27
Bishop had long ago memorized the checklist a ballistic missile submarine executed once it nudged the pier. He scanned power settings on the command-and-control consoles, watched engineering reconfigure the boat to take power from shore in preparation for shutdown of the nuclear reactor. The officer manning the sequence had it well in hand. Bishop waited until the hand-off was ready for the pier crew to physically connect the cables. “You did a solid job during this patrol, Olson,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Family waiting for you?”
“At the Squadron 17 ready room, sir. You?”
Bishop found the photo in his pocket that the ombudsman had handed him, along with her shore summary, and turned the photo to show the sailor. “My wife is at the vet with a sick puppy.” Pongo had grown so much in three months he looked ungainly. Gina’s note of welcome, along with the news, was scrawled on the back of the photo. It also had a border of X’s and O’s and a nicely drawn smiley face. Mark was taking it as good indication she’d meet him with a welcoming smile when they finally both got free.
The fact Gina was electing to take the dog to the vet rather than be on the pier to meet him—struggling to hide her emotions about what had almost happened—didn’t escape his notice. He had the distinct impression her absence was deliberate. Gina was keeping arrival day low-key, trying to say with her actions that this was just a normal part of life and what a commander’s wife did. She waved him off on patrol, said “hello” and “welcome home” when he got back. It wasn’t what Mark had been expecting, but it had its interesting merits. She knew his focus had to be on the boat for the first few hours pier-side.
The photo told him she was okay—that was the important news. There wasn’t anything in the ombudsman’s shore summary about his wife having fallen and broken a leg or something of that nature. He’d scanned it for her name as soon as he was handed the document. His wife would find her way to him eventually.
Bishop pulled the note pad from his pocket and jotted down another three items to remember on his hand-over report. Nevada blue was going to be given a boat that showed the stress of this patrol. Missiles 9 and 16 were going to have to be lifted out and put on the test bench to confirm their guidance systems had properly cleared. Bishop was considering making the move to the Explosives Handling Wharf tomorrow evening to deal with those missiles before hand-over. But it might be better to leave it for Nevada blue to oversee, as the loading of new missiles without incident would be high on their own concerns list.
“Sir, your wife is topside.”
Mark swiftly turned, nodded his thanks to his sonar chief, reached for his sunglasses, and hurried up the ladder into the sail. Gina Bishop had crossed the walkway and was standing on the steel deck of the Nevada, talking with his chief engineer and the Nevada’s ombudsman. Mark smiled when he looked down from the sail and saw her, then leaned his arms against the metal warmed by the sun. “Hi there, precious.”
She looked up, smiled, lifted her hand. “Hey, sailor, welcome home.”
“How’s our dog?”
“No longer enamored with the flowers I planted by the back porch,” she called up to him. “He ate a few, and the insecticide I used made him sick. At least the vet thinks that was the culprit.”
“That would do it.” He moved over to the ladder and left the sail for the deck.
She came to meet him and leaned against his chest in an embrace that turned into more than just a welcome home. It became a sanctuary for them both. “I’m so glad you’re home, Mark,” she whispered.
He smoothed a hand across her back. “Glad to be here.” He waited to see if she wanted to say anything else, and when she didn’t, he dropped a kiss on her hair and circled her shoulders with an arm. “How much new science did you have to invent to get us out of that jam?” he asked softly.
“I may have reapplied a bit of it,” she answered with a small smile. “You had a busy patrol.”
“I think you probably saw the worst of it,” he reassured. “The Seawolf got home safely?”
“Docked last week,” she said. “Jeff is getting married. He proposed to Tiffany about an hour after he stepped off the boat.”
Bishop grinned. “Good for him.”
“Going to be a few more hours before you can get away?”
“About four.”
“I’m thinking a fruit salad and omelet, hot shower and back rub, whenever you manage to cross the threshold of home. I’ll tell you the rest of the news then.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal and a date.”
She held out car keys and a cell phone. “Security will give me a lift home. Call if you aren’t going to make it before midnight.” There was just the edge of a tremor in her hand as he accepted the keys, and he shot her a more careful look. Joy, not stress, but she was fighting not to shed tears, determined to make this casual for the sake of the crew. No scenes by the captain’s wife, even though her emotions were running high.
He leaned down and kissed her. “Thank you for marrying me, Gina,” he whispered.
