the time he merged onto the highway clear south to Monument; the drive which should have taken no more than an hour and fifteen minutes taking just over two. He had stopped by his mother’s house first. The plan was to catch lunch with mom and then dinner with dad, just as he had each of the prior ten years since their divorce. But when he had arrived at his mom’s house, he knew that something was wrong.
His sister’s car was nowhere to be seen, and she lived there, always parking right in front of the house beneath the overhanging branches of the lone pine that pushed up the sidewalk. He could vividly remember walking up to the door, crossing the ice-spotted walkway. He’d clambered up the steps to the front porch, the whole while cradling the warm tray of rolls he had picked up to go with the meal.
It was that awkward stage where he didn’t know whether to just open the door as he had while he had lived there four years prior, or to ring the doorbell out of respect since he no longer did. He’d paused on the porch, the snow falling lightly from the gray sky, swirling in the confines of the overhung porch. The door had opened inwards before he had resolved the debate, his stepfather, Ray, standing in the doorway, looking morose.
“Come in… son,” he had said, staring down at his feet.
Ray had only called him son a handful of times in the last decade, the first of which came at his high school graduation, the rest either when he was at the height of his game, earning the Boettcher or making the Dean’s list, or when something was wrong…
That’s where it all got foggy. He could see visions of his mother slumped over in the light blue Lazy Boy, her feet dangling over the arm as she stared out the window. Toying innocuously with the fronds of the potted fern on the end table next to her, she’d rubbed them back and forth between her fingers. She hadn’t said a single word to him that day. She hadn’t even acknowledged his presence for that matter.
The tray of rolls had slipped from his hands, falling to the floor and bursting through the aluminum foil cover, rolling across the thin, white carpet as Ray had told him about his father’s heart attack. His sister, Gina, was already at the hospital, but they had been unable to reach him since he had been stuck on the road.
Everything got fuzzy from there. He couldn’t remember the drive to the hospital, let alone how he had gotten there. There had been a chunky, red-haired receptionist at the front desk who had sent him to the Emergency Room, through a maze of long white halls. He had rounded the corner in time to see his sister fall to her knees, her face buried in her hands. A white-jacketed doctor set his hand on her shoulder briefly before whirling and heading down the hallway. Scott’s legs had been unable to run, the trembling rising from his ankles and overwhelming his thighs. The hall had seemed to grow longer and longer. His sister seemed so far away, alone on the glossy white floor. The overhead light reflected in long, straight lines as he watched his feet, checking the lines in the tiles to make sure that he was actually moving.
He had cradled his sister to his chest, feeling her shuddering as she released a series of wails. The burden of strength had fallen squarely on his shoulders. He was the oldest child, the big brother, and it was his job to take care of everyone else around him through this time. All he could remember from there was guiding his sister to her feet and walking her out of the hospital, staring up into the rapidly darkening sky and wondering why.
His grandparents had flown in from San Antonio and helped make all of the arrangements. His mother had hosted the reception, much to everyone’s surprise. The weekend had passed in a blur, and whether by conscious choice or not, he remembered very little of it. There were a few spotted memories, more like third-party pictures in his mind. There was the image of standing in front of his family and his father’s friends at the funeral, lowering the black, shining casket into the soft, brown earth, tiny flakes fluttering all around him, and then there had been the session with the lawyer.
Preston Grey, his father’s attorney, had sat them down in his office on the following Monday morning: Scott, his sister, and his mother. His father’s assets were to be equally divided between Scott and his sister, with the exception of his condo, which he left to his ex-wife to sell in order to pay off her own house. Though it had been a long time since his parents had anything even remotely nice to say about one another, they had proven in the end to be more caring than he had ever thought.
There was one problem, however. Most of his father’s assets—his condo, his rental units, his construction business—had been used to secure a loan, or more accurately, a handful of loans, to finance a development that would have positioned him to be one of the top three construction companies in the city. It was a two hundred acre project: four hundred single-family homes, and three hundred duplexes. Barely a hundred houses had been built, with only fifty more begun. They had just barely broken ground on the townhouses. The commercial development, consisting of a professional office park and a strip mall were barely off of the ground. A Domino’s Pizza had already signed to anchor the strip mall at one side, and 7-11 the other, but the stores in between were nowhere near being leased.
Mr. Grey, a friend of his father’s from back in college, had already made calls to several other construction firms in the area, but none of them bid anything even close to fair market value for the remainder of the project. They knew all they had to do was wait for the loans to default, and then they could just buy up the pieces for a fraction of what it had cost his father. It was wrong and it was immoral, but based on the given situation, it was smart business.
They were left with two options.
The first was to allow the loans to default, whereupon the bank would seize all assets, burying the business, leaving failure as his father’s sole legacy. Or, they could run the business themselves. Neither was very attractive, but when it came down to it, there really was no choice. His mother was a teacher by trade, as was his stepfather. Neither of them had any experience in construction, nor did they have the time until summer. Ray had offered to help, which had been an amazingly nice gesture, but it had been just that. Gina was still in high school for crying out loud, what could she possibly do?
Without an ounce of regret, Scott had called the university the next morning, withdrawing from all of his Master’s level courses. Of course, that meant his scholarships would be gone when he tried to go back, and as it was past the deadline for withdrawal, his grades would all go into the books as “incomplete,” rather than as “withdrawal.” He wasn’t exactly sure of the distinction, but from the tone of the registrar’s voice, there definitely was one.
He had called his father’s foreman; a surprisingly intelligent and articulate fellow named Justin Warren, and had set up a meeting. Justin had proven to be worth his weight in gold. Not only had he shown Scott the ropes, but also he had given countless hours of overtime, without the expectation of pay. He had served as a liaison with the crews, bringing them into Scott’s corner from the start.
The development had gotten back on schedule within a month. All of the lots had been sold and the commercial space leased. The bank had been paid back with interest ahead of schedule, and the business recorded record profits for every quarter of the year.
Scott had set aside close to half a million dollars for his sister, to pay for her college education and to set her up for life once she was through. He had paid off all of his mother and stepfather’s debt, and had even built himself a house in the process. For his tireless work and dedication, he had rewarded Justin, who had done more for him over the last year than anyone else had for him in his entire life, with twenty-five percent of the company and double his original salary. He was promoted from foreman to managing partner, and given enormous say in the business. It was the least that he could do.
In all, it had taken close to three years to finally finish the development, but it was beautiful. The contracts were rolling in from every different direction, and they had purchased several large plots of land to the north of town for expansion that had already more than quadrupled in value.
Scott knew that wherever he was, he had made his father proud. That was all he ever wanted.
With finances well settled, and the business beating down the door, Scott felt that it was just about time to finish what he had started. He re-enrolled at grad school.
He was going to give the business one last summer of his full attention, and then he was going to just hand the reins over to Justin, feeling completely comfortable with the decision. Sure, he was going to miss it; he could see exactly what had drawn his father into it in the first place. It was a little like playing monopoly with real money, jockeying for position with other companies, dealing with bids and wholesalers, and then standing back like a god, surveying the area that had been nothing more than a pile of dirt before he had laid his hands on it. He was going to miss it, but he had started something that he needed to finish, if only for the personal satisfaction.
It had been late July, and they had just finished renovating the lower downtown area, a city contract that had brought in millions. He and Justin were scheduled to meet one last time, to determine which of their plots to the north they were going to develop first. It was to be his farewell meeting, and then it was off to school, after a
