“Yes.”
“Then why did you sleep there?”
“Didn’t want anyone saying I used your money.”
Sadie stared.
“What money?”
“Room fee.”
She almost laughed.
“You slept sitting upright because you didn’t want Mrs. Palmer to think I paid for you?”
Lucien shrugged.
“I’ve slept worse.”
Mrs. Palmer came from the front hall looking exhausted.
“You’re both impossible.”
Sadie continued downstairs.
“Who’s outside?”
“Half the town.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Palmer laughed without humor.
“Because everyone suddenly remembers you exist.”
Sadie’s stomach tightened.
Lucien stood.
He looked toward the door.
“Want me there?”
Sadie considered.
Yesterday she would have said yes automatically.
This morning she forced herself to answer the real question.
Did she want him standing beside her because she was afraid?
Yes.
Was that a weakness?
No.
“Beside me,” she said.
Lucien nodded.
Not in front.
Beside.
Mrs. Palmer opened the door.
Cold air entered first.
Then noise.
At least forty people stood in the street.
Farmers.
Shopkeepers.
Widows.
Railroad workers.
Men from the sawmill.
Two mothers with children wrapped in blankets.
Sadie recognized nearly every face.
Some had watched her marry Lucien without protest.
Some had accepted meat from the wagons.
Some had pitied her.
Some had avoided her eyes.
Now they all looked directly at her.
A farmer named Eli Pritchard stepped forward.
“Sadie.”
She waited.
He removed his hat.
“My seed note is through Cobb’s bank.”
Sadie said nothing.
“If his accounts get frozen, they’ll take my spring seed.”
Another man shouted from the crowd.
“Mine too!”
Then a woman:
“He holds mortgage on my house.”
Someone else:
“Mill owes him twelve hundred!”
Voices rose.
Lucien shifted slightly.
Sadie touched his sleeve.
Stay.
He did.
Eli continued.
“We know what he did to you was wrong.”
Sadie almost smiled at the phrase.
What he did to you.
As though the town had merely observed weather.
“But if railroad deal collapses,” Eli said, “we all pay.”
Sadie looked across the faces.
Fear.
Not greed.
That made everything harder.
Cobb had built his power cleverly.
He had not simply stolen.
He had made himself indispensable.
Money moved through his hands because everyone needed someone to borrow from.
When grain failed, he advanced credit.
When mill machinery broke, he guaranteed repairs.
When a widow could not pay tax, he postponed foreclosure.
When the town needed bridge lumber, he bought it.
Then he kept the papers.
The notes.
The liens.
The obligations.
A man could spend years convincing people he was rescuing them until nobody noticed they had become unable to survive without him.
Sadie understood suddenly that destroying Horace Cobb could damage every person standing before her.
That was probably what he had counted on.
She asked Eli:
“Who told you the railroad deal would collapse?”
“Cobb.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“After I confronted him?”
Eli nodded.
Of course.
Sadie looked at Clara Whitcomb, who had appeared behind the crowd with her coat thrown over yesterday’s dress.
Clara lifted one eyebrow.
Sadie said:
“The railroad deal is not canceled.”
The crowd quieted.