“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.”