It doesn't feel like justice, he said. No, she said, it doesn't. But it's survival, and sometimes survival is what you choose because you have seven children and 40 acres of good grazing land to protect. He looked at her. How do you do that?
He said. Do what? Say the hard thing, he said. The thing I'm already thinking, but haven't said yet. You just you say it.
Like it's not simple, she said. It's just true, and true things are better said." "Eleanor was like that," he said, and then he stopped the way he always stopped when Eleanor came into a sentence unexpectedly, as though he had not entirely planned for it. But this time he didn't pull back. "She said what was true," he said.
"Even when it wasn't easy. She said it because she thought that was respect, telling someone the real thing instead of the comfortable one." He looked at his hands. "I've missed that more than almost anything. Having someone in the room who would tell me the real thing."
Clara did not say anything. She understood that this was not a comparison. It was not him measuring her against Eleanor or finding her either sufficient or insufficient. It was a man saying, "This is what I lost and this is what I recognize, and I am not going to pretend I don't see it." "I'll write to Hargrove," she said, "the response letter."
"If you'd like." "You?" "He knows the accounts came from me," she said. "Aldridge's quiet inquiries would have made that clear. A response letter from me, precise, documented, without heat, tells him exactly what kind of mind he's dealing with.
Which is sometimes more persuasive than the most passionate letter from the person who's angry." Nate considered this. "You're not angry," he said. "I'm furious," she said. "That's exactly why I should write it."
Something crossed his face, that almost expression she had come to read as his version of being moved. "Write it," he said. She wrote it that evening. It was four paragraphs. Polite, precise, and completely without mercy.
It outlined the documented discrepancy, referenced the relevant invoices and ledger entries, noted that counsel had reviewed the material and found it sufficient, and stated plainly that Mr. Holloway was prepared to pursue all remedies unless the promissory note was forgiven in full within 14 days. Nate read it the next morning. He read it twice. "You didn't threaten him," he said.