Home was a strange place for Lucas because it meant multiple things. His own house, the one he’d built on the property, felt almost too new to count as home. Yes, he lived there, and had his friends over as often as possible, but when no one else was there, it felt empty to him. He didn’t like to be there alone. The rooms were too big, too echoing. It made him feel exposed.

Yet here he was in that other place that should have felt like home, the big house, the Phelps farmhouse that had served generation after generation of his family, the house he’d grown up in…and these days, it didn’t feel like home either. He recognized each inch of each room, every decoration, every scuff of the floor or loose thread of the furniture, yet knowing it all didn’t make it feel any more familiar.

Ever since this distance had grown between him and his father, home had seemed less and less like home.

Jed Phelps was sitting next to his reading lamp, a thick book in his hands, turning old yellowed pages. Little glasses perched on his nose. He made no sign of being aware of Lucas’ entrance, until, still looking at his book, he said, “I had complaints from the surveyors about your behavior.”

Ancient history at this point. “I thought they were trespassers. I thought they needed to be thrown out.”

“That won’t do, Lucas. I didn’t raise you to be disrespectful.”

Lucas sat down on the couch nearby his dad’s reading chair. “Any word on who wants to buy the land?” he asked.

“Buy the land?” Now his father looked up from his book.

Lucas sighed. “Don’t play absent-minded, Dad. I’m talking about the man who wants to buy up all that acreage. You remember, to fill the coffers.”

At that, his father laughed. “Oh, yes, the coffers definitely need filling. These books don’t grow on trees. On trees, Lucas, do you see? The paper is made from wood. A little joke, son.” He sighed. “I wish we had raised you with a sense of humor.”

He was clearly in one of his moods; Lucas wouldn’t be able to get a straight answer out of him.

Of course, as far as moods go, Lucas felt too full of emotion to breathe. Seeing Ash was bringing up everything, all the stuff he tried to keep tamped down inside his head.

“Do you at least have the letter the guy sent about buying the land?”

“Letter, son?”

“You showed it to me. From the lawyer.”

“Oh, I never save letters.” Jed tapped his temple. “No need. Mind like a steel trap!”

Lucas looked over at his father’s desk, the letters stuck between pages of books, peeking out from drawers, wadded into the trash.

* * *

Cray Reliable was a different world than the town it lived in. The town itself was small, slow, leisurely. A place where you would see people you knew, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. It felt like maybe it had gotten stuck somewhere along the way, caught on something in history, and simply never made its way to the present. But Cray Reliable was part of the future. This morning the lobby was bustling. Eager, energetic people, mostly out-of-town commuters, elbowed past him, making Lucas feel slow and stodgy. When he’d been here the other night, his footsteps had echoed off the polished floor; now the conversations and phones and hustle all around him drowned out such subtle noises.

Why had Ash wanted him to come back here? Lucas wasn’t cold and calculating like Ash, but he did know when someone was trying to manipulate him. He couldn’t figure out why Ash would do so.

You know why, he thought. He wants to get a leg up on you. He wants to stop the land sale…but, knowing him, he only cares about stopping the Cray side of it.

Now that was a troubling thought. If Ash found the buyer first, he could destroy the deal…leaving the buyer wanting even more of the Phelps land, and Lucas’ dad would go right along with it.

Lucas hadn’t thought about this before, but it made perfect sense.

If it weren’t so ridiculous, it would’ve been sinister. As it was, he had to stop himself from bursting out laughing in the elevator.

Ash might talk about moving on, but he was the same damned guy he was in high school. Pompous, sure of himself, positive he was better than everybody else.

Hadn’t that been the whole problem between them before? They’d never been together. You couldn’t have a relationship with Ash. He’d always be on the lookout for how to one-up you.

Lucas had to admit, it had made Ash fantastic in bed.

Wait, no, he didn’t have to admit that. He had to excise it from his memory and never think about it again. Jesus, what if the guys found out?

He kept thinking that one day the memory would stop appearing, and would fade to nothing. It had to at some point, right? Memories were supposed to fade. Yet they kept coming back.

Like that time three years ago, when Lucas had looked up at him, his face bathed in sweat, both of them panting, and said, We should go out sometime. You know, in public.

The way Ash’s hands had tangled in his hair, gently pulling his head back downward. Never going to happen, he’d said, gasping.

That one kept coming back to him.

They’d gone back to being enemies so soon after that.

The elevator stopped at the second floor…and when the door opened, there was Simon with Evan’s little boy, Reggie.

Both Simon and Lucas looked very, very surprised.

“Uh…didn’t expect to see you here,” said Simon.

“Are you here to see my daddy?” asked Reggie.

Lucas said, “Your uncle, actually. Ash.”

The boy made a face. “Uncle Ash is always mad.”

Simon and Lucas laughed, but Simon still looked worried. “You’re not going to…”

Lucas shook his head. “No, this meeting is strictly peaceful. He knows I’m coming and everything.”

“That’s a relief. Lord knows things are stressful enough around here without a big fight.”

