What happens if it becomes public? Thomas stared at her. You want to tell people? He said in town. I want to talk to Morrison.
Clare said to Ruth Hadley's husband who's on the county board to the minister who knows everything that happens in Cedar Hollow and has standing when he speaks. I want the people in this town to know what Witmore has been doing not as gossip but as documented fact. The Kettleworth letterhead. The welfare complaint filed one week after Darrow's letter. She paused.
Whitmore needs people to believe the story he's writing. Take that away from him. Thomas was quiet for a very long time. If it works, he said finally. It changes everything.
"Yes," Clare said. "And if it doesn't work," he said. "He knows exactly what we have and what we're doing." "He probably already knows," Clare said. "Men like Whitmore pay attention to their opponents."
"The question isn't whether he knows we're fighting. It's whether we let him control the terms of the fight." Thomas looked at her. You've been thinking about this for a while, he said since the welfare inspector came through the gate. Clare said he was quiet.
Then I'll go see Morrison today. Clare shook her head. I'll go, she said. You go see the minister. Thomas looked at her surprised.
Whitmore has been working the story that this household is in disarray and that your presence here is she chose the word carefully. Questioned. You walking into Morrison's general store to campaign for yourself reads differently than me walking in. She met his eyes. Nobody questions my investment in this family.
Let me use that. He held her gaze. People will talk, he said, about you doing this, about you being involved. Let them talk, Clare said. I'm already in the picture.
Thomas was very still. What did you say? He said. She realized what she had said. Emily told me, she said quietly that she drew you in the picture of the ranch.
Thomas was looking at her with an expression she had been carefully not naming for weeks. The particular expression of a man who has something to say and has been holding it with both hands for a long time. Clare, he said, don't. She said softly. Not yet.