Free The Homecoming by Carsten Stroud

hill, walk away from Beth and Axel and Hannah and Reed and even from Kate, walk away from Rainey Teague and all the inexplicable forces he represented.
    Just go quietly away under the branches of the live oaks, under the Spanish moss, vanish into the evening darkness, just keep walking until Niceville and all of its mysteries were miles behind him.
    Go home to California, find a way to get back into the Army, or even try for the Marine Corps. Find an
ordinary
life, a
comprehensible
life.
    Save himself.
    As if.
    He opened the door and Kate was there with a drink in her hand and a kiss for his cheek. Married men live longer than single men, and there’s a reason for it. He kissed her back, and held it long enough to get a whistle from Reed.
    They ate in the formal dining room, the walls covered in family photographs, all of them sitting around the long gleaming table, under the Gallé glass chandelier that their mother, Lenore, had brought back from Paris thirty years ago. Kate was at her usual place at the end of the table nearest the kitchen. Nick was at the other end, his back up against the fireplace screen, Reed at his left hand and Axel at his right, Beth and Hannah down the middle. Sterling-silver platters of roast potatoes and cobs of corn and sliced tomatoes and garden salad and barbecued steaks covered the center of the table.
    There were decanters of lemonade for Axel and Hannah, and three bottles of Veuve Clicquot were chilling in an ice bucket on the oak sideboard.
    A fourth, popped and fizzing, was in Reed’s right hand, and he was filling a quartet of crystal flutes lined up in front of him. When the flutes were full they were handed along and everyone looked to Kate for the toast, even Axel and Hannah, both kids looking solemn and a bit shell-shocked.
    “To Beth and Axel and Hannah. Welcome to a happy home.”
    “I second that,” said Reed, leaning in to give her a kiss on the cheek and then putting a hand out to Beth. Everybody pinged their glasses, Axel and Hannah clanked their tumblers, and the food got handed around.
    Axel, eight, a slender, solemn boy with large brown eyes and a full head of curly brown hair that hung down into his eyes, looked around the table with a puzzled expression. Nick saw the question forming in hiseyes and he leaned over to listen to him. As he did so it cut him to the quick to see the boy flinch in a reflexive move. He had been doing that for a couple of years now, pulling back if any male adult came too close. “I heard Uncle Reed say that Dad was arrested. Was it because he hit Mom?”
    Looking at the boy, Nick settled on the simplest answer. Axel had all the time in the world to learn the whole story.
    “No, it wasn’t. He was arrested for driving too fast. And for fighting with some police officers. But your dad should never have hit your mom. Not ever. Men
never
hit women. Or little kids. Never.”
    Axel looked a little hunted.
    “Axel, did your dad ever hit you?”
    Axel looked at his plate and shook his head.
    “Not really,” he said, still looking down. “But he yelled a real lot. And he’d lean down and get real close. And he shook me sometimes. Hard. It hurt my neck and made my head ache. I didn’t like it when he did that.”
    “I guess not. It was wrong for him to do that.”
    Axel leaned in closer, spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.
    “He hit Hannah once. Mom doesn’t want anyone to know. He hit her because she made a mess in her diaper and Mom let it get on the new rug in the movie room. Dad was pretty mad about that because it was his special room and nobody was supposed to go there but Mom wanted Hannah to see a movie and her player was broken so we went in Dad’s special movie room and that’s where it happened and Dad came home and saw it. Mom was holding Hannah and Dad was hitting Mom like he does when he gets all mad and Hannah was crying so he hit her too. That’s why she can’t hear out of that ear anymore.”
    Nick couldn’t help