"I didn't need to," she said. "The facts threaten him. I just introduced them." He folded the letter. "I'll take it to town today," he said.
She nodded and went to make breakfast. She was at the stove when she heard him stop at the kitchen doorway. "Clara," he said. She turned. He was standing with the letter in his hand and he was looking at her the way he sometimes looked at things he was trying to see clearly directly without flinching.
With the full attention of a man who had learned that things looked at carefully were usually less frightening than things avoided. "I want you to know," he said, "that whatever happens with Hargrove, however this resolves, it has nothing to do with why you should stay." She held very still. "You should stay because this is your home. Not because you saved the east pasture, because this is your home and we are."
He stopped. Try it again. "Because the children need you. Because" another stop. His jaw worked slightly.
"Because I would very much like you to stay. For your own reasons, not because of any of this." The kitchen was completely quiet. Clara set down the spoon she was holding. "Nate," she said, "I was never going to leave because of Hargrove."
"I know," he said. "I wanted to say it anyway." "All right," she said. He nodded. He left for town.
She stood in the kitchen alone for a long moment, her hand on the counter, the morning light coming through the window. The house began to stir around her with the sounds of seven children waking up and the day starting and everything ordinary and everything changed. She had come here to survive. She was doing considerably more than that now. The letter worked.
14 days later, 13 actually, a response arrived from Gerald Hargrove's lawyer, written in the careful language of a man communicating through legal representation because he no longer trusted himself to communicate directly. The promissory note was forgiven in full. The collateral claim on the East pasture was released. There was no admission of wrongdoing, which was expected and accepted. And there was a concluding paragraph about mutual respect and good business relations that both Nate and Clara read with expressions that could generously be described as polite.
Nate set the letter down. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "It's over." "Yes," she said. "The East pasture is still ours."