Chapter 3
What Might Be
Deacon
There was a bitterness stamped in the lines on my mother’s face that had only deepened in the two years since my ex-wife filed for divorce.
Back then I attributed the strain on her face to the great shame I brought on the family.
Now, I wondered if it was more.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed eyes that were bleary from another rough, fucking night. The nightmare I’d finally conquered years before had returned with a vengeance since Jenny told me the truth of what happened.
Opening my eyes, I took in my mother.
She moved fluidly, her long, slender limbs carrying her effortlessly around the kitchen, a stark contrast to my father whose condition had flared up more than usual.
He sat across from me, his eyes full of sorrow as he watched her flit around the room, a sorrow he masked every time she turned her attention to him.
Their love had always shone like a beacon; a safe haven to grow up in and a guide to light my way forward.
When my father was younger, he was a bull, the hardest worker I’d ever seen. It couldn’t be easy watching the woman you loved and looked after all your life take on more and more while you did less and less.
“Can I help you, Mom?”
With a wide smile, she denied my offer and carried the serving dishes to the table. “I’m so happy you’re home, son.”
“It’s good to be here,” I attested, though that remained to be seen. At best, I had a fierce fight ahead of me.
Lifting the serving platter, I ignored my mother’s protests and filled her plate before doing the same for my father.
I barely spoke as I ate.
It wasn’t like I’d been living on freeze-dried beef jerky, but there was nothing like a home-cooked meal.
Especially one made by Mom that conjured up the sweetness of childhood.
I placed my cutlery across my plate and pushed my chair back from the table. “Delicious as always, Mom. Thank you.”
“I don’t know why you can’t just stay here until you find something permanent,” she fussed lightly. “It’s not like we don’t have the room.”
I forced a smile but shook my head. “Move into my childhood bedroom so you can come say prayers with me every night before tucking me in?”
She huffed out a soft laugh and admitted, “Something like that.”
I shook my head, offering her a real smile, and she rewarded me with another rusty laugh.
Months ago, after talking to Jenny, and before I returned to serve my final three months, I secured a rental.
The tiny A-frame had been on the market for well over a year, and it suited me perfectly.
The owners wanted to sell, and I wanted to buy, but only if things worked out with Jenny.
I had hope, but I wasn’t banking on anything.
Not yet. With no other buyer on the horizon, the owners agreed to a six-month lease.
So long as I agreed to vacate if the right buyer came along.
“I worry about you, Deacon. You rarely smile, and I can’t remember the last time I heard you laugh.”
I worded to quell my impatience. “There hasn’t been a whole lot to laugh about over the past ten years. I promise I’m fine, Mom.”
This was nothing. Thank God, they’d never seen me in a bad mood.
“Why do you need your own place anyway?” my father challenged.
I tilted my head and took him in, wondering at the irritation in his tone.
Crippled with arthritis, he was barely half the man I remembered. Still, for me, he was larger than life.
Always would be.
I forced a stiff smile. My mother was right about one thing; it had been far too long since I’d laughed. “Maybe because I’m a grown man?”
Instead of smiling back, he leaned back and regarded me steadily. “I heard you had dinner with Jenny Davis when you were here last,” he stated.
I held his gaze, my good mood fading fast.
They’d never liked her for me. Thought I was too good for her.
I wasn’t.
“I did,” I confirmed.
“You’ve always had your head in the clouds.” He shook his head. “She’s a troublemaker.”
“Like her mother,” my mother spat.
A hard look passed between my parents.
I sat back in my chair, quelling my impatience. “I know her mother is no treat, but what is your problem with Jenny? Get it all out now because we won’t be revisiting this topic.”
My mother sat back, a fleeting look of panic crossing her face.
I frowned.
“She’s not the girl for you,” my father challenged.
“But Carolyn was?” I asked softly, guilt slithering through my chest at the mention of her name.
They’d loved my ex-wife. How could they not? She was basically a prototype of my well-dressed, churchgoing, mother.
“She obviously wasn’t what she appeared,” my mother sneered.
