Page 76 of A Hero Comes Home

It wasn’t until six p.m. that they were able to leave the house. It took that long to get the boys showered and changed, they were so wound up from their trip.

Just before they left, while Jake was on the phone with someone, maybe Major Durand, the three of them cornered her out on the back porch. “We have an idea,” Matt said, and the other two yahoos nodded in agreement.

They were up to something, she could tell.

Matt, their spokesman, said, “We want to enter the Lolly talent contest, with you.”

She frowned. “Doing what?”

“Singing.”

“What?” Unless something had changed dramatically in the past few days, none of them could carry a tune in a bucket, as the old saying went.

“We want to surprise Dad,” Matt elaborated.

“What do singing and a surprise for your father have in common?”

“Well, the Lolly celebration is supposed to be about lots of stuff. Treasures and patriotism and heroes and hometown talent,” Matt told her, like a little old man who’d rehearsed his spiel. “We think it would be cool if we sang that song about eagle wings and heroes, just to show Dad that we’re glad he came home.”

It took Sally a moment to decipher what they meant. Oh, my God! They meant that old Bette Midler song about a woman asking a guy if he knew he was her hero, that he was the wind beneath her wings. And the boys wanted to surprise their father with that song! Oh, my God! Jake would die of embarrassment, or from emotion overload. He objected to the yellow ribbons still exhibited around town. She could only imagine his reaction to being serenaded by his family.

“Um, can we think about this before we decide for sure?”

The boys weren’t too happy about her lack of enthusiasm.

“Maybe we could even ask Uncle Kevin if he would play the guitar with us?” Mark suggested.

Oh, no, no, no! Talk about awkward! “If we decide to do this, and I’m not saying we are, I don’t think asking Kevin to join us would be a good idea. It should be a family thing.”

“We been practicin’,” Luke told her.

“You have, sweetie? When?”

“Out on the boat,” Mark said.

Sally narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “Does PopPop know about this idea?”

“Yep,” all three answered.

Sally was going to have a thing or two to say to Joe about encouraging his grandkids with this notion. It would serve him right if they decided to go ahead with the wacky idea, and forced him to join them on stage.

“We got the idea when that song came on the oldies station on the boat radio,” Matt explained.

“At first, PopPop said we were scarin’ the fish away with our caterwaulin’,” Mark noted.

“But then he and Old Mike thaid we were really good,” Luke interjected. “Wanna hear?”

“Not right now,” she said quickly. “Remember, it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

The three of them pretended to zip their lips as Jake came out, looked at all four of them, who’d gone suddenly silent, and asked, “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” they all said, including Sally.

As they walked to the truck, Sally noticed how cute they all looked in almost identical khaki cargo shorts and black T-shirts, father and sons. It had been an unintentional matchy-matchy action, and not worth changing when they realized what they’d done. Jake, who was wearing the eye patch this evening, rather than dark sunglasses, and smelling enticingly like cinnamon, looped an arm over Sally’s shoulder.

The boys were already in the back seat arguing and squealing over who should sit where and an occasional “Mom, he’s touching me” yelled out. The whole time, they kept darting glances at their father, then at her, and whispering. Secret agents, they would never be.

Jake squeezed her shoulder. “Are you guys ganging up on me?”