And the knowledge of it sat quietly in the house like a lamp left burning. They told the men the next morning, "Not in the way of an announcement. Nathan wasn't built for announcements, and Evelyn had no interest in making anyone sit through one. It was simply that when Calhoun came in for his early coffee and found Nathan already at the table with his own cup still there in the way that meant he hadn't been to bed or had and come back and Evelyn at the stove with the particular quietness of someone who'd made a decision and was living inside it now.
Calhoun looked at the two of them and read the room the way he read most things without hurry and without needing anyone to explain. Something happened. He said it wasn't a question. We're getting married.
Nathan said he said it simply, the way he said most things that mattered. Calhoun set his cup down. He looked at Evelyn and then at Nathan and then at his coffee and then he said, "Well," which was Calhoun's version of a great deal, and picked the cup back up. The other men found out through the ordinary channels, Calhoun told Dolan.
Dolan told the others. And by breakfast, everyone at the table knew and was working out how to behave about it, which resulted in a particular charged silence that Evelyn moved through without comment, setting plates down and refilling coffee and not making anyone perform a reaction they hadn't finished having yet. Dolan said quietly when she passed, "Congratulations, Miss Hart." He looked at the table when he said it.
"Thank you, Dolan." Briggs said nothing. He ate his breakfast and left. She didn't follow that thread any further because it would only go somewhere she already knew.
What she turned her attention to instead that morning and the several that followed was the practical reality of the situation which was more complicated than the word marriage suggested. There was the Hargrove petition to address which meant a response had to be prepared which meant a lawyer. Nathan rode to Laramie 2 days after and came back with a man named Aldis Croft who had an office above the bank and the careful manner of a man who had learned not to show his opinions about his client's circumstances. Croft reviewed the petition at the kitchen table, which was where all serious business seemed to happen in this house.
Evelyn sat at the table, too. Nathan had asked if she wanted to be there and she'd said yes without having to think about it because she was not going to manage this situation from the other side of a closed door. Croft read the papers and then looked at both of them over the top of them. The guardianship petition as filed is based on two grounds.
First, that the child's maternal grandparents have a familial interest in his welfare and development. Second, that the current domestic situation is, he found the phrase, insufficiently stable to ensure appropriate moral supervision for a child of tender years. Define insufficiently stable, Nathan said. An unmarried man living alone with a female employee and an infant child.
Croft set the pages down. It's implication, not accusation. Carefully phrased to avoid defamation while producing the desired inference in a judge's mind. "We're getting married," Nathan said.
Croft looked at him. "When?" "As soon as it can be arranged." "That changes the petition significantly.