I’d never in all my life heard that tone from her, but it was her words that compelled me to speak.
My eyebrows flew up. “How’s that?”
She waved away my question.
“Mom,” I corrected sternly. “I was the problem in my marriage. I never should have dated Carolyn, never mind married her.”
I’d cared for her, and I’d been attracted to her, at least for a while. Mostly, I was determined to move on from the woman who had a chokehold on my heart.
I was a fool to think Carolyn could free me.
Worse, I made a fool out of her.
“But—"
“No, Mom. We’ve been over this. I won’t cast the blame for my mistakes on Carolyn. I’ve hurt her more than enough already. She was not for me, I knew she wasn’t for me, and I married her anyway.”
“Jenny Davis is about as far south of Carolyn as you can get,” my father stated.
South.
My blood began to boil.
He continued, “It’s time to take your place on the farm.”
The farm didn’t need me. Was it habit that drove him to push me? Or a need to control?
“It’s time to settle down. And not with the likes of Jenny Davis.”
I had to give them a chance, but I wouldn’t let them ruin mine.
“You don’t know her,” I pointed out. “You never gave her a chance.”
“Maybe you don’t know her,” he murmured. “There have been rumours of a relationship between her and some married man, never mind the speculation over Ansel Blum.”
“Ansel Blum?” Icy disdain froze the blood in my veins. “Are you kidding me? That man is like a father to her.”
I was engaging the exact way I swore I wouldn’t.
He shook his head. “Son, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
I hummed my displeasure low in my chest. “Are we judge and jury, now? What happened to His mercies are new every morning? What happened to He will separate us from our sins as far as the east is from the west?”
“It’s a good sentiment,” he agreed then winced. “It’s how it should be, but the reality is that woman hurt you before and she’ll hurt you again.”
I shook my head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. Turns out, it was me who hurt her. I’ve got a lot to make up for and a lot of ground to cover—”
“You can’t—”
I stood up. “And this time, the only opinion that matters is hers,” I stated firmly.
Though I revered him, I’d always been somewhat at odds with my father.
Where he wanted me to farm the earth, I wanted to fly the skies.
Where he prodded me toward the women in our church, I pursued the one woman I couldn’t live without.
Where he pledged til death do us part, I divorced my wife.
And now I was back, picking up the pieces I unknowingly shattered when I left.
But not knowing didn’t absolve me from the guilt.
I collected my cell phone and keys off the table in the hall. Flipping open my wallet briefly, I glanced at the photo I carried everywhere, a reminder of a better time.
My parents were still sputtering when I walked out, but I didn’t hear a word. I had nothing left to say.
And I refused to be swayed.
I talked a good game, but as I parked my truck across the street from Jenny’s bakery, Buns and Biscuits, I acknowledged to myself it was mostly talk.
Maybe a bit of wishful thinking.
No.
What we had back then was real.
I wanted to believe that. I needed to believe that.
But after everything I’d seen, there were days I struggled to believe in anything.
Fat, white snowflakes floated down from the sky and blanketed my windshield as I sat there in the cold.
When Jenny and I met for dinner at The Loose Moose before Christmas, I swallowed her story, hook, line, and sinker. Since then, I’d had time to consider things more closely.
And I had questions.
If she was innocent, why was she not friendly with Baxter and Maggie? Surely, she’d make sure they knew the truth even if it was just to alleviate their pain?
And while Eric and Miller seemed keen to have her join them that night, the rest of them simply froze in place.
For twenty minutes I sat in my truck freezing my balls off. I watched one person after another go into her little bakery and come out a few minutes later, arms laden with paper bags stuffed with warm, yeasty, goodness.
I could smell it even with the windows closed.
Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was my memories toying with me. But I wanted more of it.
When the rush died off, I swung my door open and made my way across the street.
The bell over the door jingled, but Jenny didn’t look up.
On the other side of the counter, she sat with her head bowed, her thick, black hair pulled back from her pretty face like a glossy, satin curtain.
“One second,” she called out. “This game is timed, and I think I’ve almost got it this time.”
