Blair and Mary had known their daughter was coming home, so they had already prepared a big dinner in advance. By the time Matta arrived that evening, the mood around the table had warmed up even more.
"If only Gordon were here too," Mary said with a sigh during the conversation after dinner, clearly missing her youngest son.
Blair just shrugged. He had known she was going to say that.
"Matta, Katherine, Bruce, you're all grown up now. Mary and I have never had to worry much about your studies or careers. But when are any of you going to bring someone home? Bruce, when Uncle Guo was still alive, he used to say he wanted you to have enough kids to field a soccer team someday."
"Uncle Blair, I'm only nineteen. I'm still young."
Bruce had not expected to run into marriage pressure here too, not in the supposedly free and easy West.
Mary looked back and forth between Katherine and Bruce, then suddenly said, "Katherine, Bruce, you two could always try dating..."
"No."
"Absolutely not."
They cut her off almost at the same time.
Then they looked at each other and immediately understood what the other one was thinking.
"Why not?" Mary asked, baffled. "You two grew up together. You know each other so well. Isn't that a good thing?"
Katherine gave Bruce a long look, then curled her lip.
"He's too handsome. I wouldn't feel secure. And besides, I know him way too well. It'd just feel weird."
"Same here," Bruce said, shaking his head like a rattle drum. "Katherine's too familiar. I'm so used to her that there's absolutely no mystery left."
"All right, Mary," Blair said, stepping in before his wife could keep going. "Let the kids decide their own lives."
Then he turned to Bruce.
"Actually, now that you're back, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."
Bruce jumped at the chance to change the subject.
"What is it, Uncle Blair?"
"Before he passed, Uncle Guo had been planning to buy the York farm to the east. But then everything happened, and the deal got delayed. Old York asked me to check with you. If you still want to go ahead with it, he's willing to keep talking. If not, then the hundred-thousand-dollar deposit your grandfather already paid won't be returned."
Bruce knew the surrounding land well. He had grown up here, after all. The York farm, which sat right next to Guo Farm and covered 735 acres, was no exception.
"My grandfather's will didn't mention this," he said, frowning slightly.
Because of the age difference, the old man had always preferred Bruce to call him Grandpa rather than Father.
"Wait a second."
Blair got up, went to a nearby drawer, and returned with a document.
"Old York brought this over the other day. It has Uncle Guo's signature on it, so it should be legitimate. And I know York well enough to say he wouldn't cheat us over something like this."
Bruce nodded and opened the file.
It was a formal purchase agreement for the York farm.
The total price was listed as nine million dollars, with five million to be paid upfront in cash. The remaining four million would be paid over ten years at 4.41 percent interest.
And the signature at the bottom was definitely genuine.
Bruce would not mistake it.
After reading through everything, he thought for a while, then nodded.
"If Grandpa approved the deal, then let's finish it."
Blair nodded too, but there was still concern in his voice.
"With the Nasdaq crash, produce isn't moving the way it used to. Taking on a farm that size right now means taking on a heavy debt load. Bruce, you need to think this through carefully."
"Don't worry, Uncle Blair. I know what I'm doing."
Blair studied him for a moment, then said, "All right. I'll call old York later tonight and tell him to come by tomorrow to talk."
Bruce nodded.
Neither Matta nor Katherine said anything about the farm deal. After all, Bruce was the actual owner now.
...
They stayed up talking until after nine.
Mary and Blair both urged Bruce to stay the night, but he declined and went back to his own house instead.
Compared to the warmth and noise of the Lincolns' place, the Guo house felt empty with only one person in it.
But Bruce had spent most of his previous life alone. He was used to quiet, used to solitude. And in some ways, it made writing easier.
The next morning, he got up at six as usual and went out for his run.
In both lifetimes, this had been his habit. Thirty minutes every morning. At this point, it was as fixed as breathing.
This time, though, while jogging across the farm, he happened to run into Katherine, who was also out in workout clothes, dressed in dark blue.
"Since when do you do morning runs?"
She shot him a look.
"I've always done them. You just never noticed."
Bruce smiled, caught up to her, and brought up the idea he had been turning over in his head since the night before.
