“Dios mio,” she said softly.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Now, I hate to cut this short because I know you’re worried but I need to get back to him. He’s bonding with Bossy, and a lot has happened since he showed up, but there’s a lot left to be said. We’ll have a good gab soon.”
“Okay, Cassidy. But I must leave you with this: the most important person in the world is you. Whatever you decide, do it taking care of you.”
She was totally the bomb.
“I am. I will. I promise,” I told her.
“Okay, querida. I believe you. See you soon.”
“Later, Milagros.”
I hit the button on the screen and put my phone down, training my eyes to the snow-gilded trees.
Now that the intensity of Deacon coming back was over and I was sitting in the cold on my porch—something I’d done alone for six months, something I didn’t enjoy doing alone for six months, far from it— all that had happened, all that he’d given me, as mammoth as it was, was wearing off.
Because I was right.
There was still a lot left to be said.
I took a page out of Deacon’s book when I heard the door open and I didn’t turn to look. I heard his boots on the deck, as well as Bossy’s claws. Then I saw a steaming mug put down on the arm of the chair as Bossy came to me and nosed my hand.
I gave her some pets and scratches, looking at the mug.
It was cocoa. Cocoa with marshmallow fluff melting on top.
I had not forgotten how Deacon could surprise me with little snatches of sweetness, like being a badass and putting marshmallow on hot cocoa (or making it at all). But I couldn’t deny it felt crazy-good having it back.
“Bed, baby,” I ordered Bossy, lifting up the cup.
She loped to the big dog bed I had out on the porch by the railing in front of the chairs that I’d thrown an old flannel blanket over. Her place in the cold when I was outside so she could be with me.
“She’s trained.” I heard Deacon say, knowing he was sitting beside me.
I took a sip of cocoa, the fluff tipping my lip. I took the cup away and licked it off.
“She knows ‘sit,’ ‘down,’ ‘stay,’ ‘bed,’ ‘come,’ ‘quiet,’ ‘be good,’ ‘downstairs,’ ‘upstairs,’ ‘play dead,’ and ‘fetch,’” I shared. “She’s great at fetch. She loves Frisbees.”
He said nothing but I felt the heaviness that came from him, my guess, this due to the fact he wasn’t there to teach her all that with me.
I drew in a breath.
Before I could ask for it, Deacon gave it to me.
“Grew up on a farm in Iowa.”
I closed my eyes tight, those seven words washing over me, beating back the January chill.
“Granddad was an attorney,” he went on and I opened my eyes. “Pissed as shit my dad didn’t follow in his footsteps. But Dad wanted to be a farmer so he bought a farm and became a farmer. Found a woman who wanted him however he came, but regardless, she loved the life.”
I took another sip of cocoa while Deacon paused and I held my cup in front of me in both my gloved hands as he carried on.
“I didn’t want to be a farmer. Got a younger sister, she wasn’t into that shit either. Dad was disappointed but he’d been a son who went his own way. He was also a man who wouldn’t push his son to go his way because he’d been the same.”
He had a sister.
I said nothing. Just took another sip.
“I played football in high school. That was back in the day when you didn’t pick one sport and train all year for it, so I also threw discus and javelin in track and field. When I was sixteen, got a job roofing during the summer. Did it when I was seventeen too. Liked it. Liked being a part of building something. Fixing something. Seein’ my work laid out in front of me at the end of the day. Understood it was my calling even if, at the same time, I didn’t really understand what a calling was.”
He paused.
I waited.
He continued.
“The man who owned the contracting company I worked for took a liking to me. Gave me a job out of high school. If I didn’t take over the farm, Dad wanted me to go to college. I didn’t do that either. He didn’t like it but understood. I graduated on a Saturday, went to work on a Monday, moved out of his house by the end of the summer. He got it. I had to be my own man and I didn’t fuck around bein’ it, so he also respected it.”
That was pretty amazing.
