299 Days: The Visitors by Glen Tate

say, “OK, I’m done.” But he couldn’t. For all he knew, in an hour there would be an attack at the gate, or a boatload of criminals landing on the beach. Or another tweaker house. Or someone off their meds attacking a neighbor. Grant knew that this wasn’t time for a logical explanation to Lisa about why he needed to do all this gun stuff or why he was one of only a handful of semi-trained gunfighters at Pierce Point and how they needed each and every one.
    “I’m home, honey,” Grant said. That’s all he could think to say. “Don’t worry,” he continued, thinking that sounded like a pretty good thing to say. “It wasn’t even close. I didn’t get a scratch. We overpowered them. It wasn’t even close. It wasn’t even close,” Grant kept repeating that to her to calm her down. She was sobbing in his arms in front of everyone. Grant felt very uncomfortable.
    “Let’s go home,” he said. She nodded, her head brushing up and down on his chest. She was a foot shorter than him.
    “Home” sounded so good. They could go home because he didn’t get killed. Lisa kept hugging him. She didn’t want to let him go.
    People were leaving them alone. Everyone else was coming up to Rich and the rest of the Team and congratulating them. After a few minutes, someone said a truck was ready to take them back to their cabins.
    The Team went out to Mark’s truck. He let Grant and Lisa ride in the rear cab together. They noticed that Grant was focusing on Lisa instead of them. This was their victory time, but Grant didn’t want to be part of it. He wanted to be with Lisa. It was like when one guy in a group gets a girlfriend. The group feels left out, like the guy will be ditching them soon for the girl.
    When they first got in the truck, Mark wanted to hear the story of the raid firsthand from Grant. He could see Grant didn’t want to talk. It was hug time, so Mark didn’t say a word all the way home.
    During the ride, Grant thought how good it felt to be with Lisa. It reminded him of back in college when they could finally be together on a Saturday night date after working hard at school all week. He was reminded of how holding her felt back then. It was a treat he earned and savored. The truck ride felt like that.
    They drove onto Over Road. His cabin looked fabulous in the twilight. – not for any particular reason, just that he was home and safe. He wanted to hug the kids and sleep in his bed. He didn’t want to leave the house. He wanted to be a normal husband and father for a while. Let the twenty-year olds save the day. This old guy had done his duty.
    When he walked into the cabin, Drew and Eileen came down from the loft and said hi. They had no idea about the raid.
    Manda said casually, “Oh, hey, Dad. What’s up?” She didn’t know about the raid, either. Thank God. She could just be a kid for a while longer. Well, at sixteen, a young adult.
    Cole came running up and said, “Hi, Dad. How was your day?”
    “Great talkin’, little buddy,” Grant said to Cole. They had been working on getting him to say social things to people to start a conversation. Cole wanted to talk to people; it was just hard for him.
    “So, how was your day?” Cole asked again. Grant had never heard him say that sentence before. It was one of the best things in the world, hearing a new sentence from Cole.
    “Oh, it was fine,” Grant said and looked at Lisa. “A little stressful, but it turned out OK,” he said, as nonchalantly as possible.
    “Good, Dad. I had a good day,” Cole said.
    “What did you do today?” Grant asked. This was part of the asking social questions thing they did with Cole.
    “I helped Manda clean up the house and I went down to the beach with her and Missy. We picked up some oysters. They’re a shellfish and live in the ocean. They have pearls in them. Some of them. We brought them back and Grandma cooked them on the barbeque. They tasted weird. I had spaghetti for lunch. Then we helped Mrs.