She thought about Harold Reese and his leather case and his professional pleasantness. She thought about Mrs. Katherine Harlow sitting very straight in a buggy with her hands folded in her lap. She thought about a woman who had said, "I will be filing my assessment with the county, and I do not anticipate further action." And then she thought about a name, Harlow, Katherine Harlow, Martha Callahan's family.
"Is Mrs. Katherine Harlow," Clara said very carefully, "Martha Callahan's mother?" Arthur Vance blinked. "Her aunt," he said. "By marriage."
Clara stood in the doorway with that document in front of her and felt the full shape of the past 3 weeks rearrange itself with a lurch she felt in her sternum. The welfare visit had not been Reese's strategy, or not only Reese's strategy. It had been a reconnaissance. Katherine Harlow had come to see the house and the children and the woman managing the household, and she had filed her assessment with the county as she said she would, and now her family had used that assessment and whatever Reese had whispered in the right ears to build a legal case. Not for land, for the children.
"I'll get Mr. Callahan," Clara said. Her voice was even. She turned from the door without taking the document and walked to the barn with a pace that was not quite running and her hands in fists at her sides and a clear cold understanding of what was coming settling into every part of her. Thomas looked up from what he was doing when she came through the barn door.
He saw her face. He put down what he was holding. ""What happened?"" he said. "There is a man at your front door," Clara said. "Who is here to tell you that Martha's family has filed for custody of your children." The silence that followed lasted 2 seconds and felt like considerably longer.
"Who?" He said. "Her aunt and her parents through an attorney named Vance." She met his eyes. "I think Katherine Harlow came here 3 weeks ago to see whether she had a case."
Thomas's face went through several things very quickly and then settled into something controlled and cold that she had not seen on him before. He walked past her toward the house. She walked beside him. At the front porch he stopped. He looked at the attorney.
He looked at the document. Then he turned to Clara. "Go get Jacob," he said. She started to move. "Clara."
His voice stopped her. She turned. He looked at her for 1 moment with everything on his face that he usually kept somewhere below it. "Whatever happens," he said. "You should know I'm not going to let them take my children."
"I know," she said. "And I'm not going to lose you either." She looked at him. He was not a man who said things for effect. She had known that from the beginning.