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.