Foley glanced between them. Right, he said with the look of a man who sees more than he's commenting on. 2 days before the hearing, something happened that nobody had planned for and nobody had seen coming. Margaret Caldwell came to the ranch. Not with Harden, not with her driver.
She came alone in her buggy and she pulled up at the gate and climbed down herself and Clara who saw her from the window went to the door and opened it before she knocked. They looked at each other. "Come in," Clara said. Margaret Caldwell stepped into the hallway of the Callahan house for the first time. She looked around it the way a woman looks at something she expected to be different.
"Ethan's in the barn," Clara said. "I'll get him if you'd like." "I came to speak with you," Margaret said. Clara looked at her. "All right."
They went to the kitchen. Clara put coffee on because it was something to do with her hands. And they sat at the table, the same table where the case had been built, where Foley had told his story, where Ethan had said, "You matter to me." And Margaret Caldwell looked at Clara Whitfield with an expression that had very little left of the social armor. "What was underneath it was tired.
"You're not going to withdraw the complaint," Margaret said. "No," Clara said. Even if I, she stopped. Even if certain pressures were to be relieved, the supply accounts, the key. No, Clara said again.
Margaret looked at her hands. For a moment, she looked old. And Clara could see that she was old, not just in years, but in the specific way of someone who has spent a long time doing things they've told themselves were necessary and has started to find the weight of it. "What do you want?" Margaret said., "The truth told in a courtroom."
Clara said, "That's all. The ranchers who left deserve that. The valley deserves that. And frankly, she stopped, chose her words. You deserve to have it stop, too.
Whatever William Caldwell built, it's done now. It's over. The railroad will come or it won't, and it won't be built on this. Margaret looked at her. "You're a strange woman," she said.
"So, I've been told," Clara said. I came here expecting to negotiate. I know. "You won't negotiate." "Not on this."
Margaret was quiet for a long moment. She looked around the kitchen at the warmth of it. The life in it. The blue ribbon on the peg by the door and the recipe box on the shelf and the two children's coats hung side by side on the hooks. Eleanor Callahan was a good woman, she said abruptly.