Thomas, this letter has a lawyer's fingerprints all over it. The language, the structure. Harriet didn't write this alone. He looked up. Whitmore, he said.
I can't prove it. Clare said, "But the timing has not escaped me. You go to Darrow and Milbrook 2 weeks later. Harriet Mercer sends a lawyer drafted letter about your children's welfare." She met his eyes.
Someone told her it was time to move. Thomas pushed the letter across the table away from him like the distance would help. What do I do? He said, and it was the first time in all the weeks she had been here that she heard something genuinely fragile in his voice. Not weakness, something more honest than weakness.
The sound of a man who has been strong for a very long time asking someone he trusts whether he's still doing it right. Clare felt the weight of that question like a hand on her chest. You write back, she said cordially. You tell her you appreciate her concern. You invite her to come and see the children in person here.
She held up a hand before he could object. If she comes here, she sees what I see. She sees Jacob doing his mathematics at the kitchen table and Emily drawing and Lily playing music and Noah watching everything with those careful eyes. And Ben. Her voice did something she didn't intend.
She steadied it. And Ben talking about George the rabbit and whether rabbits could navigate by stars. She doesn't get to see that from Denver. Thomas stared at her. And if she comes here and still decides, then we'll deal with that, Clare said.
But give her the chance to see the truth before she acts on someone else's version of it. He was quiet for a long moment. You think she's a good person? He said. Not a question.
He was reading her. I think she loves Elellanar's children the way people love what they've lost. Clare said from a distance with guilt mixed in. And I think someone has told her a story about these children that she had every reason to believe because she hasn't been here to see otherwise. She paused.
Give her otherwise. Thomas picked up the letter and folded it. I'll write tonight, he said. Harriet Mercer arrived on a Tuesday 3 weeks later on the afternoon stage from Milbrook. Thomas had gone to collect her.
Clare had stayed home because someone needed to be at the house and because she had understood without being told that her presence at the stage depot would generate a particular kind of conversation in Cedar Hollow that would not help anyone. She spent the morning doing what she always did. She made the house right, not performing cleanliness, not staging it, but tending to it the way she had come to tend to it, because this was what the house needed, and this was what she did. She made sure the children's rooms were in order. She started a good supper.