Twenty minutes later, Nathan’s rental car, delivered by the insurance company the day before, was loaded with his things. He stood in the driveway with Marcus and Alicia, the morning sun already hot on his shoulders, and felt like he was making a terrible mistake, but couldn’t see any other choice. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything. For saving my life. For taking care of me. For showing me what real integrity looks like.”
Marcus shook his hand. “You take care of yourself.” Alicia hugged him, fierce and quick. “Goodbye, Nathan.” “Goodbye.” Nathan got in the car and drove away, watching them in the rearview mirror. Marcus with his arm around his daughter’s shoulders, both of them standing in front of their small farmhouse, facing a future that looked increasingly impossible.
And he made it exactly three miles down the road before he had to pull over because he couldn’t see through his tears. He sat there on the shoulder of a Kansas county road, his hands gripping the steering wheel, and finally let himself feel the full weight of what he was running from, the first place he’d felt like he belonged in twenty years. The first people who’d seen him as something other than his net worth. The first real family, even borrowed and temporary, that he’d known since his mother died.
He was thirty years old, worth somewhere north of five hundred million dollars, and he was running away from the only thing that had made him feel like a human being instead of a bank account, because he was too scared to let himself want it. Nathan pulled out his phone and stared at it for a long time. Then he made a call to his lawyer and another to his accountant and a third to someone he’d done business with in Kansas City.
By the time he was done, he had a plan. It wasn’t perfect, and it might blow up in his face, but it was better than driving back to Chicago and spending the rest of his life wondering what might have been. He checked his mirrors, pulled back onto the road, and headed not north toward home, but south toward the county records office. There was work to do, and only ten days to do it.
Marcus stood in his driveway for a long time after Nathan’s rental car disappeared down the road, his arm still around Alicia’s shoulders. Neither of them spoke. There wasn’t much to say that wouldn’t make things worse. Finally, Alicia pulled away. “I need to go study.” “Baby girl—” “I’m fine, Dad. Really.” But her voice was thick, and she disappeared into the house before Marcus could see if she was crying.
Marcus walked out to the burned section of the field. The fire department had contained it before it spread beyond about eight acres, but eight acres of mature corn was roughly a third of what he’d been counting on for harvest. He ran the numbers in his head for the hundredth time. Even if the remaining field produced at the high end of projections, even if he sold it all at premium prices, he’d be short about six thousand dollars. Six thousand dollars might as well be six million for all the chance he had of coming up with it in ten days.