Her full smile about stopped his heart, and she added to the emotion when she lifted her hand, rested it against his chest over his heart, and lightly patted him twice. “You look pretty good to me, sailor. Come home when you can.”
Bishop laughed and pocketed the keys as she walked back across the gangway to the pier. His wife was learning to flirt.
Mark walked through the door to his home shortly after nine p.m. At first the dog growled at him, but then he recognized Mark and floppily jumped and bumped his hand. Both cats stalked into the hall to see what the fuss was about and took a perch on the stairs to consider him.
The hall light turned on near the kitchen. “Your welcome-home committee needs more practice. I didn’t hear the car.”
He smiled and dropped his bag by the door. “They’ll remember me after a few days.” He joined her and folded her in his arms, content to simply hold her for a long while, relearning the smell of her shampoo and her habit of burrowing her hands against his chest between them. She let him take all her weight. She belonged here in his arms. Life felt good again. “Hi.”
She leaned back and pulled his head down to kiss him lightly. “Let me get you fed.”
She’d changed during the last three months, and he was beginning to notice a number of the ways. Definitely lost some weight—she’d felt thin in that hug. Her smile was more confident. And something else . . . “You changed your hair.”
She laughed as she stepped into the kitchen. “Blame the wives of Nevada gold. We had this get-together at the beauty shop, a ‘before the guys get home’ party. It was a riot, but I nearly got turned into a redhead. I managed to get a hair color a shade lighter, plus highlights to go with a trim.”
He gratefully accepted the glass of iced tea she held out. “Your husband likes it.”
“Good, because the only option is to watch it grow out.”
Melinda’s colored bottles on display had been joined by pottery, the counter had acquired three cookbooks, a cake plate with glass dome had donuts under its lid, the kitchen table had been covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth, and irises clustered in a tall vase.
Gina cracked eggs for an omelet. “Bacon, ham, mushrooms, and cheese sound okay?”
“Wonderful. Powdered eggs just don’t cut it after a while.” He got a spoon out of the drawer, retrieved the already made fruit salad from the top shelf of the refrigerator, found a smaller bowl, and pulled out a chair at the table. Fresh fruit had disappeared from the Nevada a few days before the eggs, and he’d been craving a good peach. To his delight he found a layer of peach slices in the fruit salad. “Anything else you ladies did together?”
“We had baking days, garage sales, kid-fun trips. There are a lot of casseroles shoved into freezers, so time doesn’t have to be spent cooking meals, scrapbooks on what happened during the patrol, and a few houses with new paint jobs inside. We wives stayed busy.”
Bishop laughed at the way she said it. Gina had settled in with the group, that much was clear. As the captain’s wife she would have been invited to everything. Opportunities to make friends among the gold crew must have been abundant. “No major accidents or problems?”
“A snake in the yard I could have done without. I fell asleep one day and burned a pan of brownies, set off the smoke detector. And there are too many sounds in this house at night I’m not accustomed to yet, so security walked the place a few times when I was uncomfortable. I lost a cat on three different occasions—eventually figured out they were sleeping in an odd spot and ignoring me.”
Bishop looked down at the cats now stalking the dog’s tail. Pongo had crashed on his shoe to anchor Bishop from moving anywhere. “Cats will be cats,” he offered. “I see bells on their collars—those are new.”
“They’ve figured out how to move slowly enough so the bells don’t ring.”
Bishop grinned. “Of course.”
She turned the eggs and added items to the omelet. “Jeff is off on R and R somewhere, but he promised he’ll make Chicago on the 20th for our wedding celebration. Your mom and I have the invitations ready to go in the mail tomorrow if the date still works for you.”
Bishop smiled. “It does.”
“Good, because I already ordered the cake for that date.”
She folded over the omelet and slid it onto a plate, brought it over to the table for him. She took a seat next to his.
“How’s Daniel?” Mark asked.
“Good.” She rested her chin on her palm. “He was invaluable at the TCC. He headed out with the Nebraska five days ago. I made him a dozen music playlists to take with him—our credit card kind of whimpered,” she admitted. When he only chuckled, she went on, “I promised I’d keep an eye on the new saltwater aquarium he’s added to his place.”
Mark nodded and reached for a napkin.
“He pulled me into the TCC just before lockdown closed the doors, so we had a front-row seat to everything that happened. It was helpful to have him as a sounding board while it was unfolding.”
