Free A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison

well-wishing. This was a house of sin. How could this strange woman be asking to do the same?
    Sumeera nodded and fixed Ahalya with a look of resignation. “I once was like you,” she said. “I was taken from my home and brought here by strange men. Life in the adda is hard, but you must accept it. There is no use fighting your karma. Accept the discipline of God and perhaps you will be reborn in a better place.”
    Draping the garland over the edge of the pot of water, she stood heavily and disappeared down the stairs.
    When they were alone again, Sita dipped the cloth in the water and handed it to Ahalya. “Is she right?” Sita asked in a whisper. “Is this our karma?”
    Ahalya took the cloth and stared at the floor, tears forming in her eyes.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said.
    It was the truth.

Chapter 4
    The highest moral law is that we should work unremittingly for the good of mankind.
—M AHATMA G ANDHI
    Washington, D.C.
    Thomas Clarke sat in the tenth-floor conference room at Clayton|Swift, staring out the window at the law firm of Marquise & LeClair across the street. The dark-wood conference table in front of him had room to accommodate twenty-four. There were eighteen people at the present meeting—twelve lawyers, four paralegals, and two interns. The Wharton Group, as it was called, was the largest litigation team in the firm’s history.
    The topic of discussion today was the Wharton appeal. Of the dozen lawyers present, five did most of the talking. The rest, including Thomas, stayed silent, their BlackBerrys keeping track of the seconds that passed on sophisticated billing software that would be automatically synchronized with their firm-issued laptops at day’s end. The meeting was critical. The coal company executives were outraged at the jury’s verdict and were calling for blood.
    No one wanted to believe it had come to this. Clayton’s lawyers had played marionette with the judicial system for more than three years, searching for a way to kick the $1 billion wrongful death case out of court or to settle for pennies on the dollar. At all points, the evidence had been against the defense. The blowout at the coal company’s mountaintop removal facility in West Virginia had been predicted by activists. The contractor who had pronounced the slurry safely contained in the mining tunnels was under review by the government. And then there was the problem of the kids. Ninety-one of them drowned at their lunch tables by fifty million gallons of blackwater that erupted from the mountainside upslope of their elementary school. The Wharton Group had only one strategy to defeat the families of the dead, and that was to prevent them from ever telling their story to a jury.
    The strategy had almost worked. The pressure of litigating against a firm and a coal company with near-infinite resources had driven the plaintiffs to the brink of civil war, and they almost bought Wharton’s last-minute offer of settlement. In the end, however, they had stayed the course, and the jury trial when it came was a fait accompli. The only question was how high the verdict would go.
    After three grueling weeks, Judge Hirschel sent the jurors out to deliberate. They returned an hour later with a verdict that shocked even the thickest-skinned courtroom veterans: $300 million in compensatory damages and $600 million in punitives. Nine tenths of a billion dollars. It was not simply a message. It was a bombshell.
    The fallout had been immediate and devastating. Overnight, Wharton’s stock lost half its value. But Clayton’s strategy was not yet complete. Standing on the courthouse steps, Wharton’s chief executive proclaimed his company’s innocence and vowed to fight the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In reality, he wanted nothing more than to kick the can down the road. Even if the verdict was ultimately affirmed, the plaintiffs would spend