Clara stood slowly, moving around the desk to where he sat. She knelt beside his chair, looking up at him with those green gold eyes that seemed to see right through him. Ethan, I need you to listen to me. Really listen. She took his hand in both of hers.
I didn't come to this marriage expecting love. I came expecting survival. But what I've found, it's more than I hoped for. You're grieving and that's all right. I'm not asking you to stop loving Margaret.
I'm not asking you to love me. I'm just asking you to stop punishing yourself for being alive. He looked down at their joined hands, her pale fingers intertwined with his son bronzed ones. Sometimes I forget she's gone, he admitted. I'll see something and think, wait until I tell Margaret, and then I remember.
And then I feel guilty when I realize I've gone hours without thinking of her. That's not betrayal. That's healing. Is it? Because lately I've been, he stopped, unable to voice what he'd been feeling when he looked at Clara.
When he heard her laugh with Sophie, when he lay awake thinking about their night in Denver. Been what? Noticing things about you. The admission came out rough. The way you hum when you're cooking.
How you bite your lip when you're concentrating. The way the sunlight catches in your hair when you're working in the garden. Clara's breath caught. Ethan, I don't know what to do with these feelings, Clara. They feel like betrayal, but they also feel like life, like waking up after a long sleep.
She raised their joined hands to her lips, kissing his knuckles gently. There's no rush. We have time to figure this out. Do we? Morrison's giving us 30 days.
Then we'll fight him together. That word again, together. It was beginning to sound less like a business arrangement and more like a promise. The next morning brought unexpected hope in the form of Sam Fletcher himself, riding up with a grin that said he had good news. I've been digging into Morrison's past, he announced over coffee.
Turns out our friend has been playing this game in three other territories. There are warrants in Kansas and Missouri for fraud. How does that help us? Ethan asked. Because if we can prove a pattern of fraudulent lending, we can petition the territorial governor for an investigation.