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted him with you.”
“It helped, Mark, hearing his perspective. We figured out what happened with China’s sub by creating new topology maps for the East China Sea before and after the sub went missing. We spotted the seamount it hit. From there, it was simply a matter of figuring out where the crippled sub was, and a photo helped with that.”
“Your science did its job.”
“A very good job,” she agreed. “By the way, Daniel has recently met an ocean biologist. She’s finishing a Ph.D. thesis on porpoise vocalizations, and the Navy has a lot of audio recordings that fit what she needs.” Gina smiled. “I just might have introduced them.”
Bishop leaned over and kissed her. “You might have, indeed. Does she like the sea?”
“Grew up in Hawaii, surfing for an hour before school most mornings. Her father runs a deep-sea fishing charter.”
“Nicely done.” He finished half the omelet. “What else did you do while I was away?”
“Missed you. Wrote you a bunch of letters. Thought about how much I’m going to enjoy Montana for a honeymoon.”
“Three days to hand-over, and then it’s a big wedding and a long honeymoon,” he promised.
She reached over and ruffled his hair. “You need a haircut before then. I like it, but it’s so not the normal you.”
Bishop caught her hand and kissed the inside of her palm. “I lost a crew challenge at the halfway-night party and conceded not to see the crew barber until we were back onshore.”
“Going to tell me the challenge?”
“Never.”
She laughed. “The guys would have needed some levity by the end of the patrol.”
“We got through it.” He finished the meal and pushed back his plate. “I’ve missed your face, Gina, and your smile.” He brushed her hair back. “I should have taken more pictures with me than I did. I nearly wore out the ones I had.”
“I’ll remember that for the next patrol. I kept finding your notes for weeks after you left. They were really nice, Mark.”
“I hoped they would bring a smile.”
“They did. Oh, hold on. I found something of yours.” She left the kitchen and returned a moment later with a book in her hand, setting it beside him on the table.
It was a book of poetry, one he recognized. He picked it up slowly, and it opened to a page his first wife had often stopped at. A note fluttered out. Mark picked it up. It was addressed to Melinda.
“Did you read it?”
“Yes. I was too curious not to,” she admitted, sitting again beside him.
He nodded and opened the folded page.
Melinda, my love,
I know you read this book most often when you’re sad. I wish I was there to dry your tears and hug you tonight and tell you I love you. Read page 92 and think of me.
Yours forever, Mark
“I remember writing this,” he said quietly, then looked over at Gina.
She rested her chin on her hand as she nodded. “I’m thinking you’ll leave me a note like that one, expecting me to find it one day. And for whatever reason it will remain for another decade or two where you placed it, so that someone in a future generation finds it and reads the words my husband wrote for me. They’ll wonder about the love affair between Mark and Gina. You and Melinda had that for nine years—a good marriage and love affair. Now it’s our turn to build a chapter of that love story together. I get mushy just thinking about it,” she said softly.
“I think it’s good to have a relationship immortalized in words.”
Mark thought of the notes and glanced back at her. “Including the one I left under my pillow?”
She smiled. “Yes, I found it the first night—when I slept on your side of the bed, missing you more than I can say. It would be incomplete without that one.” She got to her feet, held out her hand. “A shower, a back rub, some sleep. What time does Nevada need you back?”
“Seven a.m.”
“I’ll nudge you that way at six.”
He interlaced his fingers with hers, surprised how easily the first night was fitting them back together. “Are we really okay, Gina?” he asked, concerned he was seeing a determined all-is-well appearance rather than the layers below it.
“Yes. I love you. I know you love me. I’m not wasting tonight on what might have happened or what might have gone wrong. I’ve got a future with you, one I want very much. The rest is details.”
He relaxed. She’d meant it. “We’ll talk about those details another day,” he assured her as they walked upstairs together.
“We will. There’s a honey-do list for you on your nightstand in case you get to feeling like I managed just fine without you. And a wish list of movies I want to see, and books I’d like you to buy me.” She bit her lip. “Actually I bought most of the books and called them a gift from you, so maybe you should give me back that list to update once more.”
He laughed. He switched who was in the lead and led her into the bedroom, saw the shoe box full of letters on the bedside table. “Do I start from the front or the back?”
“Oldest ones are in front.”
