Chapter Eleven #2
I see it.
Sophie sees it too.
“It’s okay,” Sophie says softly.
Amelia doesn’t believe her.
Neither do I.
Derby touches Amelia’s elbow with two fingers and waits until she moves before guiding her away. The restraint in the gesture annoys me because it means he remembers what I told him. It also steadies me because it means he remembers what he promised her.
Twila starts toward the door.
Whiskey follows.
“Stay close,” I tell them.
Twila turns. “Am I being ordered by a man under investigation?”
“You’re being asked by a man whose family is getting dragged into this shit.”
Her eyes flick to Sophie, then back to me. “I’ll be outside.”
Whiskey starts after her.
I say, “Whiskey.”
He pauses.
“Don’t let her leave.”
Twila laughs once. “Good luck.”
Whiskey’s mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious. “I’ll try not to get arrested.”
They go.
Now it’s me and Sophie near the long table full of wedding mess.
Ribbon samples.
Cornbread crumbs.
Bourbon glasses.
A notebook with Pearly Gates written in the margin where flowers should be.
The old jailhouse seems to lean closer around us, bars and brick and ghosts listening like they are waiting for a sentence.
I look at that notebook.
Then at her.
“Were you going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Her mouth opens.
No sound comes.
That is answer enough.
I laugh once, hard and humorless. “After the wedding?”
“No.”
“Before I stood in front of half the town and promised myself to you while your father’s money might be tied to these missing girls they’re trying to hang me for?”
“Legend, stop.”
“Why? Too ugly?”
Her eyes flash. “Yes. It is ugly. It is all ugly. That is why I was trying to understand it before I handed it to you.”
“You don’t hand me the pretty after you sort it, Sophie. That ain’t what this is.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” Her voice breaks for the first time. “I know.”
The crack in her voice hits me straight in the chest.
I hate it.
I hate that I’m angry enough not to step toward her.
She grips the back of a chair. “I found a donor list first. Then an old property transfer. Then a charity account that touched one of my father’s businesses years ago.
I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t know.
I thought if I asked him too soon, he would cover tracks if there were any.
I thought if I told you too soon, you would storm Paradise Falls and put him against a wall. ”
“I might.”
“I know.”
“He may deserve it.”
“I know that too.”
Her tears come then, but she doesn’t sob. They slip down her face silently, which is worse. Sophie crying loud would give me something to fight. Silent tears just cut.
“My father is all I have left of that life,” she says.
“And I ain’t saying he is innocent. I ain’t.
That is the part that scares me most. I think he knows more than he should.
I think he paid for something, or hid something, or let something happen because it was easier than asking why.
And every time I tried to say it to you, I saw your face when Mike’s ghosts came back. ”
My jaw tightens.
“Don’t put this on my father.”
“I’m not.” She wipes her cheek angrily. “I’m saying I saw what dead fathers have already done to you.
I saw Amelia walk in with Mike’s face and his abandonment in her hands.
I saw Cider sitting there with no memory of who took her.
I saw Becki carrying Royal’s baby while her own father’s church keeps circling missing girls.
And I thought, If I’m wrong, I destroy my father for nothing. If I’m right, I destroy us.”
There it is.
The truth under the truth.
Us.
I look at the wedding notebook.
Flowers.
Bourbon.
Guest list.
Evidence.
My life has always been ugly, but I never wanted ugliness to sit at my wedding table and laugh at me.
“You should have trusted me,” I say.
The words come out lower than I expect.
Sophie closes her eyes. “Yes.”
“You trust me with your body. With your life. With every dangerous piece of this club. But not this.”
“I was ashamed.”
“Of what he might have done?”
“Of being his daughter.”
That stops me.
Because I know that shame.
God help me, I know it.
I’m Mike Welles’s son in every room I enter. Even when I hate him. Even when I outgrow him. Even when I build a kingdom from the rubble he left. Blood follows. Name follows. Men look at me and decide which pieces of him still live in me.
Sophie is standing in front of me wearing the same curse in a prettier dress.
I soften for one heartbeat.
Then I remember she hid it.
Ages. Months.
The softness hardens again.
“I can understand the shame,” I say. “I can’t understand the silence.”
She nods like I have hit her and she accepts the blow. “I know.”
That makes me angrier.
I want her to fight. I want her to defend herself so I can be furious without feeling cruel. But Sophie stands there and agrees with me, and the part of me that loves her wants to close the distance, pull her against me, and tell her we will burn the truth out together.
The president in me knows better.
The man who has been lied to by family knows better.
The fiancé doesn’t know what he knows anymore.