Deacon didn’t give me a chance to share that.
“Guy I worked for,” he kept going, “had three daughters, no sons. So when I say he took a liking to me, I mean he took me under his wing. Lookin’ back, he was groomin’ me to take over when he was done. Taught me everything about building, wiring, plumbing, foundation work, architecture. Learned it all on the job, but I learned it.”
That was how he knew how to put up gutters, that my roof needed shingles, and how to sketch a gazebo, not having any issue building it.
There was a happy shift happening inside as all the pieces of Deacon started fitting together.
“Her name was Jeannie,” he said softly and that shift halted as my stomach curled.
He didn’t speak for a while and then he launched back in.
“Met her and it was all the way it was supposed to be. Every second of it. Until she went missing.”
In shock at his words, my head jerked to the side to look at him. “Missing?”
He turned his eyes to me. “Yeah, Cassie. Missing.”
“My God,” I whispered.
“It isn’t a pretty story.”
He’d already said that and I knew it had to be, what with her being dead.
But now it seemed worse. I couldn’t imagine anyone I loved going missing. It would drive me mad.
Yes, absolutely, all the pieces of Deacon were fitting together.
I just no longer liked the picture they were forming.
He looked back to the trees.
I did too and took another sip of cocoa, sucking in melted marshmallow fluff, making it extra sweet.
It was good I did. I didn’t know it then, but I’d need sweet to get me through the rest of what Deacon was going to share with me.
“Met her in a bar,” Deacon told me. “Cliché but it worked for us. She was pretty, not beautiful like you, but she definitely turned heads. Every time I looked at her, caught her lookin’ at me. She looked away, but I knew she was interested. I thought it was cute because it was, pretty girl, checking me out, shy at me catching her doin’ it. Made my approach, gave her some stale pickup line, she swallowed it. I asked her out. She said yes. We started dating. We became exclusive. We fell in love. I asked her to marry me. Three months later, we were married in a huge-ass wedding.”
I looked his way again, surprise in my tone. “Three months?”
He looked to me. “Yeah. I was twenty-four then, didn’t know jack about weddings, had no clue how rushed it was. My mom knew. Lookin’ back, I think it unsettled her. At the time, I didn’t think anything except about the honeymoon, gettin’ my girl back home, and settin’ up a life.”
He looked away and lifted his boots up to the railing. Bossy lifted her head when he did, looked at him, sniffed the cold air, then settled back down.
“Did that and we had a good life,” he said pensively. “She was pretty. Dressed great. Had a good job. Liked to have fun. Loved sex. Made me laugh. Let me make her laugh. Acted like, when I came through the door at night, her world started. Acted like, when I left in the morning, it was ending. Twenty-four, so fuckin’ young, all I knew was I had a pretty, sweet, funny girl with my ring on her finger who felt that much for me. I felt lucky.”
My throat was tingling but I fought it back with another sip of cocoa.
“Made me cookies.”
My body went still at these words.
“All the time, we had homemade cookies in the house. Every kind you can think of. She didn’t eat ’em. Made ’em for me because I liked ’em.
Sometimes, if a build was close to her office, she’d bring me lunch with a tin of ’em for me and the boys on the job.”
It was then I remembered, way back when, when I’d offered Deacon cookies.
Absolutely fucking not, he’d said.
I made a mental note not ever to make him cookies and asked, “What did she do?”
“Receptionist at a place where they contracted out to lay pipes. She made decent money, for her age, year younger than me. I made decent money. We were livin’ the life. Year into our marriage, I figured it was time to take the next step. So I told her I wanted her to think about makin’ a baby.”
Deacon’s gaze was at the trees. I slid mine there too and sipped more cocoa.
“She didn’t have to think. She was all in. And we went for it. Worked at it all the time. Not hard work, tryin’ to make a baby.”
I figured he wasn’t wrong but his voice said he wasn’t right. He was back to contemplative, but this time, it was faraway, like there was something deeper in those words, and I tensed at the sound of it.
