Unfinished Hero 04 Deacon (39 page)

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 searchin’ 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.”