The Homecoming
The
Homecoming
A NOVEL
DAN WALSH
© 2010 by Dan Walsh
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
E-book edition created 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1205-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
To my wife, Cindi, my one and only love and the inspiration behind any and every romantic thought I’ve ever had.
Contents
January 4, 1944
Shawn looked down at the empty seat beside him, trying to imagine Elizabeth there. He tried to remember the smell of her hair, the sound of her voice, one of her smiles. It all seemed just out of reach.
She wasn’t there. She would never be there again.
He came here, in part, thinking some time alone might help. He was tired of pretending to be fine. It was exhausting. Pretending to see scenes out the window, pretending to read a book, pretending to listen. Elizabeth preoccupied his every waking moment. Shawn had known a depth of love with her he’d never imagined possible, a love he was sure most men would never see, not in a lifetime.
“Care for another cup?”
Shawn looked up toward the sound. “Excuse me?”
“A refill on the coffee? It’s on the house.” The waitress, all smiles.
“No, thanks. I’ve got to be going.”
He stood up to pay the bill. The Corner Room Restaurant hadn’t changed a bit. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see their old college friends, all sitting in their proper spots. He’d gotten a room at the hotel upstairs but wasn’t ready to turn in for the night. Too much left to do. The main reason he came back was to remember her, to reclaim moments of time, conversations they’d shared, places they’d visited. He wanted to see and feel all these things again. To do anything that helped him see and feel all these things again.
Before it got too late, he decided to call Patrick. He walked toward the back by the restrooms to use the pay phone.
“Hello?”
“Dad?”
“That you, Shawn?”
“It’s me.”
“You get in all right? Everything okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“I suppose you want to talk to Patrick. I’ll get him.”
His father never did like to talk on the telephone. He heard him yell Patrick’s name, heard Patrick shout some loud, happy thing in the background. Shawn smiled. At least he still had Patrick.
“Daddy!”
“Hey, little man, how ya doing?”
“I’m fine. You at your college?”
“I sure am.”
“When you coming home?”
Shawn must have told him three or four times he would only be gone a night. But after all Patrick had been through, Shawn didn’t mind telling him again. “I’ll be home tomorrow, before dinner. You be good for Grandpa till I get there.”
“I will. Wish I could be with you.”
“Is everything all right? Is Grandpa treating you okay?”
“Yeah. I just miss you. You were gone so long before.”
“I know. But I’ll be home before you know it.”
“You still going to do what you promised?”
“Uh . . . yes . . .” Shawn tried to remember what he apparently had promised.
“You know, you said when you got home you’d tell us about how you escaped from those Germans after your plane crashed.”
“That’s right, I did. Yep, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.” “Mrs. Fortini wants to hear it too. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Also, Miss Townsend wants to hear it. Okay if I invite her? You know the lady who ate Christmas dinner with us? The one who took care of me?”
“I remember her. But I don’t think she’d really want to drive across town to hear some war story. She sounds like a pretty busy lady.”
“I know she would. Don’t you remember she asked you about it Christmas night? Can I just call her and see?”
Shawn didn’t want to say yes. He sighed. “Okay, I guess you can call her.”
Katherine Townsend stared down at her typewriter, reading the last paragraph over and over again. There was just no good way to say it. If she said what she wanted, she could forget about putting this job down on any future resume. If she kept it professional, she’d hate herself for letting her creep of a boss, Bernie Krebb, get away with forcing her out of this job. Not to mention treating every woman around this place like they were part of his personal harem.
“You don’t see him anywhere, do you?” she whispered loudly to Shirley O’Donnell, a redheaded co-worker in the cubicle next door.
Shirley stood up and scanned the perimeter offices, all glass and mahogany and all occupied by men. She took another quick glance at the small sea of cubicles in the center, all occupied by women. “Uh-oh,” said Shirley. “Here comes Krebb. Quick—”
“What?” Katherine looked up. “Where?”
Shirley peeked over the cubicle wall. “Gotcha.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Relax. Krebb ain’t back from lunch yet. It’s only 1:15. You got a half hour easy. Why do you care, anyway, aren’t you writing your two weeks? What’s he going to do, fire you?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Katherine said. “I’m going to need every day of those two weeks. I don’t have any savings or anything else lined up yet.”
“You really got on his bad side over that last case. You know the one I mean, just before Christmas.”
“I know the one.”
“Really, Kath. You need to lighten up. I get nervous just looking at you.”
