A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) by Marilyn Pappano Page A

back.”
    Therese’s features softened. “I’m sorry.”
    “Yeah, me, too. I figured…when someone falls, you’ve got to have someone else to take his place, so…I enlisted. It’s been an experience.” Mostly good, but parts of it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
    “Thank you.” Simple words, spoken with complete sincerity. They raised a heat on the back of his neck that crept up and around toward his jaw.
    “You’re welcome.”
    He got thank-yous from total strangers—in airports, on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and Veteran’s Day. Elderly men, veterans themselves, didn’t need a special day to shake his hand and express their gratitude. It always made him stand a little taller, feel a little prouder, but at the same time, a little self-conscious. He always remembered that there were thousands of people, like his friend Todd or Therese’s husband, Paul, who didn’t get to hear those thanks.
    All gave some. Some gave all.
    He’d given some—six years—and made some good friends and acquired some bad memories, but he was alive. He was here. Thank God.
    “How long were you and the major married?” he asked, the need to change the subject burning hot on his throat.
    “Five years.”
    Carefully he parroted her words back to her. “There’s a big risk in marrying someone in the military when the country’s at war.”
    “Oh, but when you’re young and in love, you don’t think about things like war, death, separation, ex-spouses, stepchildren. You’re so starry-eyed you only see the good possibilities.” Therese finished her coffee, crumpled her napkin, and stuffed it into the cup, then pushed it aside. “I love to indulge in that stuff, but once it’s gone, I can’t stand the smell of it.”
    He took the cup and tossed it into the trash can a few feet behind him, then waited to see if she would go on. After a moment staring out at the rain, she sighed. “My friends and I were all crazy mad for our husbands when we married them. We knew there was a war going on; we understood that they’d leave us to deploy; in our heads we knew there was a chance they wouldn’t come back, or they’d come back drastically changed. But we loved them, and we were proud of them, and we were willing to take that risk to be with them while we could. Even if it was far too short.”
    Sabrina hadn’t loved Keegan like that. She’d had so little love and commitment in her life that he didn’t think she was capable of it. She’d wanted to marry him, but it had more to do with the fact that he was Army—the whole man-in-uniform thing, the benefits she would receive as a dependent wife, the access to a mostly male population—than it did with honest feelings about him.
    “What about your friends?” he asked, rubbing his hand over the knot in his gut. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was a little jealous that Matheson had had a wife like Therese and captured Sabrina’s attention, too, but Keegan didn’t do jealousy. It was more likely too much strong coffee with too little food in his stomach. “Have they gotten their husbands back?”
    Her smile was faint and sad. “No. That’s how we became friends. We call ourselves the Tuesday Night Margarita Club and meet every week at Three Amigos for dinner and drinks. If you stay in town long enough, you’ll probably hear someone else refer to us as the Fort Murphy Widows’ Club.”
    Widows’ club. Just the sound of it made the muscles in his jaw clench, which was really a stupid response. Didn’t all clubs and groups form because of common interests or situations? And it was a sad fact that some of those interests or situations were brought about by tragedy. Parents of murdered children. Families torn apart by drunk drivers. Victims of violent crime.
    Why shouldn’t women who’d lost their husbands to war have a social group of their own? God knew, they needed the support, and who better to understand than someone who’d been through