“Milk? Sugar?”
“Milk is fine, thank you.”
He adds a dollop—I would have used more—to my coffee and carries it to me by the handle. He retrieves his own sitting on the island near a wooden bowl full of fruit and sits across from me.
“That’s tough. She’s doing better?”
“After three years in rehab, yeah.”
He nods. “You can’t get away from it here. I know who you are because I followed that story. I think you were onto something. Maybe not with the Sweetheart of Cedar Hill, but you were on to something. I’m sorry that didn’t work out for you, but you seemed to have landed on your feet. Rick Mercer. He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Neither do I. I drove from Portland. I met him when the Portland Pioneer asked me to do an interview with him. I didn’t get the interview.” I smile into my coffee.
He chuckles. “You got something better.”
“I did.” I look up and tilt my head. “You were working the crane that day.”
“Yep. I still pay for it every day.” He taps his temple. “I suffer from migraines now. Never used to.”
“I’m sorry.”
He raises a shoulder, wraps his hands around his mug. “It’s tough to complain when I walked away. The two ironworkers watching the lift weren’t so lucky. Rick wasn’t so lucky.”
“Can you explain what happened?”
“I can do better. I can show you.” He stands up and tugs the hem of his sweatshirt lower over his stomach.
“I’ve seen the videos.”
“I have something else. Come on.”
I leave my coffee on the table and follow him down a hallway, the walls covered in family photos, to a back room on the first floor. Bookshelves line the walls and a large flatscreen TV is mounted above a fireplace. In the corner, sitting on a glass table, is a huge replica of a crane.
Tony gestures to me from a couch positioned in front of the fireplace. “I can show you what happened.”
I stand next to the table, and he gently touches the boom. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks.
“It’s funny, but I was thinking that same thing when I was at the site yesterday. There is something sadly beautiful about it all.”
“Poetic, almost. I go out there, sometimes. Pray. Apologize to whoever’s listening for my hand in it. It doesn’t help. OSHA cleared me, but I wish I could put it away.”
“What would you have done differently?” I ask, the reporter coming out in me after all.
He grunts. “I’ve asked myself that a million times. More than a million, and every time I come up with the same answer. Nothing. I did absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Whatdidhappen, Tony?” I ask, placing my hand on his arm.
“You know the crane needs to be balanced.”
I nod. “Beau explained that to me. The truck outweighed the framework, the boom was balanced by counterweight.”
“Yes. We put the weight here,” he says, pointing behind the boom. “That way, when the crane swivels, the weight is always where it needs to be. It rained the day before and it was windy.”
“I saw the video, the tires were sinking.”
“Sure they were, it’s mud. Miss Scott—”
“Devyn.”