Katherine had been tense lately. Her only breaks from the tension were the moments she lapsed into total depression. But these dips weren’t about Bernie Krebb or even about losing this lousy job.
“Know what you need?” Shirley asked.
“Let me guess . . . a man?”
“That’s right, you need to start saying yes to all those good-looking guys keep asking you out.”
“All of them?” Katherine asked. It seemed like Shirley’s custom.
“All right, then some of them, one of them. I haven’t seen you date anybody the whole time you been here. What are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know . . . I’m just not like you,” Katherine said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean I don’t like dating just for the fun of it. It’s not fun for me. I wind up getting hurt too easy.”
“Well,” Shirley said. “The way I handle that is . . . you gotta be the one that does the hurtin’. Dump them before they dump you.”
“See, that’s what I mean. That’s so easy for you. I could never do that.”
Shirley sat down again. “Then you better take up knitting or something, start putting that pretty hair of yours in a bun.”
Shirley’s telephone rang. She sat down to answer it. “Hello, Child Services, Shirley speaking. We deal in family tragedies, one right after the other.”
Katherine laughed. That about sized up this job, and her love life too. She was twenty-six years old, had never been married, and, after two years at this job, had pretty much decided she could live without the joys of wedded bliss. Her previous experiences with men only reinforced this view. First there was Charlie, a guy she’d dated out of high school. They’d even gotten engaged. Then she found he’d been cheating on her with one of her girlfriends. A year later she began seeing a sailor named Gregg, and dated him for almost a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Out of the blue he got his orders, and without even saying good-bye, shipped out, leaving her a note saying not to wait for him. It had been fun.
Fun . . . was that what they had been having?
But her pathetic love life wasn’t the source of her gloom. It was the case Shirley had mentioned a moment ago. The one that had put Katherine on Bernie Krebb’s bad side. The case of little Patrick Collins. Krebb said she’d gotten way too personal on this case and spent way too much company time.
But Katherine couldn’t help it. Just thinking about him brought an involuntary smile.
Patrick had lost his mother in a car accident. Katherine was assigned to help him get situated with a grandfather he’d never met, while the army tried to locate his father in England. The grandfather had been perfectly horrible about the whole thing and treated Patrick terribly. But Patrick never whined or complained. He endured the tragedy of the loss of his mother better than any adult she’d ever known.
She didn’t heed Krebb’s warning for one reason: she was entirely smitten.
But too soon, it was all over. Once Patrick’s situation had mended, she had no reason to stay connected to the Collins family. But being with them, especially Patrick, was the only thing she thought about now. What had he been doing since then? Was his grandfather still treating him well? Did the old man and Patrick’s father ever reconcile? Did Patrick ever think about her anymore? How do you just turn off thoughts like these, shut down the emotions that followed? She couldn’t find the switch.
The phone rang, breaking through her thoughts. “Hello, Child Services, Katherine Townsend speaking. How may I help you?”
“Miss Townsend?”
That voice . . . it couldn’t be. “Patrick? Is that you?”
“It’s me, Miss Townsend. How are you?”
“I’m . . . I’m fine, Patrick. I’ve missed you so much.” She realized she was talking loudly; she could barely contain her joy.
“I’ve missed you too. A whole bunch. How come I don’t see you anymore?”
He still wants to see me, Katherine thought. “I wish I could, Patrick. You don’t know how much.” How could she explain? “See, now that your daddy is home and your grandfather is treating you better—is he still treating you nice?”
“Yeah, he’s been pretty nice since my daddy came home.”
“Well, now that you’re safe and sound, the way my job works, I have to—” She couldn’t say the words “let you go.” “I have to work with other kids who need help. Do you understand?”
“Does that mean you can’t come over anymore?”
“Well, kind of. At least not as part of my job.”
“Could you come for dinner? Like tomorrow night?”
Katherine smiled. “Patrick, I’d love to, but you can’t just invite me over to dinner. Your dad or your grandfather would have to do something like that.”
“My dad is inviting you, well, sort of. He said it was okay if I called you to come over.”
“He did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why isn’t he calling me himself?”
“He’s not here. He went away for one day and one night to the college he went to before I was born. But I just talked with him on the phone, and he said you can come to dinner tomorrow night. Mrs. Fortini’s gonna be there and my grandfather. He’s going to tell us the whole story about how he escaped the Germans after his plane crashed. Can’t you please come? Please?”