He stepped out of his shoes, not letting go of his hold on her hand. She stepped out of hers, and the dog pounced on a sandal. “The pets fight over who gets to sleep in the dog bed downstairs. Most of the time the cats claim it first, and Pongo plops down by the front door so he can bark when the newspaper gets delivered at five o’clock.”
“An interesting wake-up time for you.” He turned on lights in the bathroom. “You repainted in here.”
“Pongo attacked the shower curtain, and the new one didn’t work with the walls, so I decided painting was easier than returning the shower curtain and selecting a new one.”
“Works for me.” He glanced at the mirror and accepted reality. He needed a shave or his wife was going to have whisker burns in the morning. He let go of her hand, but she merely created a space on the bathroom counter and perched there to watch him. “I’m going to cut my neck the way you’re studying me,” he mentioned.
“I missed this routine,” Gina replied, smiling. “I had all these ideas for your first night back, and they didn’t include watching you shave and talking about where the pets sleep.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I thought I’d kiss you senseless and then go from there.”
Mark grinned. “I might let you do that. I’m glad you waited to get married, Gina. You could have settled down with some Ph.D. candidate back when you were 20, and then where would I be tonight?”
“Not as happy,” she said.
“Your self-confidence is improving.”
“I like being married. I like being married to you.”
He leaned over and kissed her, transferring a good bit of shaving cream to her chin in the process.
She laughed and wiped it away, sliding off her perch on the counter. “Nevada gold wives also went shopping together. Shall I show you what I bought for tonight with you in mind?”
“Not while I’m shaving,” he replied with a laugh. He reached for a square of toilet paper to stop the bleeding from the nick on his jaw. “I lived through a tough patrol. I might not survive my wife flirting with me tonight.”
She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his back. “I love you, Mark. I’m awfully glad you’re back.”
Mark set aside the razor and wiped a towel across his face, turned around and picked her up. “I adore you, precious,” he said, finding he was so full of emotion at the moment, the words came out in a whisper. “Did you ever regret marrying me while I was gone?”
She shook her head. “Nope, not a single millisecond of time. You?”
“Never. I spent the patrol thinking about how soon I’d be home again.” He rested his forehead against hers. He loved this woman. “Mrs. Bishop.”
“Hmm?”
“Change of plans.”
“Does it involve me having to find my shoes? Because I think Pongo just stole one of my sandals and took it downstairs.”
Mark laughed. “It involves my bag I left downstairs, and a stack of letters I wrote you. I want you to start reading them while I get this shave finished and take a shower. Then I’ll let you kiss me senseless.”
“We need ice cream if we’re reading letters.”
“Works for me.”
She reluctantly stepped away. “I’ll hurry.”
He smiled. “Start with the first letter and read them in order. There are only 10, but I added to each one over a few days, so they’re long.”
It was after midnight when Gina finally set the alarm for six so her husband could be back at the Nevada on schedule. As captain, it was important that he set a good example of being on time. In three days, though, he’d be on R and R, and she wouldn’t have to give him up to the Navy in the mornings.
“I just realized you’re ticklish,” she said with a chuckle, letting her fingers slide back to that spot.
He groaned even as he laughed and caught her hands. “Go to sleep, Gina. I’m fried here. I’m getting too old for a young wife.”
“I’d say you’re about perfect.” She kissed his chin. “Nice shave. But you missed a spot.” She giggled as he rubbed her cheek with it. “Do you think we’re going to be an old married couple one day?”
“How old?” he asked, his voice already heavy with sleep.
“Ninety, and a hundred.”
“Sure. I’m in great shape. And we’ll work on getting you to the gym occasionally.”
“Hey.”
He grinned and then kissed her. “Go to sleep, precious.”
She closed her eyes because he needed the rest, and while she liked to tease him, part of being his wife was taking care of him. She could have lost him, could have lost Jeff, to what was heading toward a war. She was going to take care of her guys. The rest of life could revolve around that priority.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked. She opened her eyes to see him resting on his pillow, studying her face.
“Life is good,” she replied.
“Hmm. It is.”
“Good night, Mark.”
She said it softly, deliberately, and after a quiet few seconds his arms tightened around her in a hug. “You’re kind to me, precious. I love that.”
She interlaced her hand with his, smiled, and let them both drift to sleep. She had what she most wanted—a good husband. And she loved being a wife. Life was good. And he was safely home from the sea.