Royal stands near one of the old cell doors at the back wall, dressed in black as usual, watching her eat pickles like she is a religious experience and a threat assessment at the same time.
Cider sits beside Becki, quiet as a ghost in borrowed clothes.
Royal’s sister.
Found by me.
That still feels strange to think, stranger to say. Cider was gone since she was a teenager, swallowed by some dark stretch of years no one fully understands yet, and when I found her, she came back with holes in her memory big enough for monsters to live in. She remembers pieces. A smell. A hallway. A hymn sung wrong. A woman’s hand with a scar. Not enough to build truth. Enough to make all of us afraid of what truth might look like when it finally stands up.
Pearly Gates hangs over this room even when no one says the name.
The missing girls.
Cider’s missing years.
Becki’s father and his rotten church.
Ruthanne Peck slithering into the Fire Pit yesterday with her smile and her little gold cross, trying to shame Amelia back into a cage.
There are too many women in this town with pieces missing.
I look down at my wedding notebook and realize I have written Pearly Gates in the margin instead of peonies.
My stomach twists.
Because that ain’t the only secret eating me alive.
My father’s name sits behind my teeth like a stone.
Not because I know everything. I don’t. That is part of the problem. I have enough to suspect he was involved somehow before. Enough old business. Enough whispers. Enough paperwork that doesn’t line up cleanly. Enough pauses when certain men talk about money, horses, church donations, and the kind of respectable connections that make ugly things easier to hide.
My father.
Paradise Falls.
Pearly Gates.
Missing girls.
I keep telling myself I need proof before I tell Legend.
I keep telling myself that giving him suspicion without proof would only hand him a match in a room full of gas.
I keep telling myself I’m protecting him from one more ghost.
The truth is uglier.
I’m afraid.
Not of Legend hurting me. Never that.
I’m afraid of the moment he looks at me and realizes the woman he is about to marry may have brought another rot-thread into his life. I’m afraid the name Montgomery will taste different in his mouth. I’m afraid he will see my family’s polished silver and horse-farm money the same way Amelia looks at her wedding ring mark.
Beautiful from far away.
A shackle up close.
“Sophie,” Lottie says.