Shirley glanced back at what was left of Willie’s trailer. “When my daddy got buried up in that mine cave-in, we were all sick in our hearts. People die, sure, but you get to say good-bye, bury ’em proper, at least you’re supposed to. But not with cave-ins. You know what you get? A condolence letter from the mining company that some damn lawyer wrote so a company executive wouldn’t say anything actionable or that could be used against them. You know, admitting liability? I work for a judge, I know about that crap.”

“Absolutely, it’s terrible,” Annabelle said encouragingly, continuing to hold the older woman’s hand tightly.

“Mining company wouldn’t do nothing, so the rest of the miners got together and dug a parallel shaft up there with the idea that maybe they could cut over to where the trapped miners were. They worked day and night, borrowing and begging equipment from everybody they could. This was long before the Internet and most folks up here didn’t even have TVs or nothing, and there weren’t any news trucks with satellite crap or nothing like you see everywhere when some movie star gets drunk and goes to court. So nobody knew what was really going on. My momma and I and all the rest of the women set up a kitchen and laundry and had cots and such for the men while they dug. And God did they dig. Ran a shaft all the way up there and were about to cut over when there was an explosion in the other shaft. Probably methane. Half the mountain dropped on top of my daddy and the others. After that, you couldn’t risk it. And we all knew they were dead anyway. Nobody could’ve survived that blast. So they just sealed it up and built a damn prison on top of it. Some damn grave marker for my daddy that was.

“And when my husband Josh got a job there, I didn’t like it one bit. But like he said, it was either the prison or the mines. And I sure as hell didn’t want him digging for the same black rock that killed my daddy. So the prison it was. He wanted to get Willie a job up there too, but the boy went into the mines instead. Josh was working hard on him to get him out when he got killed.”

“You said it was an accident?”

Shirley snorted. “Accident? Yeah, it was ’bout as much an accident as this was.” She pointed to the trailer’s remnants.

“You’re saying your husband was murdered? Who? Why?”

Shirley stared at her, bleary-eyed. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I shouldn’t be telling anybody this. It’s been a hole in my heart for two years now.”