Martha looked at her for a moment and then laughed a real laugh, quick and genuine. "Good," she said. "I was afraid you'd be fragile about it." She tilted her head. "You're not fragile, are you?"
"Not particularly," Clara said. "Good," Martha said again. "Because this town is small and the winters are long, and you need friends who will tell you the truth. I'd like to be that, if you're willing." Clara looked at her, this woman she had known for 4 minutes, offering something direct and uncomplicated.
"I'd be glad of it," she said. Martha nodded briskly, as though a deal had been struck. "Then come meet Helen Pruitt," she said. "She's the school teacher, and she's been asking about Mabel since she heard the girl was bright. And ignore Edna Hargrove.
She'll come around. They always do when they figure out you're staying." "I'm staying," Clara said. "I know," Martha said. "I can tell.
The ones who aren't going to stay have a certain look. You don't have it." She glanced across the yard to where Nate was talking to a group of ranchers. "He knows it, too, I think, even if he hasn't said it yet." Clara did not respond to that, but she looked across the yard at Nate, who was at that exact moment looking back at her briefly, across the distance, before he turned back to his conversation.
It was a look she would have had no language for a month ago. She was beginning to find language for it now. The real blow came the following Monday. She was in the kitchen when Nate came in from town, and she knew from the way he came through the door faster than usual, his hat still on, which he always removed at the door, that something had happened. "Sit down," he said.
"Tell me," she said. She didn't sit. He put a paper on the table. She looked at it. It was a letter, and she recognized the letterhead before she read the first line, Hargrove Feed and Grain, the name printed at the top in the self-important font of a business that took itself very seriously.
She read it. It took three readings because the first two she kept stopping and she needed to read it all the way through before she let herself respond. The letter was from Gerald Hargrove, Edna's husband, addressed to Nathaniel Holloway and written with the particular tone of a man delivering bad news he is personally enjoying. It stated that the promissory note Nate held with Hargrove Feed and Grain taken out two seasons ago when a cattle illness had wiped out a quarter of the herd and Nate had needed supplies on credit to keep the rest alive was being called in. Full payment within 30 days.
The amount at the bottom of the letter was significant. Clara set the paper down. He can do this, she said. He can do this, Nate said. His voice was flat.