Page 12 of The Soldier's Homecoming

Instead he walked out the door and into the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of wine.

Tonight was going to be a long night.

This was harderthan Penny had expected. When she’d been away, she’d imagined that the day she returned home would be the day everything returned to normal.

Daniel had put an end to that with his infidelity, but she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult with Gabby.

She heard a knock at the door as she was pressing gloss to her lips. She was nervous, which was stupid, given that Daniel’s family had been her family, too, since before she’d joined the army. But still. If their marriage was truly over, would they still consider her family? Still want to see her? Still feel the same about her?

Prickles tingled across her skin at the thought of losing them, too. Daniel’s mother was like her own. A surrogate for the one she’d lost. And his brother? She’d always been so close to him, but surely brothers’ blood ran too thick for her to expect him to remain close to her.

“Mommy!”

Penny looked up at her reflection, pausing to consider herself in the mirror before she braved their guests. There were tiny lines playing across the skin at the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d been deployed for the second time, a tiredness that had crept up on her without her realizing. And there was a sadness, a hollowness in her expression that she had felt but not seen before, and that scared her.

Because until now, she’d worried about smile lines around her mouth, not frown wrinkles.

Penny sighed and smoothed the soft fabric of her top down her torso. She glanced down at her hand and looked at how tanned it was. But there was no white line where her wedding ring had once sat, and the hollow at the front of her neck was bare. She’d always kept her wedding rings on a chain there, the weight of them reminding her of home, but she’d removed them the day Daniel had told her what he’d done, and she’d never put them on again.

If he hadn’t told his family before, they were going to figure it out pretty quick. His mother would notice her bare hand the moment she saw it.

“Mommy!” Gabby hollered again.

“Coming,” she called back.

She didn’t see Gabby when she emerged into the living room, but she did see Tom walking through the front door.

And a laugh caught in her throat. A laugh that could so easily have turned into a sob.

Maybe he did think of her like his sister, if his body language was anything to go by.

Daniel stepped forward to shake his hand, or maybe to pull him in for the hug-and-back-slap thing they used to do. put the look on Tom’s face spelled anger. The same look she bet he wore when things weren’t going his way on a mission. She might be a soldier, but even she knew how tough and determined a Navy SEAL could be!

Tom glared at Daniel, pausing only to smack him on the side of the head with his open palm as he passed.

“Ow!”

Daniel reached to where he’d been knocked, hand over his left ear.

“Idiot,” Tom muttered.

Daniel didn’t look amused, but he didn’t argue either.

Penny took a deep, gulping breath before stepping fully into the room. At least they knew. It would have been harder if Daniel hadn’t been truthful about what had happened between them. About what he’d done.

She cleared her throat, announcing her presence.

“Penny!”

His mother’s excited call made Penny forget her thoughts. Made her worries drain away.

“Oh, Pen, it’s so good to have you home safe and sound.”

She let herself be folded into the warm, welcoming embrace of the woman who’d been like her mother for the past eight years.

“Thanks for coming over, Vicki,” Penny mumbled against her mother-in-law’s shoulder, holding her back, tight.

She found herself being held at arm’s length to be inspected.

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