Page 9 of Legions

“Oh, I don’t know. This sofa is nice and worn in. Quiet, no one trying to tell me what to do. The Lord left me alone,” I said, then stifled a yawn.

Dad’s expression hardened some, but not much. He didn’t like me making jokes about the Lord.

“Your pride needs checked,” he informed me.

This wasn’t about my pride. It was about my sanity.

“You are making assumptions, Dad.”

He took another drink from his cup, studying me. “I’m your father. I don’t have to make assumptions. And your mother is hurt but she does forgive you. She wants to hear you apologize to her face though.”

Yeah, well, that was not happening. I took the blanket I had used and began to fold it up. “Perhaps she should apologize to me,” I said tightly, standing up, already regretting that I had chosen to sleep here last night. It wasn’t as if I were broke. I had a bank account. I could have parked the truck in Atlanta then taken an Uber to a hotel. But I hadn’t, which was something I could admit this morning after having a night to sleep on. It was because, while I had needed distance, I hadn’t wanted to be that far away from Thatcher.

He had been a full-blown psycho yesterday. But after the time away from him and the sleep, I could see past the crazed gleam in his eyes to the other that had been there. He’d been afraid. He had one focus. Me. One goal- keeping me.

My chest ached. Had he slept last night? Had they calmed him down?

No. I wasn’t doing that. I could not let my love for him outweigh the rest—the idea of him sleeping alone in his bed, our bed. I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly as my throat tightened. Without me there to comfort him, who would?

“Don’t act like a child, Capri. As you pointed out to your mother and I, you are a grown woman. You make your own choices. Now, you’re faced with the truth that your parents know more than you gave them credit for. We’ve lived life, honey. We have experience. You may be twenty-seven years old, but you have been sheltered. Our fault. I can admit to that. But we were trying to protect you. I’d always believed you’d marry a man of faith. Live your life the way you’d been raised. But-”

“Dad, just don’t. Stop. I’m not here to get forgiveness. I needed a night to collect my thoughts. That is all. I had even planned on being gone before you got here. And I am now leaving.” I informed him and headed for the door.

“Do you know who he killed?” My father asked as I reached the door.

I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep going. But the tone of his voice, there was something there. A heaviness or weight he was tired from bearing. It didn’t make sense.

“He wasn’t convicted. Don’t believe everything you hear,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Funny thing about murders, they don’t get wiped under a rug. A man was, in fact, killed that day. Not only did Thatcher Shephard snap Beauden Redd’s neck, but he then lit a cigarette and waited for the cops to arrive. He didn’t even run,” he told me, his tone etched with… guilt. No. That made no sense.Why would my father have guilt over something he hadn’t done?I turned around and looked back at him.

“Then explain to me why he didn’t go to prison,” I said hesitantly because the look on my dad’s face wasn’t one I was accustomed to seeing.Was that pain?

Dad stood up and sat his cup on the table beside him. “One reason would be that the Shephard family is a part of the southern mafia. They weld power in high places.”

I didn’t respond. Although I had thought my parents suspected or after the media frenzy when Thatcher had drugged and abducted me, they had found out for sure what the Shephards were. Neither my mom nor dad had come out and said it to me. Not like this.

“But you know that, don’t you,” he said, his eyes still full of that remorse that confused me. “You knew it when you told the police he hadn’t kidnapped you.”

I remained silent.

He let out a heavy sigh. “This,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “This is my punishment. I had convinced myself over the years that the Lord understood my actions. But I had always known deep down that was a lie. One, I told myself. It made it easier to accept and forget.”

I was now confused.How had he gone from telling me about the alleged murder that Thatcher had been accused of years ago to something he had done?

“The other reason he didn’t go to prison was because he had a witness. A strong one. That said it was self-defense. The only witness but one that people trusted. The court trusted. But then the judge had been bought by dirty money. She’d just needed a reason to let him walk away free.”

I waited, studying my father, whose posture wasn’t as straight but appeared to be weighed down by something heavy. A slow trickle of uneasiness began to seep through me.Why did my dad know the specifics? Had he looked it up, done research, because I was with Thatcher?

“You see, even a pastor will do what must be done to protect his children. He will do things to better his church. Build the flock,” he said with a hollow laugh, and suddenly, the lines in hisweathered skin seemed deeper.

The silence that followed was loud—so loud that I was afraid to breathe. But I waited, needing to know what I didn’t.

“You remember the years of therapy you went to?” he asked.

I tensed. That was something we never spoke about. I had managed to shove it deep into my past and never allowed it freedom.

“Why are you bringing that up?” I asked, my voice cracking.

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