I went home that night with an order for a chopper, a colander, a salad container and juicy gossip for my husband. He wasn’t a fan of my Tupperware bill and he was surprisingly apprehensive about the information gleaned about our home’s previous owner.
“A paramilitary guy?” asked Mitch.
“Yes,” I said excitedly as I sat down on the couch with him.
Mitch shrugged and then turned the TV on again. “Did you bring home any brownies?”
“I did,” I said with a smile.
After the tasty treat, we cuddled on our couch and resumed our nightly routine of watching scary TV shows on TV.
Watching scary shows while being married to someone who deploys might not be the smartest course of action for some women, but it was alright by me. After all, I was a single woman living on my own before I’d met my husband. I also knew that our alarms were on, where our gun was and where our phones were. I was good. I had a system. However, we were living in a new house. That meant that I had not yet committed all of the sounds to memory.
What sounds are those? Different ones. The sounds of the house shifting, wood expanding, the sound of my vertical blinds smacking each other as the wind from the ceiling fan pushed them about, the sound of my freezer cranking up, the sound of my laptop restarting…all of these sounds are part of a catalog in my head. As a light sleeper, I’ve learned them all. I miss a lot of them when Mitch is home, as his presence has a way of making me feel safer (which is odd as a lighter sleeper is a safer sleeper) Sometimes he’ll wake up in the night and will say, “What was that?” I feel proud when I tell him exactly what it was he heard: the sprinklers, the freezer or our kid moving in his bed.
It takes me longer to fall asleep when Mitch is gone. Part of it is voluntary; I can read up on fan fiction online for my favorite werewolf book series, I can listen to my iPod full blast or I can chat with my other military wife friends online (things that don’t happen when Mitch is home).
So, when I was home alone one night, a thumping sound from overheard really startled me. I wasn’t sure that I’d heard it at first. I pulled out my ear bud and looked up. I saw nothing but a long-abandoned cobweb on our ceiling, of course. No sound followed but I was still on guard. I shoved my laptop aside and then removed the comforter. Wearing no armor but a pink tank top and panties, I glared at the ceiling. This was my house. My husband did not leave behind a nervous, scared wife – he’d left behind a quick-thinking hard-ass. It was ten steps to my closet and my Glock. I was half a step away from my cell phone. I was fifteen feet away from my son’s room. I had a plan.
I probably stood there for another six or seven minutes before I realized that I would hear nothing else. Still, I made the rounds of my house with my heavy Maglight flashlight. When I found that nothing else was amiss, I went back to bed (with the light on, and after fighting sleep for a long time).
My husband’s ship pulled in a few days later. I told him about what I’d heard. He was concerned of course, but after seeing the blatant evidence of his family’s well-being and survival, he disregarded the incident.
I did not.
