He did know it. He did not say so.
"You could have told me," he said instead. "Any day. July, August. You could have sat me down."
"And you'd have said what?"
"I don't know what I'd have said."
"I do." She stood up. Her voice was very quiet. "I'll tell you what I was afraid of, since we're doing all of it. When my dad lost the place at Denton, I was fourteen. You know that part. What I never told you much about is after. Everybody we knew was so careful with him. They were kind. They brought casseroles. And none of them would hire him, and none of them would lease him ground, and the men he'd branded with for twenty years started looking just past him at the co-op, like there was something over his shoulder. He got small, Wade. He spent the rest of his life working at the elevator and being small. And I watched you stand up at that meeting and say Deer Lodge, and I thought, that's the same thing. That's the same room. That's the same men looking past somebody's shoulder." She swallowed. "And I thought about Ray Ferris sitting in his truck outside the courthouse."
Wade's jaw set. "Don't."
"He came to see you. The week before the sale. He asked you not to bid."