"Katherine, have you ever thought about working for me?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've probably already heard from Matta that I started a professional networking company. Most of my time is going to go into that from now on. Which means I won't be able to give the farm and the produce stores much attention. So I want you to manage them for me. Assuming a Harvard Business School graduate like you is willing to slum it."
She stopped in place and stared at him.
"You're serious?"
Bruce stopped too and nodded.
"Completely. I thought this through carefully. First, you grew up here. You know the farm better than almost anyone. Second, you've got the exact management background I need. And third..." He smiled a little and looked her straight in the eye. "There aren't many people I trust with this kind of responsibility. You're one of them."
Katherine studied him carefully and realized he was not joking.
"You'd really trust me to manage nearly ten million dollars in farmland and retail stores?"
"Of course. And I'll make you a promise. This year, I'll put at least ten million dollars into expansion. Next year, fifty million. After that, even more."
"Please," she said, curling her lip. "If you're trying to persuade someone, maybe don't start by making up ridiculous numbers."
Bruce just smiled and did not explain.
Facts would do the job better than words.
Once the money actually arrived, she would believe him.
"So... is that a yes?"
"Of course it's a yes. It's not every day someone hands me this much responsibility. Big companies don't usually give you a chance to run something on your own this early." Then she added, "That said, just because we're friends doesn't mean I'm working cheap."
Bruce relaxed inwardly.
She sounded casual about it, but he knew perfectly well that if not for the fact that they had grown up together, someone with a Harvard MBA would never have taken a job at a company that still looked, from the outside, like a limited-upside little operation.
"Fifteen thousand a month," Bruce said. "And if performance is strong, I'll give you two percent of total profits as a year-end bonus."
"That's more like it."
After thinking it over, she nodded.
"Good. Then there's something else I want to talk about. I've got some ideas for the future of the produce stores."
Katherine made a small gesture with her hand, inviting him to continue.
"Right now, the Guo Fresh stores are too limited. They only sell meat, produce, and fruit. I want to add prepared food and convenience retail."
"Prepared food and retail?" She frowned. "You're serious?"
"Yeah. On the prepared food side, we keep it simple. Burgers, chicken wraps, pizza, grilled sausages, stuff like that. We can build a centralized food processing kitchen in the city, then distribute finished products to each location based on demand. Separate production from point-of-sale."
He kept going.
"For the retail side, we focus only on the fastest-moving daily items. Beer, bottled water, snacks, toilet paper, gum, things like that. Same with produce and meat. We don't try to sell everything. Just the highest-demand items."
He looked at her and summed it up in one sentence.
"The future Guo Neighborhood Store should exist to solve the most basic daily needs of people living within two hundred meters of it. Store size should be kept between fifteen hundred and two thousand square feet."
What Bruce had in mind was basically a scaled-up version of the neighborhood convenience model he knew from the future.
He wanted a business that could generate stable cash flow no matter what the economy was doing.
And in that respect, farms and neighborhood retail were ideal.
Even in a recession, people still had to eat.
Katherine thought it over.
"So what you're really trying to do is have the farms handle production while the neighborhood stores handle end sales. You want to connect the entire chain from upstream to downstream."
"Exactly."
He nodded in approval.
"In the future, I want us to have three or four major farms in every state. Farm output goes straight into Guo Food Processing, Guo Slaughterhouses, Guo Packaging, then gets shipped through our own logistics fleet to Guo Neighborhood Stores for sale. If we control both production and distribution, we can manage costs properly and compete on price while taking more of the market."
Katherine listened in silence for a while, then nodded.
"That actually is a very good plan. But if you want to build all of that, it's going to take a huge amount of money."
"I'll solve the capital problem. Your job is to run the business well."
She stared at him for a long moment, then smiled.
"I really hope you're not bluffing."
"You know me," Bruce said. "I never make empty promises."
From a distance, Mary called out to them.
"Bruce! Katherine! Come back and eat breakfast!"
"Come on," Bruce said. "After we eat, we still have to meet old York."
He waved toward Mary and took off running toward the house.
Behind him, Katherine opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but ended up swallowing the words and following after him instead.