Chapter 43: The Boy Who Left

If anyone had asked Augustus Vance what became of the third boy who used to wander in and out of the Vance property with Alexander and Dominic, the older man would’ve had a fairly simple answer.

The Mercers moved away.

That was all.

No scandal attached to their departure, no falling-out between the families, and certainly nothing dramatic enough to stay at the forefront of anyone’s mind.

In fact, the timing had been almost painfully ordinary.

Giovanni Mercer had just finished delivering his valedictory speech.

His parents watched proudly from the audience as their only son stood before his graduating class and thanked the teachers, families, and friends who’d accompanied them through years of scraped knees, impossible examinations, questionable school lunches, and friendships they were all convinced would survive adulthood.

Naturally, everyone expected a celebration afterward.

The Mercers owned a comfortable property with enough open space that neighborhood gatherings had never been particularly difficult to arrange. Several classmates were already asking what time they should come over.

Instead, when everyone returned from the graduation ceremony, they found moving trucks parked outside the Mercer residence.

Furniture was being carried out.

Boxes covered the porch.

And Giovanni, still wearing the clothes he’d worn beneath his graduation gown, was hauling his belongings toward one of the trucks.

Alexander stopped at the gate.

"You’re moving?"

Giovanni looked up.

For once, the newly declared valedictorian seemed to have absolutely no idea what to say.

"Apparently."

"What do you mean, apparently?"

"My father sold the house."

Alexander stared at him.

"When?"

"A while ago."

"And you’re telling me now?"

"I only found out recently too."

That did nothing to improve Alexander’s expression.

Matteo Mercer had sold nearly everything the family owned to raise capital for an investment in a construction company. The decision was risky enough that he’d kept most details quiet until everything was finalized.

They’d simply been waiting for Giovanni to graduate.

Now nothing kept them in the neighborhood.

It should’ve been one of the happiest days of his life.

Instead, Giovanni spent most of it packing.

They barely had time to accept congratulations from neighbors before someone asked where another box belonged. Classmates arrived expecting a graduation party and ended up saying goodbye instead.

Dominic appeared sometime after Alexander.

"So you’re really leaving?"

Giovanni glanced toward the truck.

"Unless my father suddenly changes his mind."

"Where are you going?"

Giovanni gave them the address.

It wasn’t impossibly far.

At eighteen, however, distance had a peculiar way of sounding much greater when the people you’d seen almost every day suddenly wouldn’t be there tomorrow.

Giovanni packed his bicycle first.

Then came his board games, books, old school things he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away, and finally a small sculpture carved from weathered wood.

Alexander recognized it immediately.

"You still have that?"

Giovanni glanced down.

"Why wouldn’t I?"

"I made it when I was fourteen."

"Yes."

"It’s ugly."

"Also yes."

Alexander frowned.

Giovanni carefully wrapped it anyway.

"Then stop looking at it."

Unfortunately, he couldn’t pack one thing.

His parrot.

The family’s new home didn’t allow pets, much less a bird that considered sunrise an excellent opportunity to announce its existence to the entire neighborhood.

A nearby family agreed to keep it.

That goodbye took Giovanni longer than he’d expected.

By late afternoon, almost everything he’d recognized as home had disappeared into the back of a truck.

Alexander and Dominic stood nearby while the last few boxes were loaded.

"You’ll visit," Alexander said.

It wasn’t phrased as a question.

Giovanni looked at him.

"Of course."

"You’d better."

"I will."

Alexander held his gaze for another moment, apparently deciding whether that answer was sufficient.

Then he nodded.

At eighteen, promises like that seemed simple enough to keep.

None of them understood yet how quickly college, work, responsibilities, and entirely different lives could swallow the years.

The Mercers’ new house was considerably smaller than the old one.

No open backyard let Giovanni ride his bicycle without worrying about traffic, no sprawling property to disappear into, and certainly no horses waiting somewhere beyond the fence.

There was also only one bathroom.

Ysabella surveyed the three of them over dinner that first evening.

"We’re going to need a schedule."

Matteo looked up.

"For what?"

"The bathroom."

"We’re three people."

