Holt looked between them. He looked at the table. He made a note. "That changes the calculus," he said. "I thought it might," Clara said.
Thomas was looking at her with the small smile that was becoming familiar. "The petitioners' central argument," Holt said, "is going to be instability. A widower struggling alone, inadequate care, uncertain domestic circumstances. A formal engagement and ideally a marriage before the court date removes that argument almost entirely." He looked at Thomas.
"Can you be married before August 14th?" Thomas looked at Clara. Clara looked at Thomas. "Yes," they said, not simultaneously, but close enough. They were married on a Saturday in late July at the Red Valley Church with the bell that needed paint.
Reverend Miles, who had known Thomas Callahan for 11 years, performed the ceremony with the unhurried gravity of a man who understood what he was joining and took it seriously. Tom Aldridge stood up for Thomas. Hattie Greer, who had dressed for the occasion in a way that suggested she had been waiting for it and planned accordingly, stood beside Clara. The children sat in the front pew. Noah was in the suit Jacob had found for him, which was slightly too large, and he sat with his feet not quite reaching the floor, and his hands folded in his lap with the solemn focus of someone performing an important ceremonial role.
Emma had put her own hair up for the first time, two careful braids pinned at the back, and she sat straight-spined and clear-eyed, and only cried once briefly, which she managed by pressing her lips together and looking at the ceiling until it passed, and Clara saw it and loved her for it without saying a word. Luke sat still for the entire ceremony. This was by any metric a miracle. He explained afterward that he had decided it was important enough to try, and that he thought he had probably pulled a muscle, but it had been worth it. Jacob sat at the end of the pew closest to the aisle, and when Reverend Miles asked if anyone had reason to object and the church went quiet, Jacob looked at Clara with his father's dark eyes and the ghost of something that was not quite a smile and was better than one, and she looked back at him, and she was absolutely going to hold herself together, and she did.
Thomas took her hand at the altar and held it the way he had held it at the kitchen table with the same steadiness and the same seriousness, and when Reverend Miles told him he could say what he wanted to say, Thomas looked at her and said, "I told you I do things with my hands, so I'll just say that I mean to keep hold of this one." And Hattie Greer made a sound in the second row that was entirely undignified and entirely human, and that Clara would remember for the rest of her life. She said her own vows plainly and without embellishment because that was how she was built, and she meant every word down to its foundation. When it was done, Noah climbed off the pew and walked directly to Clara and raised his arms. She picked him up.
He put his forehead against her cheek and stayed there. August 14th came the way hard things come, not faster than expected, but more real. They drove to the county courthouse in a wagon that had been cleaned for the occasion. Thomas drove. Clara sat beside him.
Daniel Holt had arrived the night before and had spent the evening at their kitchen table reviewing the documents one final time with the precision of a man who does not lose cases he should win. The Harlow family was already in the courthouse when they arrived. Edward Harlow was a heavy-set man with the expression of someone convinced of his own righteousness, which was the most dangerous kind. Ruth Harlow was a small woman who was crying before the proceedings began, which Clara suspected was not entirely strategic, but also was not unhelpful to their case. George Harlow stood behind his parents with his arms crossed in a way that reminded her with a jolt of Jacob on that first porch, except that Jacob's defensiveness had always been in service of protecting someone else.
And George Harlow's appeared to be entirely in service of himself. Catherine Harlow was not there. Clara noticed that immediately. Holt noticed it, too. She saw him mark it.
The judge was a man named Clarence Webb, who was perhaps 60 and had the look of someone who had heard a great many things in a great many courtrooms and had opinions about which ones were worth his time. The Harlow family's attorney went first. He was competent. He laid out the petition clearly, the months of struggle, the inadequate domestic conditions, the children's welfare, the maternal family's connection and resources and capacity to provide a stable environment. He mentioned the county welfare assessment.