“We could save millions a year,” he argued, “if we handled equipment inspections the way other firms do.” Corbin turned toward the window, and thought about a rainy Tuesday morning, and a woman whispering into a phone in his kitchen because she was ashamed to ask her own mother for twenty-eight dollars.

He thought about the nearly empty formula container, and the baby clothes drying on a metal rack, and a thick blue envelope of warnings that no one had been willing to read until it was four years too late.

Then he looked back at the manager, and answered in a voice that carried the whole length of the table.

“If saving money requires someone else to pay the ultimate price on our job sites,” he said, “then it was never actually cheaper.” Not a single person in the room raised an objection.

And somewhere twenty miles away, above the counter of a small breakfast diner, a brass plaque said the same thing in fewer words, under the photograph of the man who had paid to prove it true.