"And you take forty minutes."

"I do not."

Giovanni continued eating.

"You do."

His father looked betrayed.

"Whose side are you on?"

"The side that needs the bathroom sometime this century."

Ysabella laughed.

For all its inconveniences, however, the house had been chosen for a reason.

It was close to the construction project Matteo had invested nearly everything they owned in and within walking distance of a diner where Ysabella found full-time work as a cook.

She had no formal culinary training and never called herself a chef.

She simply loved cooking.

More importantly, she seemed able to take inexpensive ingredients and turn them into meals that made customers ask who was working in the kitchen.

Giovanni occasionally stopped by after class.

One evening, he found his mother leaning against the counter after the dinner rush, rubbing one tired wrist with the opposite hand.

"You should have your own restaurant."

Ysabella laughed.

"With what money?"

"Someday."

"Your father already gambled our house on his dream. Don’t you start gambling another one on mine."

"I won’t gamble."

She pushed a plate toward him.

Giovanni accepted it.

"I’ll earn it."

His mother looked at him for several seconds.

Then she smiled.

Giovanni remembered that smile for years.

College didn’t unfold the way he’d once imagined.

Money remained tight while most of Matteo’s investment was tied up in the construction company, so Giovanni enrolled in night classes and worked during the day.

He wasn’t particularly selective about employment.

Restaurants, coffee shops, or bakeries.

If the pay was reasonable and the shift came with a free meal, he considered the job worth applying for.

The arrangement cost him time. A degree that should’ve taken four years took five.

Those five years, however, taught him considerably more than anything printed on his transcript.

Working in restaurants showed him why one place remained packed despite average food while another with a better kitchen struggled to keep its doors open. He saw how poor scheduling wasted labor, how careless inventory management devoured profits, and how the wrong supplier could ruin an otherwise good month.

He learned to watch how businesses actually worked.

Then he carried those habits into everything else.

At school, he listened more than he talked.

At work, he took whatever responsibility he was given and learned enough to make himself useful.

And whenever something went wrong, he cared more about figuring out why than deciding who deserved the blame.

Meanwhile, Matteo’s gamble slowly began paying off.

The construction company won more projects. Profits increased, and instead of enjoying the money immediately, Matteo reinvested most of it.

His ownership gradually increased as the business grew.

Eventually, the man who’d sold his home merely to buy his way into the company became its controlling shareholder.

By then, Giovanni no longer thought of the business as only his father’s risk.

He’d spent summers helping around job sites whenever he could, worked through project reports when Matteo brought them home, and learned enough about procurement and logistics to begin pointing out inefficiencies his father hadn’t noticed.

Sometimes Matteo listened, but most of the time he didn’t. Giovanni kept pointing them out anyway.

By the time he finally graduated from college, the Mercers were no longer struggling.

Matteo stood beside him after the ceremony and examined his diploma.

"Took you long enough."

Giovanni raised an eyebrow.

"I was working."

"I know."

His father handed the diploma back.

"That’s why I’m proud of you."

This time, no moving trucks waited outside. No hurried goodbyes, and no home disappearing into boxes on what should’ve been a happy day.

There was simply dinner with his parents afterward and work waiting the following morning.

Giovanni didn’t return to the neighborhood he’d left behind.

Not because he’d forgotten it.

Occasionally, an invitation arrived from an old classmate. Someone would send a photograph, mention a familiar name, or tell him who had returned home for the holidays.

Alexander’s name appeared often enough.

Giovanni always noticed.

Sometimes he even typed a message.

Most of them never made it past the screen.

There was always another deadline, another project, or some perfectly reasonable excuse to send it later.

Eventually, later became months.

Then years.

The construction company continued growing, and somewhere along the way, Giovanni stopped being the owner’s son who occasionally helped solve problems.

He became someone people deliberately brought problems to.

Matteo noticed.

So did everyone else.

The boy who had left their old neighborhood carrying boxes on his graduation day never really found his way back.

By the time he finally crossed paths with Alexander Vance again, he wouldn’t be arriving on a bicycle.

He’d be sitting across from him at a bidding table.

And neither of them would be boys anymore.