Welcome Home

By Tamer Brand

This story sheds light and truth on the old saying that, "If you look hard enough, you may just find exactly what you are looking for." This thrill ride brings to life the frightening events that take place in the breadth of a single weekend. For the military wife this story depicts how the horrors that unfold test the measure of her resolve and her will to push on. Her struggles trying to find normalcy in her marriage prove to push her to the brink as she dances dangerously on the edge of freedom and infidelity. The nightmare of coincidence thrusts her from one harrowing situation to another. In her struggle to maintain her sanity and save her family she finds herself desperately lost with no where to run.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tamer Brand
• Release date: Mar 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310472992

Tamer Brand

My name is Tamer Brand. I have just written my first Indie book. I would say it falls in the genre of Suspense/ Thriller. I am very excited. I am the mother of a couple of boys, who are awesome. I decided to write Welcome Home because I have always been a story teller. I think I come by that trait naturally from my grandmother. In college I originally wanted to be an English major but in my first year a lot of my papers would say things like "this paper is not written in the proper dialogue/ format". I used to get really frustrated by that as I try to be great at anything I do. Until one day that same professor wrote "this paper Is not written in the proper format, but you are an awesome story teller, I always enjoy reading your papers, You should go into that one day." By that I assumed he meant writing of some sort and I started writing stories here and there by pen. I have so many beginnings and now that I have found the courage and thanks to smashwords the know how, I can start writing the middles and endings.

Book preview

Welcome Home

By

Tamer Brand

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Tamer Brand (Veronica Wormbly)

Published by Veronica Wormbly under pen name Tamer Brand

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents mentioned herein are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

I owe a huge Thanks to Michael Christianson for producing my cover art. Also lots of heartfelt Thanks to all of my first readers: M. Scherk; A. Shaw; T. Dahman; D. Reinking.

Thank You All for all of the support!

Contents

Chapter 1 - Welcome Home

Chapter 2 - Welcome Back

Chapter 3 - The Shithole

Chapter 4 - The Way We Were

Chapter 5 - The Stranger

Chapter 6 - Home

Chapter 7 - The Delicate Dance of Deception

Chapter 8 - Saturday

Chapter 9 - Awake

Chapter 10 - In the End

Chapter 11 - Things She Would Not Do

Chapter 1

Welcome Home

You know when you are asleep and you hear the phone ringing, you can feel your body telling you to wake up to answer the ringing phone. It felt something like that.

I could hear Cynthia saying You better hurry and wake up or you're going to be late for drill, but my body was not pulling at me to wake up.

Could be because I didn't have drill for another month and Cynthia was just going through the motions. She probably would have said anything to get me up and moving as she was. But I just wanted to lie there a little while longer and let the sun shine in through the window and warm my face. I finally drudged up from the bed and I could see her there, standing in our bathroom making herself up. She hated when I referred to her putting makeup on that way. She felt as though I was implying that she would just pop a fresh new Maybelline face out of an air sealed box to super glue on top of her aged tired one. Picturing that in my mind made me laugh inside a little.

Still facing the mirror, trying to sketch her eyebrows into order Cynthia prodded, "Why are you so sleepy this morning didn't sleep well?"

As if she cared. She wasn't there with me or at least when I fell asleep she wasn't.

No, slept fine, Tim replied tiredly through a yawn.

The window letting sun shine in, made me want a few more minutes.

You know how that is, I said, hoping to get a little empathy instead of the whole lot of bitchy that was coming.

She just rolled her eyes. I waited for what she would probably snarl next.

No, I don't know how that feels because I get up before the suns up with the kids EVERY MORNING."

This was a valid complaint; mornings just have not been very productive for me ever since I returned from overseas. But something was different about this morning. My dreaming almost wouldn't stop, I wasn't able to pull myself out and wasn't sure which was better.

Now out of bed and on my way to another fruitless day; I made my way down stairs to find our two kids watching cartoons and eating cereal in the living room, at the cocktail table.

Good Morning, guys! I said to them, as sweetly as possible, without even a breath of disapproval about their current dining area.

