He set the box on the table, opened the lid, and pulled out a yellow equipment release form Martha had signed three weeks earlier.

Martha looked across the table at the yellow sheet, her fingers resting flat on the wood.

“He told me I couldn’t take my drywall stilts or my mud pans out of the storage barn unless I signed that bottom line.”

Nathaniel pointed to the fourth line down on the form, where Arthur had written a four-hundred-dollar deduction under the printed heading of non-refundable equipment wear.

“These tools were bought directly by Whitmore Construction under master equipment order six-eleven,” Nathaniel said.