Nathan pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and made himself face the truth. He was falling for this family, not romantically. Alicia was young enough to be his daughter, and Marcus was grieving his wife, but falling nonetheless. Falling into the fantasy that he could belong here, that he could be part of something warm and real instead of returning to his empty apartment and his lonely life.
And that fantasy, Nathan knew from hard experience, was dangerous because every time he’d let himself want something like this, every time he’d reached for connection and warmth and family, it had been taken away. His mother leaving, his father moving on, friends who disappeared when the money dried up during rough business years, a girlfriend who’d left him when she realized his wealth couldn’t fill the emotional void where a functional human being should have been.
Better to leave now before he got too attached, before he started believing this could be something permanent. In the morning, Nathan would go. He’d leave money to cover the damages, as much as Marcus would accept, and then he’d return to Chicago and his real life, and this strange interlude in Kansas would become just a story he told at dinner parties about the time he crashed his car into a cornfield. That was the plan, but plans, Nathan was learning, had a way of falling apart in the face of human need.
Frank Doyle heard about the fire before Marcus had even finished putting it out. News traveled fast in small towns, and bad news traveled faster. And by the time Frank climbed into his truck and headed out to the Hill farm, he was already calculating how to turn this catastrophe to his advantage.
Frank was fifty-three years old, heavy through the middle, with a face that had settled into permanent dissatisfaction somewhere around his fortieth birthday. He’d managed the First National Bank branch in town for the past fifteen years, and in that time he’d foreclosed on eight properties, including two that had belonged to people he’d gone to high school with. He didn’t enjoy it, exactly, but he didn’t lose sleep over it, either. Business was business, and Marcus Hill owed him eighteen thousand four hundred sixty-two dollars and seventeen cents.
Frank pulled up to the farmhouse just after breakfast on the fourth morning of Nathan’s stay. He climbed out of his truck, hitching up his pants, and walked to the front door without bothering to knock first. Marcus was at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, and he tensed when he saw Frank through the window. Nathan, sitting at the table with coffee and the local newspaper, caught the change in Marcus’s posture immediately.
“Problem?” Nathan asked quietly. “That’s Frank Doyle. He holds my mortgage.” Marcus dried his hands on a dish towel and went to open the door. “Frank, what can I do for you?” Frank pushed past him into the house, his eyes sweeping the room with practiced assessment before landing on Nathan. “Heard you had some excitement out here. Whole field burned up, from what I understand.”
“About a third of it,” Marcus said evenly. “A third?” Frank whistled low. “That’s going to make it tough to come up with your payment next month, isn’t it?” “I’ll manage.” “Will you?” Frank pulled a folder from under his arm and dropped it on the kitchen table. “Because I’ve been looking at your account, Marcus, and you’ve been just barely scraping by for the past three years. One bad season and you’re done. And now you’ve had a bad season.”