Studying the market, Jack learned how he could achieve economies of scale. Earn the biggest return. So unlike now, slogging down an empty desert highway at the ends of the earth, broke in more ways than one. Broke of money. Broke of spirit. But in the beginning, for Jack it was all about money. When a man comes from nothing, he is hungry to create something. Jack was always about creating something more, doing something no one else had done. He used Sarah’s father’s company to run a scheme. Was it crooked? Not if he didn’t get caught. He used it all summer after college. Building his bank account to buy into American Pharmacy. A business he would parlay into something much bigger. His scheme was simple. When customers made their insurance payments to his father in-law’s company, he took their cash and invested it in stocks. Got a return. Made their payment, and whatever return he made from the market, he reinvested. His net worth kept piling up. He kept gambling their payments. Then he cashed out.

His business plan for American Pharmacy was also simple: go beyond the pharmacy; create a drive-through; add groceries; expand the makeup, shampoo, snacks, and other consumer goods. Create a one-size-fits-all solution in the puzzle of American consumers’ lives. Twenty-four-hour photo development. And before long, he had restructured and helped open stores all over the United States. And his ideas were catching on in other retail sectors, eventually combining retail with pharmacies, groceries, oil changes, and lawn and garden. A one-stop shop to pull trade from both the supermarket and the department store. Creating superstores. The only remaining task was to outsource labor. Hello, China and Mexico! Hello, profits.

All the years he’d spent building and networking, promoting his ideas, was time spent away from a family that was growing without him. A son who had attended a trade school, for God’s sake! A fucking trade school to become a journeymen electrician, only to lean on the crutch of drugs. Inevitably, the crutch grew to become an addiction.

Sarah would lose their second child and want to adopt, only to see that child grow into something unlike anything she or Jack could have imagined.