Nathan stood at the window and watched the buggy go. "They live in Laramie," he said. I knew they'd come eventually. Margaret was their only daughter.
He paused. Harlon built a mercantile empire and he's been managing things ever since, including Margaret before we married. He never quite forgave me for taking her out here. Did she want to be out here?
Evelyn asked. Nathan turned from the window. The question seemed to catch him slightly offguard, the way honest questions did when someone had expected something easier. She did, he said.
She liked the ranch. She wasn't as fragile as her father believed. A pause. He never believed that about her.
And now he believes he has a say in Caleb. He'll try to. Nathan said that's why they came. Not just to see him, to look at the situation.
His eyes moved briefly to her and away. And to look at you. She'd understood that. What will they do?
I don't know yet. He moved away from the window. Harlon doesn't do anything without a plan. He was right about that and the plan made itself known 11 days later in the form of a letter from a solicitor in Laramie addressed to Nathan which arrived with the Thursday post and which Nathan brought to the kitchen that evening and sat on the table between them without comment.
She didn't pick it up. It wasn't hers to read. They're petitioning for guardianship. He said partial quarterly visits with Caleb and Laramie extended to full summer residency when he's older.
The language is he stopped. It's very careful language. It says the child's current living situation lacks appropriate maternal supervision. She heard the phrase land.
She felt it land. It says that she said it implies it. The lawyer's been careful about what it says directly. He looked at her.
They're saying that a hired housekeeper is not an adequate substitute for family. She understood what was happening. She'd understood it the moment Cecilia Hargrove's eyes had moved over her in that front room. That assessing look that had nothing to do with what she actually saw and everything to do with the category she'd already placed Evelyn in before she'd walked through the door.