Calder Pride (Calder Saga 5)

“You have said enough, Emma,” Neil muttered near her ear. “Don’t shame me further with your talk.”

This time Emma didn’t resist when he ushered her from the den, her glance falling on Calder’s daughter as they passed her. Suddenly everything coalesced. There was one single reason for her failure.

“It was that Calder girl,” she declared in a venomous whisper.

“If she hadn’t been there, he would have helped us.”

“You are fooling yourself, woman.” Fumbling he opened the front door with his crippled hands. “If you’re wise, you’ll forget what happened here today.”

“How can I forget when Rollie may go to prison because of her?” She stalked out of the house.

A silence hung in the study, the air still charged with the woman’s emotional outpouring. It held Cat motionless until she heard the click of the front door closing. Uneasy and chilled by the encounter, she crossed to the study window and looked out, watching as the couple made their way to the battered pickup truck.

“I should feel sorry for them.” But every time she tried to summon some compassion, Cat remembered the look of malevolence the old woman had given her. Even now it made her want to shudder.

“In a tragedy like this, innocent people on both sides suffer from it,” her father stated. “We often forget that.”

“He killed Repp.” She felt again the rage of that loss. “Am I wrong to believe he should be punished for that?”

“According to state law, he committed a crime. And by law, he has to answer for it.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” She turned from the window, impatient with his evasive answer. “Am I wrong?”

“That depends, Cat”—his watchful eyes studied her face, his own expression remained impassive—“on whether you want justice—or vengeance.”

It wasn’t the kind of reply Cat had expected. Without a ready answer, she had to stop and think, look inward and examine.

“I don’t know. Justice, I think,” she said at last.

“If you had to think about it, it probably is.” His expression gentled, approval gleaming in his eyes. “Blind hate would have had you demanding it.”

Hate had definitely been in Emma Anderson’s eyes, Cat recalled. “I have a feeling that we just made an enemy.”

“It’s possible.”

“What will happen to them? Will they lose their farm?”

“I would say it’s very likely they will,” Chase replied.

In the middle of August, the bank issued its first foreclosure notice on the Anderson farm. Cat learned about it from her uncle Culley.

The news wasn’t entirely unexpected. The old woman had virtually predicted it when she had pleaded for help.

“It must have been a bitter blow to the Andersons.” Cat looked to the south where the land stretched in an undulating sweep of untamed plains.

“Bitter ain’t the word for it.” Culley snorted a laugh. “I heard the old lady went after Jim Farber with a shotgun when she found out what he was there for. Old Neil Anderson managed to talk some sense into her.”

“I wonder what they’ll do?”

“It’s hard to say. But I wouldn’t be worrying about the Andersons.” He sat loose and easy in the saddle, his body swaying with the rhythm of his horse’s striding walk. “That Emma is a canny woman, sharp as a New York banker where money’s concerned. Most folks don’t give her enough credit for them keeping the farm as long as they have.” He glanced sideways. “I’d wager that Emma knew that foreclosure notice was coming. They sold their herd of dairy cattle two weeks ago, and nobody’s been able to figure out what became of the money. The Andersons claim they had to use it to help their son, which strikes me as unlikely, considering Rollie’s got himself a public defender for a lawyer. Me, I figure Emma socked that money away knowing they would be needing it. They’ll get by just fine. You wait and see.”

She said nothing, her attention drifting to some far-off point.

Watching her, Culley could tell she had something else on her mind.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” he asked at last.

A soft laugh feathered from her. “Am I that easy to read?”