“Margaret believed he had altered the accounts.”
“What happened?”
“She started looking into it.”
Clara felt cold.
“And then she died.”
Ethan looked at her.
Neither said what both were thinking.
Three days later, a carriage arrived.
Reverend Samuel Pike stepped out with Deacon Mercer and another church elder.
Ethan met them on the porch.
Clara remained inside with the children.
Voices rose.
Then Ethan burst through the door.
His face was murderous.
“What happened?” Clara asked.
He held out a folded paper.
She read it.
A petition had been filed with the county court expressing concern regarding the moral and physical welfare of the Cole children.
It cited Ethan’s debts.
Samuel’s muteness.
Lucy’s nightmares.
The disrepair of the ranch.
And the presence of an unrelated unmarried woman living in the household.
Clara stopped reading.
“They want to take the children?”
“Temporarily.”
Ethan crushed the paper in his fist.
“Over my dead body.”
Annie stood on the stairs.
Her face was ashen.
“You said nobody would take us.”
Ethan turned.
“Nobody will.”
“You said that about Mama too.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Annie ran upstairs.
The hearing was set for Friday.
For five days, terror returned to the Cole house.
Ethan consulted a lawyer he could not afford.
Clara considered leaving.
Each time she packed mentally, she saw Lucy at the window.
Samuel shaping bread.
Annie carrying a kettle too heavy for her arms.
Ben asleep against her shoulder.
On Thursday night, she finally placed her dresses inside the carpet bag.
Ethan found her.
“What are you doing?”
“You know what.”
“No.”
“If I leave, their strongest argument disappears.”
“Their argument is a lie.”
“Lies can remove children from homes too.”
“I won’t let you go.”
Clara looked at him.
The sentence hung between them.
Ethan’s face changed.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“I don’t think you do.”
Clara’s heart began pounding.
But footsteps sounded behind them.
The children stood in the doorway.
Lucy was crying.
Samuel looked terrified.
And Annie suddenly looked nine years old again.
“Please,” she whispered.
Clara closed the carpet bag.
“I’ll stay.”
The courthouse was full before ten.
Nearly half the town had come.
Some out of concern.
Most out of curiosity.
Clara sat beside Ethan while the children occupied the bench behind them.
Mercer sat with Reverend Pike.
The judge, Miriam Ward, was a severe woman in her sixties whose expression suggested she had no patience for foolishness.
She questioned Ethan first.
His debts.
His working hours.
The condition of the ranch.
Then Clara.
“Miss Hayes, what is your relationship to Mr. Cole?”
“I work in his household.”
“Nothing more?”
Clara felt fifty people leaning toward her.
She looked at Ethan.
Then back at the judge.
“No.”
Something inside her ached as she said it.
Mercer’s attorney stood.
“Yet you receive room and board?”
“Yes.”
“You eat meals together?”
“With the children.”
“You care for his children?”
