Then I described a library entrance I had once proposed with a dramatic staircase and an inconvenient side ramp.
A parent with a stroller had shown me the problem during a public meeting.
I changed the design because the parent was right.
The panel asked several more questions, and I answered without mentioning Patricia.
When I left, the nurse followed me into the hallway.
She said her father had worked with mine on the Ridgeway project.
I stopped so suddenly that a man carrying coffee nearly collided with me.
The nurse introduced herself as Helen Duarte.
She said her father had been a maintenance supervisor and had kept a notebook of repair requests after the building opened.
Some of those requests concerned the same structural connections Evelyn had documented.
Helen had never connected the notebook to the public controversy until she saw my name on the interview schedule.
I gave her Simone’s contact information and asked her not to hand me anything privately.
She nodded and said she understood.
Before returning to the conference room, she said my father had once refused to leave a worksite until a loose handrail was repaired.
He had been stubborn about small things because he knew small things could hurt people.
I drove home with tears in my eyes and no idea whether I would get the job.
Chapter 39: The Notebook
Helen’s father, Luis Duarte, had died six years earlier.
His notebook remained in a box of union papers in Helen’s garage.
With her consent, Simone arranged for the notebook to be scanned and its custody documented.
The entries were ordinary at first.
They recorded leaking faucets, malfunctioning lights, and doors that dragged against their frames.
Then the notes changed.
Luis had reported unusual movement around a stairwell expansion joint.
A repair crew had been instructed to conceal the visible gap with trim.
A later entry described a crack near an anchor plate.
The maintenance request had been closed without a documented inspection.
Simone explained that the notebook did not prove the building was unsafe today.
It did, however, provide a contemporaneous record that warranted examination.
She forwarded the material through appropriate channels to the city engineer and the investigators already reviewing the procurement matter.
The city ordered an independent structural assessment of the Ridgeway complex.
I was relieved, then immediately frightened.
If the building needed repairs, people might blame me for disrupting their work.
Simone said the purpose of an assessment was to replace uncertainty with evidence.
I tried to believe her.
That night I watched a local news segment about the inspection.
The reporter showed the building’s familiar brick facade and interviewed workers worried about temporary closures.
