"That's Whitmore," Clare confirmed. He used Harriet, Jacob said. He found Eleanor's cousin and he used her grief to try to take us apart. Yes, Clare said. Jacob looked at the letter for a long time.
Miss Clare, he said. His voice was very controlled in the way his father's was controlled, and it was the same fury underneath in miniature. Can we use this? I think we can, Clare said. I think when Daryl sees this, it changes the picture considerably because it shows Whitmore isn't just banking, Jacob said.
He's orchestrating. That's exactly what it shows, Clare said. Jacob looked at her. You knew, he said. You knew if we invited Harriet here, she'd see the truth.
And you knew if she saw the truth, she'd tell you how she found out about us. And you knew. I hoped. Clare said, "I hoped there's a difference." Jacob picked up the letter.
"I'm going with P to Milbrook," he said. "When he goes to Darrow, I want to be there." "Jacob, I'm 12," he said with a flatness that was not accepting limitation, but rejecting it. "I know these numbers better than anyone." "Darl needs to know these numbers."
Clare looked at this boy. She thought about what his mother might have felt watching him. I'll talk to your father," she said. Thomas's reaction to the Witmore letterhead was quieter than Clare expected and more dangerous for its quietness. "He held the letter for a long time.
He set it down. He picked up his coffee cup and held it without drinking. He went after my dead wife's family," Thomas said. "Yes," Clare said. He found Harriet and he he used Eleanor's memory.
The coffee cup in his hand was very still. He used Elellanar's death to try to take my children. Thomas, no, he said, not to Clare. To something else, to the part of himself that had been afraid, that had been willing to believe powerful men always won, that had shrunk from the fight because he was exhausted and grieving and alone. No, he stood.
He looked at Clare, and the look on his face was something she had not seen before. Not the cold, careful, enduring Thomas Walker, but the version of him that existed underneath the endurance. The man who had been a different kind of man before Eleanor died and had been trying to find his way back to that man ever since. I'm going to Milbrook tomorrow, he said. With Jacob.
He paused. I heard what the boy said. He goes, "Good," Clare said. Thomas looked at her. You're going to stay, he said, while I'm gone.