I was seventeen years old when I met Jimmy Patterson. He was twenty-two, worked construction around Columbus, and had the kind of dangerous charm that makes teenage girls stupid. He had a crooked smile and broad shoulders and promises that sounded like poetry when you’re too young to know better. He told me I was beautiful. He told me we’d have a life together. He told me everything I wanted to hear.
I got pregnant three months after we married in a courthouse ceremony with two witnesses pulled in from the hallway. Jimmy celebrated the news by going to the bar with his friends and coming home at three in the morning, smelling like beer and making excuses I pretended to believe.
Deacon was born on a Tuesday afternoon in March, seven pounds four ounces of perfect, screaming, needy life. Jimmy showed up at the hospital six hours late, his breath still sour with alcohol, his eyes bloodshot, his apologies as empty as always. But when he held Deacon for the first time, something in his face softened, and I thought maybe—just maybe—fatherhood would change him.
