Free 11 Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Heather Long Page A

back to base right after the holiday was over and suggested that I move there in January and change schools.” She stirred a french fry in the ketchup on her plate. “We talked all the time and he said how much he missed me and how tough it was and how much he enjoyed it. He promised we could get a little apartment near the base and be together. He still had his work and I could still go to school. So in January, as soon as the semester was over, I moved.”
    “I can make a lot of excuses and say I was young, but we weren’t there two months when his orders came down for his assignment. He didn’t tell me that the base we were at wasn’t his final destination, and when I said I’d need to stay to finish at this new school, he said I couldn’t because we were in base housing and they wouldn’t cover it. So I had to withdraw and I can tell you what that did for my credits. It was too late in the semester to start again so I thought I’d wait for summer. Then he was deployed, and I was living in North Carolina and didn’t know anybody.”
    Marrying a Marine could be hard on the spouse. “Didn’t any of the other wives or spouses reach out to you?”
    “Yeah, but I was pretty focused at first and didn’t really seem to fit in. Tuck was always worried about what impression I gave and used to tell me it was better to let people think I was a little slow, rather than open my mouth and prove it.”
    Joe’s fingers curled. Dick .
    “His first deployment was a few weeks, well—like twelve—for training and then he was back. I was in the middle of trying to get accepted back at school. He insisted that I put it off again because he needed me. He was only home for three weeks then went on his first deployment to Afghanistan. Nine months, four days, and twenty-one hours. I managed another semester, but my grades struggled. It was weird, Tuck’s emails were short and grew terser the longer he was there and when he came home….” She blew out a breath. “When he came home, I made the mistake of doing homework instead of fixing dinner one night, and he threw my books in the trash. When I tried to get them out, he yelled at me. He’d said hard things before—but not like that.”
    She went silent for a long time.
    “He grew abusive.” Not that he didn’t sound abusive before, but something in the way she held herself told him that was the first time her husband had hit her. “A hand grab here—bruises on my arm—or a broken plate and I got cut—nothing really mean, but when he came home from his second deployment, he was a stranger.” Her voice remained remarkably strong despite the quaver he could hear beneath the words. “I was still in school and I asked teachers to help me advance, finishing the semester early when he let me know he was coming home, because I didn’t dare have any homework in the house. I thought it would be better if he didn’t think he was competing for my attention.”
    “But it wasn’t. Sweetheart, why didn’t you talk to his commanding officer? Or someone on the base? We know some men come home changed—and they need help.”
    “I couldn’t do that to him.” Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “The first time he hit me, he didn’t mean it. I know he didn’t. He actually seemed stunned. I chipped my tooth and my nose was bleeding. He apologized and promised it would be better and it was, for a long time. But his nightmares never went away. I had to slip out of bed after he was out and sleep on the floor because he-he attacked once. And he didn’t mean it….”
    He wouldn’t argue with her, not when she shook her head so hard.
    “But when they wanted him to deploy again, I told him he should stay and see about getting help and….”
    Joe sighed. He’d seen cases of it—too many. Combat was hard on everyone in the family, harder still when the Marine struggled with it.
    “That time, deployment lasted eighteen months and I finished my degree. I got a job and was