She crossed to the table and she picked it up and she opened it to the first page and she saw Henry's handwriting, the careful printed letters, the double underlines on specifications. His particular way of dating the top right corner of every page. And she closed it again before she could come undone in front of a stranger. "Mr. Marsh," she said.
"Are you willing to tell a lawyer what you just told me?" The young man looked at the door, which was the look of someone calculating what was on the other side of a decision. "Mr. Crane will know it was me," he said. "Yes," Martha said. "He will.
I'll lose my position. You'll lose your position when Crane's company collapses under the weight of what's in these records. Martha said, "The question is whether you lose it on your own terms or his." She held his gaze. A man who came here to return what he was sent to destroy has already made his decision. He just hasn't said it out loud yet.
Daniel Marsh looked at her for a long moment. Then Silas came through the door and Marsh looked at him with the expression of someone measuring a situation. And Silas looked at Marsh with the flat, careful expression he wore when he was paying serious attention to something. "Lawyer's name is Garrett," Silas said as if they'd all already agreed to the next part. "He's expecting us." Martha looked at Silas.
He shrugged slightly. "Sent a rider this morning before we left," he said. Told him to expect developments. She looked at him for a moment with an expression she couldn't entirely control. "You were certain?" She said.
"No," he said. "I was prepared." He looked at Marsh. "You have a horse?" "Yes, sir." Marsh said. "Then you'll ride with us tomorrow morning," Silas said. "Tonight you eat and you sleep, and in the morning you tell Thomas Garrett everything you just told Mrs.." Marsh looked at Martha.
She nodded once. He nodded once. Martha went to the stove and put dinner on because the day was ending and people needed feeding and that was still true in the middle of everything else that was true. And as she worked, she felt the notebook's weight in her apron pocket where she'd put it against her hip solid and real and returned. She did not cry again, but she kept her hand against her pocket while she stirred the pot, feeling the edges of it through the fabric, the water stained corner, and the cracked spine.
Henry had kept honest records. She was going to make sure that mattered. They rode to the county seat the next morning. Three of them Martha Silas and Daniel Marsh. And the road was cold and clear and nobody talked much for the first hour, which suited Martha fine because she had been organizing her thoughts since before dawn, and she needed the quiet to finish doing it.