"There's a reason," she said.
He was quiet for a moment. "You're sure?"
"I'm not sure of very much," she said. "I wasn't sure the ledgers would hold up. I wasn't sure Agnes Carver would testify. I wasn't sure any of it was going to work, and I did it anyway because the alternative was giving up, and I don't give up." She looked at him steadily. "So, no, I'm not sure. But I know the difference between fear and wisdom. And this is not wisdom telling me to be careful. This is just something new—something I haven't done before." She paused. "I haven't done it since Henry. And Henry was a different thing, and this will be different, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise."
"I know it will be different," he said. "I'm not asking it to be the same."
"Then, yes," she said. "There's a reason."
The stars held their positions overhead. The horses shifted in the paddock. The October cold was the clean, dry kind that makes you feel awake rather than miserable, and the blanket around her shoulders was warm, and the man sitting next to her on the porch of her own house was not going anywhere.
Thomas found them there in the morning. He came out in the early gray with his coat unbuttoned and his hair rumpled from sleeping at the kitchen table. And he stopped in the doorway and looked at the two of them: Margaret with the blanket still around her, Nathan on the step below with his back against the post, both of them awake and quiet. And he stood there for a moment with an expression on his face that was complex and young and very like his father's.
Then he said, "There's no coffee."
"I know," Margaret said. "I didn't make any yet."
"I'll make it," Thomas said.
He went back inside. Margaret and Nathan looked at each other.