“And I knew that if somebody tried to use something against me, there wasn’t much there for them to use.”

He paused.

“That doesn’t put you in a powerful position.”

“What does it put you in?”

“A clean one.”

He smiled faintly.

“And sometimes a clean position is stronger than a powerful one.”

We continued driving through the late-afternoon light.

I looked at Dad’s worn jacket.

His aging truck.

The notebook on the dashboard.

The ordinary tools of a man who had spent twenty-nine years doing the same thing carefully.

He fixed what he was hired to fix.

He documented what he saw.

He didn’t take what wasn’t his.

He called the right people.

And when someone tried to avoid paying him—and quietly suggested his daughter’s job could become part of the discussion—he didn’t yell.

He didn’t threaten anyone.

He simply stood behind work that had been done correctly.