Good Morning, Dad, came back with a lot less sweetness or enthusiasm.

Is everyone angry with me this morning, I thought. Have I missed something, my mind whispered to its' self. I searched my tattered memory banks for a missed appointment, a birthday, a recital perhaps, or maybe a basketball game. I selfishly pushed these thoughts out of my mind. I have no reason to explain my tiredness to anyone, being that I only returned from Iraq the month before; I thought, beginning to feel a little aggravated.

My sergeant would always say, Normal will take some time men, let sleep be your friend in your transition back home, in his that's an order tone.

We were gone for 18 months. I never knew how long that could feel but after a few weeks of anything it can become normal and you just mentally bide your time. You spend days and nights, for a while, trying not to think about what may or may not be happening back on the other side of the ocean.

So what's on deck for today guys?

I asked, expecting a little more conversation from little people, who were three and five years old when I left but now seemed closer to twenty five in their demeanor.

School! they both kind of moaned and whined at the same time, in my direction.

As if to say, can't we just watch our cartoons! This lack of conversation or affection since I returned bothered me quite a bit. I attempted to talk with my always angry wife about it but she just dismissed my feelings as though I was being utterly ridiculous. She gave no comforting words, no soft caress of my back, gestures you would expect with such a conversation.

I just got, Well what did you expect, in her most aggravated and exacerbated tone.

This I saw coming. So I grabbed my cup of coffee and the newspaper and sat at the kitchen table whispering a little prayer in my head, begging for normalcy to appear soon. I can't take much more of this, I thought. Had I done something wrong?

Off to work and school, they hurriedly went out the door without so much as a glance backwards from any of them.

Have a good day! I yelled to them, desperately hoping for some sort of reaction.

And slam the door closes. I was completely alone now and feeling pretty lost. I sat there staring at the front page of the morning paper. I wasn't really reading it though, just blankly staring at it, deep in thought; wondering what had I done to get here. Why am I the bad guy?

Actually, you're not even the bad guy you're like the 3rd wheel, that extra inconvenience of a person no one wants around. The thought stung, it jabbed at my mind and toyed with my emotions.

My family doesn't want me here. They seem to want it, just her and them. The mere thought, sent my mind wildly drowning in emotion, grasping at pieces of memories. I could feel tears begin to well in my eyes, stinging and burning until I brushed them away.

To keep himself sane, he focused in on memories that reminded him of what his family life was like pre-deployment. The life before Cynthia and the children decided to write him out of their lives. But his thoughts kept creeping back to sorrowful times.

I received no hugs at the gate when my flight landed. As a matter of fact no one even bothered to show up, I had to catch a ride with my sergeant. By the time I reached my front door, I had forgiven Cindy Baby all the way. I made excuses for her in my mind on the drive home. I told myself something had come up. This wasn't our first rodeo with deployments; so maybe she had gotten busy with the kids or something. But to my dismay when I swung the front door open, hoping and expecting a jubilant celebration of my return, everyone was there, just going about their day. I had to practically pry the kids away from that damned television. What the hell is going on here, I thought. I work through issues in my head, instead of out loud. I figure you get less dumbass unhelpful answers that way.

For example, when I asked Cindy Baby why they hadn't made it to pick me up from the airport, she simply replied; We haven't spoken in over a year, how was I supposed to know when you were getting back.

I was a little taken aback by the fact that she said, Getting back, and not coming home.

I could feel sweat beads popping up like bubbles in boiling water on my forehead. I was getting very angry and needed a release. Just thinking of that day sent me spiraling downward to the point where I could only see black. I took a few deep breaths, forgiving her again, all the way to the last long exhale. Then I slid all of my aggression to the, you were gone a long time, section of my brain.

This section of my mind helped me be empathetic for my wife's single motherhood for 18 months. The other ultra-masculine portions of my psyche had little sympathy for someone being an asshole, not even her. I mean what really did she have to do all that time, yell yes and no and then pop in another DVD. That thought was almost my father speaking directly through me.