She slid the notebook across the table. Take it, she said. I made a copy anyway. Clara laughed, genuinely surprised out of it, and Lily, startled by the sound of it, laughed too. It was the first time Clara had heard her laugh fully.
It was the kind of laugh that started in the chest and couldn't be contained, the kind that belongs to someone who has remembered briefly and completely that they are still a child. Daniel heard it from the hallway. He stood there for a moment outside the kitchen door and listened to his daughter laugh and did not move until it was finished. Then he walked in and said very quietly to no one in particular. I haven't heard that in a long time.
Lily looked down at the table, but she was still smiling. The lawyer's name was Thomas Ardan, and he operated out of a single room above the hardware store in Willow Creek. He was a lean, precise man in his 50s who listened to Clara lay out the documentation with the expression of someone hearing information he had been expecting for some time. When she finished, he said, "How long did it take you to put this together?" "About 3 weeks of organizing and 3 days of work I could point at."
She said, "He looked at the records. He looked at Lily's notebook. He looked at Daniel." "Mr. Hayes," he said. Are you prepared for what happens if you file this complaint?
Tell me what happens. Daniel said Gerald Hollis is the most powerful man in this valley. Ardan said he controls the bank. He has property all along the western ridge and he has been trying to consolidate this land for the better part of 15 years. If you challenge him formally and publicly, he will make your life very difficult.
My life, Daniel said, is already very difficult. Ardan almost smiled. Fair point. He looked at the documents again. The evidence here is solid.
Unusually solid. If you have even one or two other landowners who can provide corroborating records. Three, Clara said, possibly four. Ardan looked at her. You've already spoken to them.
Mr. Hayes has two of them are willing to provide their records if Daniel files first. Ardan was quiet for a moment, thinking, calculating, measuring the distance between what was right and what was safe. "File the complaint," he said finally. "I'll draft it today." Daniel exhaled.
Clara did not. She stayed very still because she knew this was the moment after which nothing would be the same, and moments like that deserve to be felt fully. There's one more thing, Ardan said. He sat down the papers and looked at Daniel directly. Hollis will know within 24 hours that you filed.
He will respond. And the way men like Hollis respond is not through the law. Not first. It's through pressure. He'll call in whatever he can to make you back down before this gets to a hearing.