The Top Gun's Return. Kathleen Creighton

its cradle and picked up the Teddy bear. After gazing at it for a moment, she wrapped her arms around it and cradled it against her heart.

      Does he have any scars?

      She didn’t know how to tell Sammi June that the worst of her daddy’s scars were most likely deep down inside him, where nobody could see them.

      At eleven o’clock next morning, Lieutenant Commander Rees arrived in a European model Ford to take Jessie shopping. He took her to a larger town near the air base where, he said, most of the families of base personnel did their shopping. Before turning her loose in the shops, however, he took her to lunch at a small bistro that served mostly Italian food, including pizza. Normally Jessie was very fond of pizza, but it was going to be a while before she stopped associating the smell of Italian food with the heartstopping terror of that phone call from her mother, telling her that her husband had come back from the dead after eight years.

      She ordered a small antipasto and a diet soda, and since the weather was unusually sunny and warm for April, they chose one of the small tables outdoors on the sidewalk.

      Lieutenant Commander Rees didn’t mess around. He stabbed a fork into his baked ziti, then asked Jessie straight-out how things were going with her and Tristan.

      Jessie, being a true Southern woman, was all set to smile brightly and assure him that everything was Fine, just fine, but for some reason, didn’t. Maybe it was something to do with the lieutenant commander’s air of authority and self-assurance, which all military officers seemed to have, in her experience, and the fact that Jessie had barely known her own father growing up and was wanting to confide in somebody strong and wise, but all at once she found herself blurting out the truth.

      “I don’t know,” she said. Her throat closed and she stared bleakly at her salad. “I don’t know how it’s going.” She took a breath and belatedly fought for control. “I’m a nurse, I feel like I ought to have a better handle on this than I do. Hey, I’m used to taking care of tiny little babies. What do I know about how to deal with…with—”

      “I’m not gonna lie to you,” the lieutenant commander said in his brisk military way, matter-of-factly munching a bite of ziti. “Lieutenant Bauer’s got a rough road ahead of him, and so do you. It’s not gonna be easy.” Jessie nodded miserably, and after a moment he wiped his mouth with his napkin and went on. “The fact is, some POWs have an easier time adjusting than others. And sometimes their marriages don’t survive the strain. Now, Mrs. Bauer, your husband is a man with a good, strong character to begin with—if he wasn’t, he’d never have survived what he did as long as he did. If I were a betting man I’d have to put my money on him to make it back all the way. But that doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a cakewalk. He’s gonna need you to be strong. And, he’s gonna have to reach down inside himself and find some strength maybe he doesn’t know he has.”