I turn away.
“Soph, I can’t marry you with this between us.”
The words leave my mouth and change the room.
Her face goes white.
I feel my own blood go cold.
I did not say I won’t marry her.
I said I can’t marry her with this between us.
There is a difference.
Right now, it doesn’t sound like one.
“Legend,” she whispers.
I look back at her because I owe her that much. “I’m not calling it off.”
Her breath catches.
“But we postpone.”
The tears stop.
That is worse too.
She looks at me like I have slapped the future out of her hands.
“Postpone,” she says.
“Until we know what this is. Until your father is questioned. Until Pearly Gates ain’t sitting in the middle of our vows like a corpse under the floorboards.”
“My father may never tell the truth.”
“Then we find it without him.”
“And if he is guilty?”
My throat tightens.
She waits.
The woman I love waits for me to answer whether her father’s guilt changes the way I love her.
It should be easy.
It ain’t, because the truth is complicated.
It doesn’t change love.
It changes trust.
“If he is guilty,” I say, “then we handle him.”
Her eyes sharpen with pain. “We?”
“Yes.”
“But you are postponing the wedding.”
“Because you hid this.”
She flinches.
I keep going because if I stop, I may break.
“Not because you are his daughter. Not because Montgomery money may be dirty. Not because Pearly Gates may have touched your family. I have my father’s sins piled to the rafters, Sophie. I ain’t judging you for blood.”
“Then what are you judging me for?”
“The door you closed between us.”
She covers her mouth with one hand.
There it is.
The thing I can’t get around.
She knows I have killed for her. Lied for her. Put my club in front of her. Bled for her. Loved her with every ugly piece of me I know how to offer. And still, when the secret came for her, she stood on the other side of it alone.
I can’t marry her while that door is locked.
She lowers her hand. Her voice is quiet when she speaks. Too quiet.
“I’m going home to Paradise Falls.”
Everything in me rebels.
“No.”
Her chin lifts.
There she is.
My Sophie.
Hurt. Proud. Bleeding, but not bowing.
“You just postponed our wedding because I kept something from you. I’m not staying here tonight like a punished child while every brother in your club listens for whether I cry.”
“That ain’t what this is.”
“No? Then what is it?”
“It ain’t safe.”
She laughs once. “Now you sound like every man I have ever had to fight.”
“That ain’t fair.”
“No.” Her eyes shine again. “It isn’t. Neither is postponing a wedding in front of ghosts my father may have helped make, but here we are.”
I step toward her. “Sophie.”
She steps back.
The space hurts worse than I expect.
“I need to go home,” she says. “I need to think. I need to look at what I found without trying to guess what your face will do when I tell you. And I need to ask my father some questions before someone else bleeds for answers.”
“You’re not going alone.”
Her jaw tightens. “Don’t do that.”
“I am still me.”
“And I am still me.”
We stare at each other across wedding ribbons and cornbread crumbs, both too stubborn, both too hurt, both right enough to be dangerous.
Finally, I say, “I’ll send men.”
“I know.”
“I’ll send Derby.”
“No.” Her voice is immediate. “Derby stays with Amelia and August.”
That lands.
Even now.
Even hurt, Sophie is thinking about Amelia.
“You can’t choose your guard while walking away from me,” I say.
“I ain’t walking away from you. I’m walking to my home.”
“Feels the same from here.”
That breaks through her.
I see it.
For one second, she almost comes to me.
Then her phone buzzes again on the table.
We both look down.
Another unknown message.
This one has no words.
Only a photo.
The front gate of Paradise Falls.
Taken today.
Sophie’s hand flies to her mouth again.
My rage goes clean.
Not hot.
Clean.
That is the kind that gets men buried well.
I pick up the phone and study the picture. The angle. The distance. The visible stretch of fence. Whoever took it was near the main road, not inside.
Yet.
Sophie whispers, “My father is there.”
“Then he ain’t alone anymore.”
I look toward the room where my brothers wait just out of sight.
“Whiskey,” I call.
He appears immediately, Twila behind him because apparently not even God is moving that woman off a scent now.
I hold out the phone.
Whiskey reads the screen, then looks at me. “I’ll trace what I can.”
Twila looks at Sophie. “Is your father at Paradise Falls right now?”
Sophie nods.
“I’ll call my dad,” Twila says. “Not official yet. A welfare check can be quiet if it comes from the right mouth.”
Whiskey glances at her. “Sheriff Dix does quiet?”
“When his daughter tells him loud will make things worse.”
Their eyes meet.
Heat there.
Bad timing.
Good tension.