Page 77 of A Hero Comes Home

“You have no idea,” Sally said.

And the (red) tide turneth . . .

Jake had been in Clyde Jones’s rock ’n’ roll–themed diner many times growing up in Bell Cove, but not of course in recent years. Clyde’s niece, Delilah, Sally’s friend, had done a great job restoring the place to its former glory.

In fact, the boys insisted that he take a picture with his cell phone of them posing in front of the twenty-foot neon Elvis out front, which hadn’t been there in the old days, but was a great addition. Two of them had crawled halfway up Elvis’s leg. Matt was stretched on tiptoes, pretending to be patting the King’s butt. And Sally was as bad as the kids, hugging Elvis’s boot. She looked like a kid today, too, with her hair all spiked up, wearing a pink-and-white halter dress that barely covered her thighs, which was amazing considering how un-kid-like she’d been all weekend, especially with her interpretation of cinnamon sex. Whoa!

Just as he was about to round up his rowdy bunch, he heard the loud screeching noise of car brakes being pushed to the metal. Glancing sharply to the right, his Special Forces training on high alert for danger, about to leap into action, he saw a bunch of teenagers in a beat-up convertible, laughing their asses off as they barely missed the curb on the street out front. Without a care for any damage they might have done, the idiot driver did a quick self-correction and zoomed off. He’d either been talking or texting or whatever teens did today to distract them from driving with alertness. There could have been kids near that curb.

He sounded like an old fogey thinking that way, but he realized that the knee-jerk, sharp swivel of his head to the right had been due to his concern for his family. What did I think would happen? That a vehicle would jump the curb and come barreling over the parking lot, taking down my wife, three kids, and a twenty-foot Elvis? Hey, stranger things have happened. Good thing I didn’t have a weapon with me. I might have shot up a terrorist teenager.

But here was an even stranger thing. When his head had wrenched to the right, so had his eyeballs. Both of them. It felt like something had pulled in the socket. And it hurt now. Not painfully. Just an odd ache. This had never happened before. He needed to examine the situation in front of a mirror once he got home. He’d probably popped a blood vessel, or something.

In any case, time to get this show on the road. “Let’s go, kiddos. If we don’t hurry, they’ll be sold out of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches.”

“Oh, no!”

“I want bacon on mine.”

“Well, I’m not eatin’ fried pickles. Yuck!”

“Pickles give you farts. Binky said so.”

“I’m gonna eat five banana puddings with whipped cream, and I don’t care if I barf, either.”

“I like that Elvis song about Hawaii. That’s where they do the hula dance.”

“Kin we get a hula hoop?”

“Wonder if Maggie will be here?” Matt asked, his face going suddenly red as he noticed his father watching him.

“Who’s Maggie?” Jake asked Sally.

“Maggie, short for Magdalene, is Delilah’s daughter.”

“Magdalene and Delilah, huh? Biblical names. She’s as bad as us with Matthew, Mark, and Luke.”

“And there’s the grandmother, too, named Salome. Wait till you get a look at her. Oh, my! No, I won’t tell you what I mean. I can’t wait to see your reaction. Let’s just say if you think Vana Gustafson is hot, wait till you meet the Glam Gram. That’s what they call her.” She rolled her eyes. “And as for Maggie, she’s only five, Luke’s age, but all girly girl. All the boys love her.”

Still laughing and talking over each other and elbowing each other, the boys would have rushed up the steps and into the diner, screeching like hyenas, if he hadn’t grabbed the hands of two of them and Sally corralled the other. They were laughing as they walked inside.

Right away, they were greeted by a blonde bombshell. That was the only way to describe the tall woman with big bed-mussed blonde hair and a hot-cha-cha figure encased in tight white jeans, a red tank top, and an apron. Yes, Jake had developed a thing about aprons.

“Sally! You came! At last!” The woman hugged Sally, gave each of the boys a kiss on top of their heads, then turned to him. “And you must be Jake.” She gave him a hug, too.

“Jake, this is my friend, Delilah Good. As you can guess, Lilah, this is my husband, Jacob.”

“You can call me Jake,” he said quickly. Sally was the only one he wanted calling him Jacob.

“Welcome, welcome,” she said to them all.

“Hey, the place looks great. Just like it did in the old days, but better,” he said. And it did. Everything was shiny new, including the mini jukeboxes set on the wall of each booth, where you could hear the low strains of Elvis songs playing whenever the diners had put in their quarters. At the back end of the diner, on a far wall, he saw evidence of Sally’s parents and their set-designing skills having been there. There was a mural depicting a collage of Elvis images against the backdrop of Graceland.

“Thanks. You grew up in Bell Cove. Did you know my uncle?”

“Yeah, a little. My mom and dad knew him better. But this was a teenage hangout for a while. Old Clyde was a good guy.”

“You can take that booth there at the end. Merrill is out back, checking inventory for me. I’ll bring him here to meet you, Jake. We’ve heard so much about you.”