“I saw our future and I knew how it would be,” he said. “Wanted how it would be. Willing to work to make that happen. So I knew, we made a baby, we had to be ready. We lived in a two bedroom apartment that was no place to raise a family. We needed a home. Talked to Jeannie, she agreed. We needed a down payment, and both our parents would pony up, we knew it, but I was not that man. So I talked to my boss. Took overtime. Always overtime available on builds. Took off from home before seven, got home after eight, sometimes later. Worked weekends. Back then, I was workin’, and when I wasn’t workin’, I was sleepin’, eatin’ cookies, or fuckin’ my wife. Good times.”
His voice didn’t change, except for a thread of sarcasm on the last two words, but instinctively I knew this was where the story was going bad.
I grew edgier and fought against shifting in my seat.
“She had the time and was good at it so she looked after our bank accounts, balanced the checkbooks, paid the bills. I didn’t look at any of it. Until one day, saw a bank statement shoved in the basket where she kept that shit. The balance was nowhere near where it should be. Asked her about it, she freaked. Said she’d loaned a friend in trouble some money and didn’t want to tell me because she thought I’d say no or would get mad if I knew she did it without asking. She said they were gonna pay it back. She was so out of it with panic, I told her, if they paid it back, I didn’t give a shit. She was like that with her friends. Tight. She’d do that for any of ’em. Coupla months later, they paid it back.”
I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“But she wasn’t gettin’ pregnant. My annual checkup, asked my doc about it, he said you should try for a year before you look into it. It hadn’t been a year so I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to trip her. She was actin’ moody anyway and I figured it was the same for her as for me, uneasy about why we hadn’t made a baby.”
He fell silent and I didn’t prompt him. Just took another sip of cocoa, pulling in a soft cloud of marshmallow. I swallowed and waited.
I didn’t wait long.
“Months after that, we were close to havin’ enough for a down payment on a house, work was insane so I wasn’t gettin’ home until at least nine most of the time. She still wasn’t pregnant and I was ready to approach it with her. Psyching myself up. She was wired and off and I knew why. Day I was comin’ home early to take her to dinner to have that talk, got home, my wife was gone.”
I turned my gaze to him but said nothing.
“Gone,” he told the trees. “Completely, and by that I do not mean she took her clothes and shit. She left everything, even her purse and phone. It was only Jeannie who was gone.”
Slowly, he turned his head to me.
“And I lost it.”
I would too.
Anyone would.
“Of course you did, honey,” I said gently.
“Thought she was kidnapped.”
Oh God.
“Deacon.”
“Terrified outta my mind. Nothin’ disturbed in the house and her car there, purse, phone? What woman leaves without her purse?”
“None of us,” I replied when he quit speaking.
He looked back to the trees and made no response to me. He just kept telling his story.
“By midnight, she didn’t show, had called her friends, her folks, her sisters, her boss, went to the police, told ’em she was gone. They told me she had to be gone longer before they could do anything. I thought that was fuckin’ whacked. A man knows his wife, he knows she isn’t where she’s supposed to be, with anyone she knows, they should fuckin’ look.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
He looked at me. “There’s a reason they don’t look, Cassidy.”
I pressed my lips together.
“They knew there’s a shit ton of ways a man might not know his wife. Next days, weeks, months, I’d find out I knew fuckin’ nothin’ about Jeannie.”
“What was it?” I whispered, not wanting to know, but needing him to give this to me. Not because I felt it was my right to have it anymore. Because he had to let it go.
He looked to the trees.
“Started smokin’ pot when she was twelve. Graduated to droppin’ acid and doin’ ecstasy by the time she was fourteen. Snortin’ coke before she was a junior in high school. Good family, two sisters who were solid, don’t know why the fuck she did that shit, just know she did. Also knew she could be fragile, felt deeper than other people, and seein’ things clearer now, that was not in a way that was healthy. She had three stints in rehab between age fifteen and nineteen. Last one took, they thought.” He drew in breath and finished, “They were wrong.”
