He was on his feet now. The chair pushed back. And there was something in him that was past anger, past fear, into something more personal and more complicated than either. She looked at him. "I'm not what?"
She said carefully. He looked at her. "You're not going to let me protect you." "I don't need protecting from a conversation," she said. I need you to trust that I can handle myself.
I know you can handle yourself, he said. His voice had dropped. That's not the point. "Then what's the point?" He looked at her for a long moment.
The point, he said, is that I don't want you in the road alone with a man like that. The point is that you matter to me and I would like to be able to do something with that instead of finding out after the fact that you he stopped. His jaw worked, that you handled it. The kitchen was very quiet. Clara looked at him.
"You matter to me," he said again. Quieter like the first time had been finding the words and the second time was meaning them fully. Clara was still for a long moment. Then, "Trust me," she said. "That's what mattering looks like from where I'm standing.
Not protection, trust." He looked at her. Then he sat back down. "I do trust you," he said. "It's harden.
I don't trust." "I know," she said. "But I'm still here, and I'll still be here tomorrow." He looked at his hands, then at her. "Yeah," he said quietly.
"You will." The hearing was set for the 14th of December, 3 days before it. Foley arrived from Nebraska, a compact weathered man in his 50s, who shook hands hard and looked around Harland Creek with the expression of someone returning to the sight of something they'd survived. He met with Beckett and Ethan and Clara in the ranch kitchen, and he laid out everything that had happened to his spread in the two years before he'd sold the same pattern, the same pressure, the same invisible hand, tightening around his operation until he'd felt he had no choice. "I should have stayed," he said.
He was looking at the table. "I know that now. I should have fought it. But I had a wife and three kids, and I was scared, and scared men do things they regret." "You're here now," Clara said.
"That's what counts." He looked at her. "You the one who kept Callahan from selling?" "He didn't need keeping," Clara said. He made his own choice.