Come Back To Me by Melissa Foster Read Free Book Online

as Suha had insisted on continuing to work in the hospital during the war, even with the unsafe conditions.
    They’d met for a brief lunch of goat stew and rice, which Suha had prepared the evening before for supper and which she had carried with her to the hospital earlier that morning. This had been their practice, meeting each day around two o’clock in the afternoon for the largest meal of the day. On that unusually warm, gray afternoon, her father shuffled down the path toward his home, too slowly for a group of angry, impatient insurgents who had been terrorizing families in the neighborhood with their guns and loud voices, scavenging and eying the women as if they were just awaiting the right moment to attack. Suha knew of women who had been raped and killed—women without husbands, fathers, or brothers to protect them. A neighbor had seen trouble brewing—loud, irate threats toward the old man. He’d run to the hospital to fetch Suha. Her father had made it to within thirty feet of their front door before the heartless insurgents destroyed Suha’s life—without an ounce of remorse. At the moment of his death, she’d been running down the path toward her home as fast as she’d been able, panting, her heavy bosoms swaying painfully against her ribcage. She’d prayed aloud for his safety as she ran. Her dark abayah stuck to her large body from the unrelenting heat of the sun. Her house had come into view. She’d thought he’d made it. As the door had come into view, her eyes drifted toward the ground, and she’d collapsed to her knees at the sight of her father’s bullet-ridden body. She sobbed, rocking back and forth, and screamed into the road, Baba! Baba! Blood pooled around him, and his face—the face of the only man she’d ever worshiped, the face of her protector, the face which, forever more, she would recall as blood streaked and lifeless—lay still, distorted and filthy, against the cold, hard earth.

Chapter Six
     
    The evening loomed like a forbidding forest. Tess had known the time would come when she’d have to go back to work. Her bills would not pay themselves. She stared into her closet at her business suits, their creases fresh. The feel of them used to give her an energized high. Now, just the thought of taking charge, being responsible, pained her. How would she ever be ready to face the world by tomorrow? Tomorrow! She threw herself down on her bed and let out a frustrated sigh. Tears came easily. “Oh, Beau,” she said softly. She contemplated the bottle of Xanax that had helped her through the difficult nights, then kicked them off of the nightstand with her toes. She wasn’t going to become that woman. She dropped her hand to her abdomen. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she rolled over and punched the pillow. The thought of pitiful looks and people using words that had taken on new meanings, words like sorry, passed , and accident, made her as angry as it made her sad.
    Tess remembered Beau’s promise, made the days before he left for Iraq. “I’ll come back. I promise,” he’d said with feeling.
    “I know you will,” she’d answered, without as much confidence as she’d hoped.
    Beau had gently pushed her back from his chest so he could look into her tear-filled blue eyes. “Baby,” he said, “what have I told you since we decided that I should take this opportunity?”
    Tess looked down at the floor and said in almost a whisper, “You’ll come back to me.”
    He tilted her chin up so she couldn’t help but look into his eyes. “And I will. I promise you that.”
    “But you can’t make that promise,” she said quietly. “There’s still a war going on, Beau.”
    “Don’t doubt me, Tessie. I love you, and I promise, come hell or high water, if I have to walk and swim back from Iraq, I will come home.”
    Tess took Beau’s hand and outlined in his palm, lightly, with her index finger, the letter I , the shape of a heart, and the letter u. He smiled and