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A cold, razor-sharp stillness settled over Arthur Vance’s features. His fingers flattened against the blue folder on his desk.
“Go on,” Arthur said, his baritone dropping an octave.
“The abutment failed during an afternoon pour,” Eleanor said, a single tear escaping her lower lid, tracing down her cheek. “Fourteen tons of wet concrete and fieldstone collapsed into the river cut. Thomas was in the trench below. He pushed his nineteen-year-old apprentice out of the collapse zone before the wall gave way. The stone crushed his pelvis and his spine.”
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Eleanor took a ragged, shuddering breath, her hands clenching into fists in her lap.
“The company didn’t pay for his medical transport. The contractor’s insurance company claimed that Thomas was an independent subcontractor who had entered the trench without an authorized excavation permit. They denied the worker’s compensation claim within forty-eight hours. We spent every dollar of our savings on three surgeries at Lancaster General. I sold our truck. I sold my mother’s jewelry. Thomas fought for fourteen months in a rehabilitation bed in Ephrata… but the sepsis reached his heart two weeks before Chloe’s sixth birthday.”
