She came in and sat at the kitchen table and folded her hands and said, "There is a story going around town about the fire." "What story?" Clara said, "That the fire was your fault." Mrs. Holt looked at her directly.
That you were careless with a lamp? That Ethan has been covering for you because he's a pause because he's become attached and that an attached man can't see clearly. Clara was very still. "Who is saying this?" She said it doesn't matter who's saying it, Mrs.
Holtt said. What matters is that people are listening because people already had questions about you and now they have a story that fits the questions and people like a story that fits. She paused. "I know it isn't true. I want you to know that I know."
"Thank you," Clara said. But knowing and it mattering are different things. Yes, Mrs. Holt said. They are.
After she left, Clara sat for a long time at the kitchen table. Lily came and sat beside her without being asked the way Lily did. Now close and quiet with the particular radar of a child who had learned to track adult distress from a long way off. "Is something wrong?" Lily asked.
"Some people in town are saying untrue things," Clara said. Lily absorbed that. "About you? About me?" Lily picked up Clara's hand and held it in both of hers.
"The way you hold something, you're being careful with." Her hands were very small. "Noah says people who say untrue things are cowards," she said. "Noah's right about that." Clara said, "Are you scared?"
Clara looked at the child beside her at those serious eyes that deliberate grip. "A little," she said. Honest because Lily deserved honest, but not enough to leave. Lily nodded. Like that settled it.
"Good," she said. And she stayed right there, her hands around Clara's for a long time. Ethan came in an hour later and found them there and stopped in the kitchen doorway. Clara looked up. Something happened on his face that he didn't manage to hide in time.
He came and sat across from them and he looked at Clara with something direct and undefended and he said, "Beckett came to see me this morning." Clara waited. "He has something." Ethan said. One of the ranchers who sold a man named Foley moved to Nebraska 2 years back.