He could picture himself sitting on that couch in the Gordons’ sunroom, back when he was welcome there, looking up at the wrinkled poster of a clay Indian doll in a yellowing plastic frame. The poster said SANTA FE. Michael used to look at it and wonder why the Gordons would bother to drive all the way from Wisconsin to Cape Cod every summer only to conjure up the Southwest. They also had a Milwaukee Railroad poster in the kitchen that Michael always wished he could rip down. Maybe those posters were the reason he’d returned to the Cape and stayed here all these years, because they made him think: Why would anyone want to be anywhere else?

Michael didn’t have time to mess with an old couch. He had to get to work. He needed to hire their summer landscaping crew and fill out all the tax forms and paperwork. The business had grown from the early days, when Jason could only have as many employees as he could fit in a truck. Back then, he ran it out of his backyard, and all his neighbors complained about the tools everywhere, the trucks in the driveway, the crew coming and going. Later, Jason bought one of the last industrial lots in Eastham and built a small office, and two garages large enough to fit the trucks, trailers, and snowplows.

He had plenty of competition, although he’d been around long enough to develop a solid arsenal of regular employees and clients. Michael had already agreed to rehire three of his regulars, and he’d lined up a few interviewees that morning to fill his open spots. He liked to think he was a good judge of character, but he’d accumulated his share of horror stories over the years: the oxy addict who stole an old widow’s checkbook, and a pedophile who solicited a teenage boy. The one that gave him the most grief was the idiot who mixed up an address and tore up the wrong lawn. And there were always employees who would buy their own truck and try to poach his clients. How could you look at a person and predict what kind of damage they might be capable of doing? Is that what Ed thought when he reflected on his decision to adopt Michael? Look how that turned out.

Between interviews and two calls from Sandi about a copyright issue with Anibitz, Michael was nagged by questions about the couch. He wondered why Ed and Connie would be on the Cape already. They worked at schools, and it wasn’t even spring break yet. He pulled Carol Hargrove’s business card out of his wallet and stared at it. No, Ed and Connie would never sell their house. Never.