Hide-and-Seek

Chapter 12

I had one month to empty Maple Grove House, which had been empty for more than twenty years, and start my construction project that was going to change the place forever. A doable task, by all means. I was pla

ing to spend the rest of the week at the estate. The idea was to kill two birds with one stone – prepare the house by going through the inventory with the good old Harry and spend some time at the former pig farm with my construction engineer, discussing the necessary preparations for the construction now that we had the money to do it. I called Harry and asked him to hire a cook for the time being because I wasn’t ready to have bachelor-style meals while I was there. He had “just the person” for the job.

I decided to leave early on Wednesday and take the morning train to Maple Grove House. I picked up a cup of coffee with a pastry on the way to the station. When I got there, I stopped at a news stand to buy something non-digital to read when I saw Jared’s face on the cover of a business magazine. The title below his smiling face read “The Finance Wizard is here to stay.” I bought the issue to educate myself on the train.

The article was mainly about his sky-rocketing success in finances, hailing his local roots but not going into too many details. They mentioned that his mother worked for “one stately manor” before leaving for the States and taking him along. It was “the best decision ever” and “taught him to be resilient and persistent.” He never knew his father, and his “mother was everything to him.” There was a picture of him in his twenties and Susan in front of their small home in California, just before he started building his financial empire. I wondered if he started it in his garage like other famous entrepreneurs. The article didn’t cover that. A few other pictures showed various stages of his life all the way to the present day. It concluded with his plans to “develop different aspects of his business further” and spending more time where he was born to understand his roots better. I couldn’t say that I had been enlightened by the read but it had added a few brushstrokes to his portrait.

Somehow, the purchase of the house and the timing of this article didn’t feel coincidental to me. Even though I was the one who asked him for investment, as I sipped my coffee and watched some little villages passing by in the window, I wondered what Jared really needed the house for. To get his foot in high society? Didn’t seem like he cared that much about it. Maple Grove House was probably the passing fancy of a really wealthy guy who wanted to own something old which he could show to his friends. For me it was a good opportunity to turn over a new leaf. So I suppose it was a win-win.