I know what you're going to say. Then don't make me say it. I was quiet. The light was going orange across the property. Long shadows stretching from the timber line toward the cabin.
Somewhere in the trees, a bird she could not name called once and went silent. "I'm not trying to take anything from you," he said. His voice was even, but the evenness was working harder than usual. I understand what independence means to you. I understand why.
You built this without anyone's help for as long as you could and that matters and it is real and I am not discounting it. He paused. But Dunar has a lawyer and you don't. And if this goes to formal proceedings, that disparity is going to hurt you regardless of how right you are. Being right is not enough.
You know that. She looked at the documents. She looked at the cabin on the rise. She thought about her father and the county records office and the neighbor who had simply outlasted him. I'll take a loan, she said.
He went still. Not a gift, she said. A loan, written terms, a repayment schedule, interest at the going rate. If Dunar forces formal proceedings, I'll borrow the legal fee from you and repay it from the sewing income and the garden sales. She looked at him.
I need it to be a real agreement documented. I'll write the terms myself. All right, he said. I mean it. I know you mean it, he said.
And yes, he held her eyes. You'll get your hearing and you'll win it. She nodded once. It was not comfortable. There was nothing comfortable about borrowing money from a man she was trying very carefully not to be indebted to in any other sense.