Orson stood up. Let me talk to Gideon. He said it the way people say things that are really statements about what they've already decided. And he went back out to the main room, and the door swung mostly shut behind him. And Mara lay on the cot and listened to the two of them talking in lowered voices and stared at the ceiling and thought about Toby sitting out there eating breakfast at a stranger's table and thought about the deed against her ribs and thought about Thomas.
She thought about Thomas for exactly 45 seconds. Then she stopped because she couldn't afford 45 seconds, and she sat up and she started planning. Gideon had known Orson Pike for 16 years. Long enough that he'd stopped needing to translate the man's silences. Long enough that he knew which version of quiet meant Orson was thinking, and which meant he was already done thinking and waiting for you to catch up.
The silence that stretched between them after Orson came back out of the back room was the second kind. Well, Gideon said,"Well, Orson agreed."She tell you about the deed. She told me. Orson picked up his coffee cup, looked into it like it might have changed while he was in the other room. Put it back down.
You knew about it already. She told me last night, which wasn't quite accurate. Mara had told him the minimum last night because the minimum was what she'd been able to hold together long enough to say. She'd told him there was a document and that Ror wanted it and that Ror was not the sort of man who accepted not getting things he wanted. That had been enough for Gideon to understand the shape of it.
She's got something real, Orson said. Not just her word against his. Paper, dated, filed, witnessed. I know. If Whitlock gets her hands on that.
I know. Orson. Orson looked at him then. Really looked the way he'd been looking at Gideon on and off for 4 years. That specific measuring look that Gideon tolerated because Orson had earned the right to it by being the one person who had shown up without being called after the accident.
Who had sat in this cabin for three days without speaking more than 10 words, who had understood that presence was sometimes the only useful thing a person could offer. She can't travel. Orson said,"No, and Ror's men are asking around town."Yes. So, she stays here until she can walk. And in the meantime, every day, somebody in town gets another day to remember that they saw a woman and a boy going into Gideon Mercer's place.
Orson let that sit for a moment. Unless you move them. I considered moving them. What' you decide? Gideon was quiet.