“She was on drugs?” I asked inanely and he looked back at me.
“Don’t know what tripped it,” he said, not answering me because my question needed no answer. “Don’t know if it was me askin’ for a baby and her realizin’ she didn’t have that in her. But she went back to coke. That money that was missing, that was because she was using. And Cassidy, this is where it gets ugly.”
It wasn’t already ugly?
I didn’t ask that.
I urged, “Tell me.”
“She got that money back turnin’ tricks.”
I blinked.
Turning tricks? As in, sleeping with men for money?
Oh my God!
I didn’t request Deacon confirm that, but he still kept talking.
“Got deep into coke right under my nose, and seriously no fuckin’ pun intended with that shit. So I wouldn’t find out, paid for it the only way she could, suckin’ cock and fuckin’ it for money.”
Okay, it was safe to say that was seriously ugly.
“Baby,” I whispered.
“Her folks, obviously, knew she had a problem. Sisters knew. Her friends knew. Shit came out when she didn’t go to work and didn’t come home for days and finally the cops got involved. No one was surprised. They were sad. They were worried about Jeannie. They felt for me. But no one was surprised. No one but her bosses…and me.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Nope.”
“Her parents, friends, sisters, when you called to say she was missing?”
He leaned slightly my way. “No one told me.”
“I…I can’t believe it. That’s crazy.”
“So whacked it’s jacked,” he agreed. “Cops heard her history, they went from looking into it to zero effort. Nothin’. Addict out scoring. Washed their hands of it.” He looked back to the trees. “I didn’t.”
Oh God.
“Loved her,” he said softly, his voice now melancholy, and my heart squeezed. “Loved her, didn’t give a fuck she had a problem, missed her, wanted her back. Wanted to fix her. Obsessed with doin’ it. Blinded with that need. Wanted her back in my bed. Her smile. Makin’ her laugh. Her fuckin’ cookies.”
God. I should never have offered him cookies.
“So I went se
archin’ for her. Eventually quit my job. My boss, good man, put a lot into me. He was worried about me, devastated, thought I was throwin’ my life away on a woman with a problem I couldn’t fix. Told me that shit. I told him to go fuck himself. Dad did the same. He and Mom beside themselves with worry. Tried to talk me out of it. Told them they could fuck off too. Went lookin’ for her. Sunk into a world that, with where my head was at, was welcome to me, and I spent years lookin’ for my wife.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head.
“Found her, Cassie.”
At this new tone, my eyes flew open, and my head shot up to see he was looking at me.
“Found her. And, baby, you need it all, I’ll give it all to you. But I’ll tell you now I do not want to give you that. I do not want you to know that shit that extreme and ugly exists in this world. I want you to let me protect you from that. I will tell you she got in deep, switched from coke to heroin, got to a point she couldn’t live without it so she’d do anything to get it, and to keep her fix, she hit the underbelly of the underbelly. I tried to pull her out. Got my ass kicked, nearly died in an alley.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
“I kept trying. Got shot at.”
Oh my God!
“Deacon,” I breathed.
“Kept trying. She overdosed. She died. They dumped her body and her parents had one to bury. But I was gone. What I saw, what I’d done, who I’d met, made deals with, greased palms, I was lost to that world, belonged to it, and she died, Cassie, but I never left that world.”
“You weren’t lost to it.”
“Baby, I was until about three hours ago.”
I leaned toward him. “You weren’t lost to it, Deacon. She dragged you down into it.”
His eyes held mine and he nodded.
Then he said, “She did. I didn’t get that until Raid pissed me off by shovin’ it in my face. I didn’t process it and get past it until I heard that song I gave you. But, and it’s important you get this part, Cassie, she may have dragged me down, but it was me who stayed there.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad was it when you found her?”