“That’s perfect.”She gestured.“Your turn.”
He pulled out the figurine of the soldier kneeling in prayer, the words taken from Psalm 91, the Soldier’s Psalm, carved into the base.“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.”
He ran his finger over the words, then looked up at her.“I really like this.”
“It made me think of you.”She fought the desire to lighten the tension that filled the room.“I was hoping you’d like it.”
“I do.Very much.”He paused, then said, “When something about a mission or something else stresses me out, I recite the Soldier’s Psalm.”
She gasped.“I love that.”
He put it back in the bag and pointed at her.“One more.”
When she opened the jewelry box, the necklace with a pendant shaped like a stethoscope forming a heart made her gasp out loud.“Oh, Jerry,” she said, tracing the heart.“How beautiful.And how thoughtful.”She shook her head.“How did you even have time?”
He shrugged.“I saw it weeks ago and thought of you.I went this morning to pick it up, hoping it would still be there.”He winked.“The benefit of Christmas deployment is the ability to take advantage of after-Christmas sales.”
She stood with him and easily went into his arms, still holding the box in her hand.“It means a lot to me.Thank you.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers.She thought she could stay in his arms all day.He cupped her cheek with his hand and slowly gentled the kiss.When he raised his head, it was just to rest his forehead on hers.“I suddenly don’t want to leave, again.”
She squeezed him and stepped back.“You go see your family.Enjoy them.”
“I will.”He slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her forward again.“In a minute.”
Midland, South Dakota
Jerry’s dad, Leonard “Leo” Adam McBride, set a cup of coffee in front of him.Jerry smiled and said, “Appreciate it.”
“Course you do.”His dad sat across from him, his hazel eyes taking in everything.His once brown hair, still cut close in the military style, now salted with gray.
“How was your night?”
The weather had delayed his flight.He’d arrived just before midnight.“Fine.Been a long couple of weeks, though.Lots of snow and lots of flying.”He rubbed his eyes.“We got in on Christmas Day.”
“Didn’t realize you were even gone.”A wry smile curved his lips.“But when we didn’t hear from you Christmas morning, I assumed.”
“Yeah.”He took a sip of coffee and closed his eyes, appreciating his father’s special roast.“Man, that’s good coffee.”
“Life’s too short to drink bad coffee.”
“Well, when all you got is MRE coffee for a few weeks, you’ll take most anything else.”He raised his cup in a toast to his dad.“Business still good?”
His father sat back in his chair.“I used to get enough orders at Sturgis to see me through the year.Now, with all the social media stuff your cousin keeps doing, I have a three-month waiting list and work twenty-hour days just to fill orders at Sturgis.If you ever decide to get out, I can add an ‘& Son’ after the name, and we could make a killing.”
His father built custom windshields for any kind of vehicle that needed one, but motorcycles dominated his trade.The work involved in customizing the windshields and forming them by hand went back to the days of old when blacksmiths crafted swords and shields on anvils from raw metal using hammers and pure human strength.
Jerry raised an eyebrow.“Get out?”
“Yeah.”His dad rubbed his smooth jaw.“It’s not the same Army I was in.Very different.”
True.A lot of things about the military had changed in the last decade, and some things had changed back.“Granddad said the same thing about you.Didn’t he say, ‘Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis’?Times change, and we change with them,” Jerry smiled when he said that.It wasn’t intended to be an insult or a gotcha.“Everything changes from one generation to the next, does is it not?”
“Renaming ships and tearing down memorials?When they renamed Bragg, that was kind of the final straw for me,” his dad said frankly.
“They named it back,” Jerry countered.
His dad shook his head.“One shot, one kill.No take backs.”
