Nothing Left to Take

Tom fixes things for a living in the small town of Ashford. He is quiet and tired and steady, and he has just learned he is dying of the same rare sickness that killed his wife two years ago, the sickness that comes from the town's bad water. He tells almost no one. His eight-year-old daughter Lily does not know. She is the whole reason for everything he is about to do.

Everyone in Ashford loves Mr. Vance. His factory poisoned the water for years and he knew, and he buried it by being kind. He funds the hospital and the school, hands out free bottled water, and when families got sick he paid their bills and held their hands and got them to sign papers to stay quiet. Tom signed one of those papers, for his wife's care. Now he is paid off, gagged, and made to look like a greedy man before he has said a word. And Vance is about to be honored as the man bringing the town clean water.

This is a grounded revenge drama, told in the plainest words, about how a man with nothing left to lose becomes the one person a master manipulator cannot scare, buy, or control. You will cheer the win and grieve the man in the same breath. How does a dying man beat someone who owns the whole town? And what did he leave for Lily?