There would be decisions about the farm and the legal proceedings and the question of testimony and the question of where they went from here. There would be Orson in the barn pretending his horse needed him and the east parcel and the road's visibility and Ferris with his survey equipment. There would be all of that. But tonight the ridge was empty and the stove was holding and Toby was asleep in the back room in the particular deep sleep of a child who has started to feel safe again. And that was more than Mara Vance had had six days ago.
She went to bed. Gideon sat at the table for a while longer, as he always did, watching the window. The dark outside was ordinary dark, nothing moving in it. Just the cold and the stars coming out between the clouds and the sound of the cottonwoods at the edge of the property, shaft shifting in what little wind remained. He stayed until the fire needed banking.
Then he banked it and went to sleep. The word came in the form of a letter and Orson brought it on a Tuesday morning 11 days after Ferris had written out with his certified copies. 11 days that had passed in the particular way that days pass when the acute danger is over. But the resolution isn't yet complete slowly in the mornings, faster in the afternoons. With a quality of suspended waiting that all four of them had learned to work around rather than through.
The letter was from Clara Whitlock. Mara read it at the table while Gideon stood near the window and Orson sat in his chair and Toby, oblivious to the significance of paper and legal language. Occupied himself in the barn with Marjgery and the morning routine he had made his own over the past week and a half. She read it twice. Then she set it flat on the table and pressed both palms on it the way she'd pressed her palms on the oil cloth packet the week before when she was letting something go.
This time she wasn't letting go. This time she was taking hold. He's been arrested, she said. Orson made a sound. Ror was taken into territorial custody 4 days ago, she continued.
Z. The warrant was issued on the basis of Ferris's authentication along with corroborating documentation from two of the other families who had kept their original records. She looked up. Judge Moss signed the freeze order on all property transfers. His accounts remain frozen pending full investigation.
His attorneys have filed three challenges and all three have been denied. C. The room was quiet. Whitlock says she expects the fraud convictions to carry. Mara said,"she says she doesn't make promises about outcomes, but she wanted me to know that the evidentiary record is stronger than anything she's worked with in 12 years of practice."Gideon turned from the window.
He looked at her with an expression that had the particular quality of someone who had been waiting for a thing to be real and was now watching it become real and finding that it felt different from what they'd anticipated. Not less, but different. More complicated, more quiet than the moment seemed to deserve. The Heartleys, she said, Whitlock mentions them. Their transfer has been voided in the preliminary order.