What doesn’t need to happen is a file landing on a precinct captain’s desk.

You make thirty-four thousand dollars a year at the county courthouse, Valerie.

That’s a modest wage for a single mother with an injured child.”

He took a heavy cream-colored envelope out of his breast pocket and slid it across the Formica table toward my teacup.

“Your father is prepared to pay every medical expense out of pocket, as long as this stays a private family disagreement,” Vance went on.

“If you try to pursue formal criminal charges, county clerk jobs have a way of disappearing during annual budget reviews.