Thomas made a sound that was almost not quite, but almost a laugh. I'm sorry, he said. This isn't what you signed up for. No, Clare agreed. But I'm not leaving.
She said it clearly without equivocation before she could second-guess herself. I want that to be clear. Whatever Whitmore is building, whatever Harriet Mercer is planning, I'm not leaving this family in the middle of it. Thomas looked at her with an expression she could not entirely name. Something complex and careful, something that had gratitude in it, and something else she didn't let herself identify too closely.
Why, he said. It was the same question he'd asked before by the box of documents. He was asking it again because her answer the first time had moved something in him and he wanted to understand it. Clare thought about lying. She thought about giving him the professional answer.
The practical answer, the answer that would be safer for both of them. She said, "Because Ben talked to me last night, not just a word or two, a whole conversation about George the rabbit and about the stars he could see from his window and about whether rabbits could fly if they wanted to." And he fell asleep on the sofa before I could get him upstairs. And I carried him up to his bed and he weighed next to nothing. Thomas.
And when I laid him down, he put his hand on my arm for just a second in his sleep like he was making sure I was still there. And I She stopped. She looked at the table. "I cannot walk away from that," she said. "I am not capable of it anymore.
The kitchen was very quiet." Thomas's hands flat on the table had gone very still. "All right," he said. "Just those two words, but the way he said them, quiet, deliberate, final," was the sound of a man who was also in his own way saying, "I'm not leaving you in the middle of it either." He didn't say that.
But she heard it. She heard it clearly. The lawyer's name was Frank Darrow, and he had an office above the feed supply store in Milbrook, which was 15 mi east on a better road than the one that led to Cedar Hollow. Thomas went on Thursday morning alone and came back in the late afternoon with the tight expression of a man who has received exactly the news he feared, but was braced for. He sat down at the kitchen table.
Clare poured coffee without being asked and put it in front of him. The note is legal, he said. The acceleration clause and the inspection clause are both enforceable under Colorado territory law. Darrow says there's not much that can be done about the terms of the note itself. What can be done?
Clare said documentation. Thomas looked up. Darrow says if Whitmore tries to invoke the inspection clause without cause and he'll need to manufacture cause because there isn't any, having clear documentation of the ranch's actual viability would be essential to challenging it. If Whitmore invokes it and we can demonstrate it's being done in bad faith, he paused. It's still a fight and fights cost money.
What about Harriet Mercer? Clare said Thomas's jaw tightened. Darrow says a blood relative can petition for custody if they can demonstrate the current home environment is inadequate. He says adequate documentation of the home environment. Children in school in good health, stable household management would be critical evidence against any such petition.