A judge in a county courthouse doesn't know that. He held her gaze. What are you saying? He said. She had thought about this for 5 hours.
She had turned it over and looked at it from every angle, and she was Clara Bennett, who was practical above all things, and she had arrived at the only practical conclusion. I'm saying, she said carefully, that what I am in this house matters in that courtroom. And what I am right now is not enough to protect these children from what the Harlow family is trying to do. Thomas said nothing. I'm not saying this the way you might think I'm saying it, she said.
I'm not asking for anything. I'm not She stopped, tried again. I'm telling you the shape of the problem. What you do with that is your decision. Thomas looked at her for a long time.
Then he said, Clara. Thomas. I was going to ask you, he said. I want you to know that before any of this. I was going to ask you, and I was trying to find the right time and the right words, and neither of those things has ever been easy for me.
He looked at his hands on the table. I don't want you to think I'm asking because of the court case. I know why you're asking, she said. "Do you?" Yes, she said, because of the window you fixed without telling me, because of essential, because of 3 weeks of mornings and your hand on this table.
She looked at him. I know why. He reached into his coat pocket. What he put on the table was not a ring. It was a small carved wooden bird, no bigger than her fist, smooth from the working of it wings half spread as if caught between staying and going.
She looked at it. I made it, he said. I've been making it for 2 weeks. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but my hands needed something. He looked at the bird.
My wife Martha, she used to say that I only know how to say things with my hands. That words came out of me sideways. He pushed the bird gently toward her. I can't give you much right now. The ranch is not what it should be, and there's a court case coming, and four children who are going to drive you to the edge of your patience on a regular basis for the foreseeable future.
His voice was steady and plain and absolutely serious. But I can give you this. And I can give you the truth, which is that this house has been alive since you came into it, and I don't know how to go back to what it was before, and I don't want to. Clara looked at the wooden bird. She picked it up.
It was warm from his pocket. The wings were perfect, each feather line carved with the patience of a man who had been doing it in the hours after the children were in bed, alone working something out with his hands that he didn't yet have the words for. Yes, she said. He looked at her. Yes, she said again.