After they'd gone up to bed, and the kitchen was clean, and the fire had settled into its nighttime behavior. Miriam sat down at the table, and Bramwell poured two cups of coffee without asking whether she wanted one, and set one in front of her, and sat across from her, and they looked at each other in the lamplight. Tell me exactly what the lawyer said, " she said. He got the letter. She read it herself this time, all the way through slowly.
The lawyer's name was Gerald Foss, and he wrote in the careful, compressed language of someone who was paid to say difficult things without drama. The substance of it was that a letter had arrived at the Carver's Mill County Clerk's office from a Harlon Briggs, an attorney in San Francisco on behalf of one Orson Hensley, stating that Mr. Hensley intended to return to Montana territory in the spring and wished to resume custody of his children and marital relations with his wife. Miriam put the letter down. He found a lawyer, she said. Yes, he's in San Francisco apparently.
She looked at the letter again. California didn't work out, she said. Not a question. She already knew the shape of Orson's failures the way they built and collapsed. Built and collapsed.
Always with an explanation that put the fault somewhere else. California had been his great plan, the place where everything would finally go right. The fact that he'd found a lawyer instead of a business told her exactly how well California had gone. Foss says we should respond formally. Bramwell said he wants to document the abandonment properly.
Dates witnesses the condition of the homestead when you left it. He thinks the legal position is strong. It is strong. Miriam said left in November. He left a note.
He took the savings and the food and the horse. If that isn't abandonment by the legal definition, I don't know what is. Foss says the same thing. She was quiet for a moment. He won't win, she said.
Whatever Orson's lawyer in San Francisco told him, he's not going to come here and take my children. I won't allow it. Bramwell was watching her with the careful attention he used when he wanted to understand something precisely. I know, he said, but we need to be prepared for the possibility that he comes in person, not just through lawyers. She hadn't let herself think about that part yet.
She let herself think about it now briefly and practically. The way she approached things she didn't want to approach. Orson in person was a different problem than Orson on paper. Orson on paper she could handle with documents and dates and a lawyer who knew the law. Orson, in person, had always had a particular talent for making her feel smaller than she was, not through violence.