Ethan showed Michael a plastic fire truck missing a wheel. “Can you fix things?” he asked hopefully.
Michael stared at it. Before he had become CEO of Sterling Developments, before boardrooms and contracts, he had been a mechanic. His hands still remembered.
Using a bent paperclip and the metal tip of a pen, he improvised a tiny axle. Within minutes, the wheel spun smoothly again.
Ethan gasped. “You’re a wizard!”
Soon after, their bus arrived. David stepped off, tired but smiling. The reunion was warm, full of relief. When Emily explained who Michael was — or rather, who he had been — David didn’t see a failure.
He saw a man in need.
“We don’t have much,” David said plainly, “but if you’ve got nowhere to go, come with us. There’s an empty lot in our neighborhood. Been sitting there for years. Maybe someone who knows how to build could see something we can’t.”
Michael had nothing left to lose.
The six-hour ride felt like traveling to another world. The town they reached had dirt roads, patched houses, and families barely scraping by. David pointed to a fenced-off lot filled with weeds and debris.