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.