The day was bright and cold, Hannah noted as they rode down to the waterfront. The nuclear-powered submarine was docked at Delta Pier, the largest of the three wharves at Bangor.
Other family members of the Atlantis crew were crowding the waiting area by the time Cheryl and Hannah arrived, although they were several minutes early. The air was thick with excitement and anticipation as wives and children anxiously looked for sighs of their loved ones.
The early-December wind cut through the front of Hannah's coat, but she was too nervous to think about being cold. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and turned her back to the intermittent gusts.
As the men started down the gangplank, Hannah bit into her lower lip as the waiting crowd hurried forward to greet their husbands and fathers. A small pain gripped her stomach, but she ignored it, certain it must be nerves; certain everything would be all right the instant she caught sight of Riley.
"There's Steve!" Cheryl exclaimed, pointing out her tall, lanky husband, then waving the small bouquet of flowers she'd brought as a welcome-home gift. "Oh, damn, I'm going to cry," Cheryl added, smearing the moisture across her cheeks. "I hate it when I do this. His first look at me in weeks and I'll have mascara streaks running down my face. I'll look like a zebra."
Hannah smiled at her friend's joke, impatiently watching as the men of the Atlantis disembarked, eagerly searching through a sea of unfamiliar faces, hoping to find the one that was.
"Riley's three men behind Steve," Cheryl said, pointing him out to Hannah. It took her a moment to locate him, but when she did, her mind spun at a feverish pace, attempting to make sense of all that was happening to her. Her heart thudded. After all these weeks of torturous waiting, she was about to come face-to-face with the man who'd overshadowed every waking moment of her thoughts. All that she'd done, everything she'd bought, every place she'd gone, every person she'd talked with receded into the background as she focused her attention on Riley.
He paused at the top of the gangplank and seemed to be searching through the crowd. He didn't see her, Hannah knew, just by the way he squared his shoulders and shoved his duffel bag over his shoulder. There wasn't any reason he should expect her. The only means of communication between the submarine crew and family members during deployment was family grams, and Hannah hadn't known what those were until it was too late to send one. Even if she had known, she wasn't certain what she could have said in a few short lines.