The Homecoming by JoAnn Ross Page B

grew up. Which was why she was reluctant to allow him to take them to school.
    What if he lost one? The way he had his Hot Wheels Hummer just last week?
    Also in the box was a police Medal of Valor, awarded posthumously by the Oceanside PD. Kara knew Jared would have been equally embarrassed by being singled out for that honor.
    “Of course you’re not making it up.” She stalled as her whirling mind scrambled to come up with some sort of compromise. “And I don’t recall your mentioning anything about bringing fathers to school.” Damn . If she’d only known, she would have rounded up a surrogate. Or at least spoken with his teacher beforehand to warn her that Trey might be ultrasensitive today.
    Thin shoulders, clad in the gray T-shirt he’d begun to outgrow but would not give up that read MY DAD WEARS COMBAT BOOTS, shrugged. “I didn’t want to make you feel bad. It’s not like you can bring Dad back just for a stupid school event.”
    It hurt. And, dammit, although she’d do anything for her son, Trey was unfortunately all too right about this: She couldn’t bring Jared back.
    “Why don’t I drive Trey to school,” Faith suggested, “instead of having him take the bus today? Then we can give the box to his teacher for safekeeping until he can show off his father’s medals. Then, depending on our schedules, either you or I can drive him home.”
    Relief flooded through Kara. “That sounds like a perfect solution.” She tousled her son’s corn-silk hair. “Why don’t you run upstairs and get it?”
    “Thanks, Mom!”
    “Thank your grandmother.”
    “Thanks, Gram!” The older woman seemed to freeze as he flung his arms around her waist and gave her a huge hug.
    As her eight-year-old son clambered up the stairs after the precious box they’d decorated with Marine Corps emblems, Kara crossed the kitchen and laid her head on her mother’s shoulder.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    Kara’s father had always been a toucher. Faith Blanchard was not. But in a rare physical display of affection, she stroked the back of Kara’s head. “It was the logical solution.”
    Logical, yes. But it also, for some reason, made Kara’s eyes mist up.
    “Don’t you have surgery this morning?”
    “It’s an easy day.” Faith extracted herself from the light embrace and began bustling around the kitchen again. “Rounds this morning, then what should be a simple TLIF—transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion—at eleven.”
    “That sounds serious.”
    “The patient’s a crab fisherman with recurrent herniated disks due to the physical nature of his work. I’m merely going to join two vertebral segments together, which will eliminate the movement in those joints. The ideal solution would be if he’d stop fishing, but since he also needs to feed his family, and fishing is not only what he does, but all he knows and wants to do, hopefully this will reduce the pain caused by movement and the associated compression of the nerve roots.”
    She said it so casually. The same way Kara might talk about writing up a speeding ticket. But with a self-confidence that had always seemed to be bred in her mother’s bones.
    “Then I have appointments at the office with a few patients whose referrals don’t indicate any serious problems,” she continued, “so I should be done by three thirty. If you’re still stuck out there at Douchett’s, my bringing Trey home shouldn’t be a problem.”
    “I appreciate that.”
    Faith shrugged shoulders elegantly clad in a cream silk blouse. “I’m his grandmother. It goes with the territory.”
    Then, as if realizing she’d made it sound like a duty, she tacked on, “And, of course, he’s an absolute delight. Did I tell you the other day that he said he might want to be a doctor when he grows up?”
    “That’s great.” Of course, last week he’d been determined to be a comic book artist. And before that, a superhero who had the power to blow things up with his nuclear