The Paper

The next morning Tom made pancakes, which he only did on special days, and Lily was so happy about it that she didn't ask what the special day was. That was good, because Tom didn't have an answer. The special day was that he had decided something in the dark, and he wasn't going to tell a soul what it was.

He walked Lily to school. He watched her run in with her bag bouncing. Then, instead of going to work, he went up the hill to see Mr. Vance.

To understand why that took so much out of Tom, you have to understand the paper.

When Anna got sick, Tom had been sure of one thing very quickly: it was the water. He wasn't a clever man about books, but he was clever about how things worked, and he had started to notice a pattern. The people who got the rare sickness all lived close to the river. He started asking questions. He started writing names in a list. He went to the town office and asked to see old records about the factory, and a week later he lost the job he'd had fixing machines at Vance's plant, and no one would say why.

That was the first time Tom felt how big Mr. Vance really was.

And then Vance had come to the house, kind as anything, and paid for Anna's care, and one evening he had brought a lawyer and a paper. The paper said that Vance would pay a sum of money to help the family, and that in return Tom would never take Vance or the factory to court, and would never talk about the water, ever, to anyone.

Tom had not wanted to sign it. But Anna was in the good ward, and the good ward cost more each day than Tom made in a month, and Lily was six and needed shoes and needed a mother for as long as they could keep one. So Tom signed. He signed for his wife and his little girl.

Anna died three weeks later.

And after that, the paper sat on Tom like a stone, because now it meant something ugly. Now it meant he had taken money to be quiet about the thing that killed his wife. If he ever stood up and said Vance poisoned this town, people would say, didn't you take his money? Didn't you sign his paper? You're just a bitter man who wants more. Vance had not only bought Tom's silence. He had made sure that if Tom ever broke it, no one would believe him.

That was the man Tom went to see, up on the hill, the morning after the news.

Vance's house was the biggest in the valley, white and wide, with a green lawn that was always green even when the town's gardens went brown. Vance met him on the porch, arms open.

"Tom Farrell," he said warmly. "My friend. It has been too long. Come, sit, sit."

They sat. A young man brought cold drinks. Vance asked about Lily, and remembered her name, and remembered that she liked drawing, because Vance remembered everything about everyone, the way a shopkeeper remembers what you like to buy.

"Mr. Vance," Tom said, and he made his voice soft and low, the voice of a beaten man, which was not hard to make because half of him was beaten. "I'll be honest with you. I'm not well. It's the same as Anna. The doctors say I don't have long."

He watched Vance's face do something complicated and quick, and then settle into deep, warm sadness.

"Oh, Tom," Vance said. "Oh, no. My friend. I'm so sorry." He shook his head slowly. "You know, sometimes I think some people just have bad luck with their health. This town, these families. It breaks my heart. It truly does." He put his hand on Tom's arm, the same arm he'd held two years before. "Whatever you need. You know that. Whatever it costs."

Bad luck with their health. Tom held very still and did not let his face move. It wasn't bad luck. It was the water, and Vance knew it was the water, and Vance was sitting here calling it luck to a man who was dying of it. But Tom had come here to be a beaten, grateful man, so he lowered his eyes and said, "Thank you. That means a lot. I came because... it's Lily. When I'm gone, she'll have no one but my sister, and there's no money. I don't know how she'll be looked after. I thought... I thought maybe you could help. Like you helped before."

He said it like it cost him his pride, and it did.

Vance's whole face opened up with pleasure. This was the thing Vance loved most in the world: to be needed, to be the kind man, to have the poor come up the hill and ask. "Of course," he said. "Of course I'll help with the little girl. Leave it with me. We'll set something up, something proper." He beamed. "You did the right thing, coming to me. You always were a sensible man, Tom. Not like some of the angry ones."

A young woman came out onto the porch with a jug, and Vance waved her over. "Water for my friend," he said. She filled Tom's glass. It was cold and clear and it tasted clean, cleaner than anything that came out of a tap in the town below.

"Good water, isn't it," Vance said, pleased. "I have my own well, up here on the hill. Deep one. I don't drink the town water, of course. A man in my position, you can't be too careful, all sorts of things get into rivers these days." He chuckled at his own good sense. "You should get bottled. I'll send some down for you and the girl. Vance Springs. On me."

"That's kind," Tom said quietly. "Thank you."

He walked back down the hill with the taste of Vance's clean well water in his mouth, and something turned over in him, slow and cold.

I don't drink the town water, of course.

Vance had his own clean water. Up on the hill. His own deep well. He would not touch the river the town drank from. A man who thought the water was fine, a man who really believed his factory was clean, would drink the town water like everyone else. He wouldn't need his own well. He wouldn't warn a dying man to buy bottles.

Vance knew. He had always known. And he had just said it out loud, to Tom's face, because he thought Tom was a beaten, grateful, harmless man who had come to beg.

Tom got home. He waited until the house was quiet. Then he took out the old car-parts notebook, and he opened it to the clean page, and for the first time he wrote something down.

He wrote one word. A name. A name he had heard two years ago, from a woman who had come to Ashford asking questions about the water and then been chased out of town by Vance's lawyers before she could print a single word.

Nora.