “How about you, Chief?” the other soldier asked Ross. “You got a family waiting for you at home? Wife and kids?”
    He shook his head, offered a slight smile. “Not at the moment.”
    “Interesting answer,” said the female soldier. “Is this something you’re putting on your agenda?”
    Ross chuckled. “Never thought of it in that way, but yeah. Maybe I am. Being in country so long makes you realize…having a family gives a guy something to hold on to.”
    “Sometimes the only thing,” said the woman. “Sometimes it’s the thing that saves you.”
    Ross knew she was right. The bond of family was a powerful, invisible force, feeding the will to survive. He’d seen wounded soldiers keeping themselves alive by sheer determination alone. Sometimes there was more healing power in the sight of a loved one’s face than in a team of surgeons.
    “Yeah, one good thing about deployment is it makes you appreciate the life you have,” said the beer-drinking soldier. “Because nobody’s life sucks as bad as bunking in the desert in winter.”
    “Hey, don’t be so sure,” said another soldier, turning around in his seat. “You haven’t met my wife.”
    “Okay, now you’re scaring me,” said Ross. He knew he was joking as much as the soldier. In his life so far, he had done everything he was supposed to do as a Bellamy. He’d acquired a fine education and learned a useful profession. He’d served in the military. He just assumed the rest would come to him, that he wouldn’t have to go looking for it.
    He liked women. He dated a lot. But he’d never found someone he wanted to wake up next to for the rest of his life, someone he wanted to have kids with, build a life. He hated the way his last relationship had ended just before he enlisted. It had faded away—not with an explosion of emotion but something possibly more devastating—disappointment. He’d been faced with the sinking realization that he’d made a huge mistake, convincing himself he was in love when he really wasn’t.
    “It’s been my experience that love happens when you least expect it,” Granddad had said. “Sometimes it’s not convenient. So what you do is you simply stay open to the possibility, all the time.”
    Ross tried to do that. Before going overseas, he’d dated a lot. He had good times. Great sex, sometimes so great he felt a flash of emotion and mistook it for love. But nothing ever lasted. He always ended up with a hole in the middle of his life. Without someone to share everything with, the future was just an endless string of days.
    He wanted more than that. He needed more. The realization had been so clear to him on that final evac mission. He had vowed then to find