“I can wait.”
Her head snapped up, and she gasped, those soft blue eyes blowing wide as she took me in. “What are you doing here?”
I tilted my head.
She hopped down from her barstool behind the cash and promptly tripped over her foot. Grabbing for the counter to save herself, she slapped her cell phone down, and the damn thing slid clear across the polished expanse before diving for the tiled floor at my feet.
Snatching it out of the air, I glanced at the screen before giving it back to her with a small smile. “Mahjong?”
She huffed out a soft laugh. Cheeks growing rosy, her mouth curved into a small smile. “It’s a step up from Solitaire.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. I’d know her anywhere but couldn’t deny the changes. She was stunning as always, but there was a shadow behind the soft blue of her eyes that wasn’t there before.
I wagged my eyebrows, willing to give anything to see her smile for real. To see her throw her head back, open her mouth wide, and roll with wild laughter. “You’ve gone high-tech.”
“It seems so.” Her smile faltered, then fell away altogether. “Deacon,” she paused then forged ahead, a frown perched between her brows. “Why are you here?”
Do you want the short answer or the real answer?
I tucked my hands into my front pockets. “I live here.”
Her head began to shake before I’d finished speaking. “No. Your family always shops in Peppergrove.”
“I’m not my family.”
Her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed. “Are you sure about that?”
Before the last word left her lips, she wiped her face clear of all expression.
Had my family given her a hard time after I left? And why had that possibility not occurred to me before?
I knew the town had turned its back on her.
If her story was true, she’d suffered.
And she’d suffered a lot.
Why had she stayed?
Even as I doubted, the still, quiet voice of reason inside me whispered the truth. She wouldn’t ever leave Ansel. And, after all this time, she had no reason to tell such an outrageous lie.
I’d wanted closure.
Finding out the truth should have given it to me.
But I’d been woefully unprepared for the emotions that reared up after seeing her again. Never mind what sitting across from her, smelling her, breathing the same fucking air as her, did to my senses.
And learning how utterly I’d failed her woke the nightmare.
Being here now was perhaps the biggest mistake of my life, but I couldn’t walk away. Not without seeing what might be.
I stepped closer to the counter.
Her eyes widened, panic lacing her voice as she blurted, “I don’t want you here, Deacon.”
My name stuttered from her lips like it was difficult to pronounce.
Stopping in my tracks, I rubbed my hand over the scruff covering my jaw.
After ten years of shaving religiously, the rough bristles felt odd. Somehow, they grounded me to the present and my new reality.
I was a different person, a civilian once more, but a grown man compared to the green barely out of my teens youth I’d been when I first fell for the woman in front of me.
At twenty-one years old, I didn’t know shit.
And I didn’t know that I didn’t know shit.
Jenny had been skittish when I first found her. Both insecure and suspicious of my motives.
The entire first year, we were more off than on. Eventually, I gained her trust and convinced her to let me move in with her because I fully planned on putting a ring on her finger as soon as possible.
Those two years I spent loving her were the sweetest of my life despite our tumultuous beginning.
Now?
If her story was true, and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t, she’d been right to question my commitment.
But walking in on that scene, her lovely limbs wrapped around her old boyfriend in his bed, my knees buckled on the spot.
I stood there with my heart crumbling to ash, and she didn’t so much as twitch. And now I knew why.
I fucking left her there.
Vulnerable and unprotected.
If I could bring that man back to life, I would, only so I could kill him myself.
Slowly.
Jenny deserved better than me then and more now.
If I was half a man, I’d honour her request and leave her in peace.
I nodded shortly. “I’ll try to steer clear.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I held it together until I got to my truck.
Slamming the door, I gripped the steering wheel and stared at the snow on my windscreen.
Thank you.
Her whispered words echoed in my head.
Thank you.
Like I’d given her something she desperately needed.
I inhaled deeply, my chest filling with air before expelling the threat of violence bubbling in my veins.
Because I’d just out and out lied to her.
Not a great start.
“Fuck.”