The little boy said, “Is Uncle Ash mad at you too?”

Lucas smiled down on him. “He probably will be, before too long.”

* * *

“I’ve only got a minute, we’ve got a conference with these morons from Denver,” said Ash. “If I’d known they were coming in, I would’ve called you to reschedule.”

“Really?”

Ash paused. “Just because I don’t like you, doesn’t mean I want to waste your time.”

He led Lucas through a wide, bustling hallway. Doors were open on every side, people talking to each other across the hall, chatting to each other or into phone headsets.

“You guys keep busy,” said Lucas, marveling over it all. It reminded him of when he’d accidentally put a foot into a fire ant nest, and the ants would swarm. It was both fascinating and troubling. Wouldn’t these people rather be outside?

“Everyone has been putting in extra hours. Voluntarily, I should say.” Ash nodded at the offices. “In the old days, this was all open space. That was Uncle Leonard’s idea. Keep everyone talking, keep them all face-to-face. He thought it would boost creativity. People hated it. You couldn’t have a conversation without everyone hearing. Everyone thought it was dehumanizing. No privacy. So we built everyone an actual office. Not little cubicles, but actual offices. I don’t want to tell you how much it cost.”

You do want to tell me how much it cost, because you’re bragging.

Except…this was a different side of Ash. Someone ran up to Ash with a handful of papers and asked him something. Lucas watched him. Ash didn’t look imperious or spoiled. He frowned, intently listening, looking down at a column of numbers. Lucas couldn’t tell what he said, but it relaxed his employee, who smiled up at him and nodded.

Ash really did grow up.

It was strange, watching him deal with people. He wasn’t barking orders, making demands. More people came up to him with questions. He glanced over at Lucas, raising his eyebrows like this was all a big surprise.

His employees liked him. They weren’t afraid of him.

It was like an optical illusion. People don’t change, not deep down. Do they? Scratch the surface, and Ash would reveal himself as the entitled sadist he really was.

Wouldn’t he?

Lucas had a moment of doubt about that. What if Ash had changed? What if he’d grown up, gotten out into the world, gotten the kind of life that Lucas would never have access to?

I’m sitting watching my farm rot, and he’s following his dreams. They might not be the same as my dreams—god knows, I couldn’t wear a suit every day and deal with all these numbers and deals—but somehow, Ash got ahead of me. He’s doing what he wants, while I’m just spinning my wheels.

“Sorry about that,” Ash said. He drew Lucas back into his office and shut the door. “Drink?”

“Little early for me. Hey…can I ask you something?”

Ash looked hesitant. Maybe he thought Lucas was going to bring up the past again. “Sure.”

“What is all this like? Running your own business yourself? All these people counting on you?”

Ash’s face brightened, then fell a little. He laughed ruefully. “I don’t recommend it. Sometimes I feel like a dad with 500 children.”

“You’re on top of the heap, though. Like you always knew you would be.”

“It’s not like that. This might be my family’s company, but there’s still a board of directors to answer to. There are still other shareholders. Customers. The general public. I don’t feel free, if that’s what you’re getting at. You know, sometimes I envy you, Lucas.”

“Envy me?”

“You’re not tied down. You don’t have to be up first thing in the morning. You don’t have to stay late.”

His granddad had been up first thing in the morning. There were cows to be milked, coops to be opened, fields to inspect. So much to do. Things that felt important, tied in to the cycles of seasons, of weather, of life itself. All of that had been taken from Lucas, thanks to his dad.

It didn’t feel like freedom.

Before he could say anything, Ash was speaking again. “I’ve only got a minute before I have to go, but I wanted to tell you what I’ve found out.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

Ash nodded. “Interesting, isn’t it? Suggestive.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lucas. “You found nothing…but it’s interesting?”

“We sell electrical fittings all over the country, Lucas. All over the world. We know a lot of developers, tons of architects and contractors. Nobody has heard of any plans for the land. No pitches to investors. None of the beginning paperwork you’d expect to see, if someone thought of putting a shopping center or neighborhood on the land.”

Lucas frowned. “So…we’re back at square one? We don’t know anything?”

Ash brightened. "Here, that absence of information means something. We're looking for a single buyer now. One guy, willing to pay a lot of money for the land…but with no interest in making an investment out of it. That narrows the pool of possible buyers quite a bit, don’t you think?”

“Why would some rich guy want to buy it up but not do anything with it?”

“That’s not the question you should be asking,” Ash said. There was a fierce intelligence in his eyes, an energy and animation that Lucas was enthralled by, almost against his will. “Because there’s also the question of timing. Someone knew the company—and my dad—were in financial trouble. Maybe something’s going on in your family too, a sudden need for money.”

Filling the coffers. But he couldn’t talk about his father to Ash. “Maybe.”

“So, who is rich enough to buy the land with no plan to use it, who knows about our particular families?”

“Someone local? But we’d know if it were somebody local, wouldn’t we?”

Ash moved to the office door, and opened it back up. “It’s a mystery. Are you busy tonight? We should talk about this more. I’m sure we can figure out who this is.”