THE TRUE TITLE

Three weeks later, on a crisp morning in early autumn, an old, rattling pickup truck pulled up to the gravel yard of *Vance Timber & Millwork* in rural Millersburg, Ohio.

The mill was an independent cooperative operating on sixty acres of managed hardwood forest—the original business Arthur Vance had built sixty years ago before handing it over to an employee-owned board.

Mark stepped out of the truck.

He wore no designer polo shirt. He was dressed in thick canvas work pants, a denim work jacket, and steel-toed boots he had bought with his last eighty dollars. His face was lean, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling slightly with exhaustion.

Standing by the lumber sorting shed was Joe Miller—a sixty-eight-year-old master sawyer who had worked alongside Mark’s father for forty years. Joe wore a sawdust-dusted leather apron, a pencil tucked behind his ear.

Joe looked at Mark for a long moment, then spat into the gravel.

""Your mother called, Mark,"" Joe said, his voice like gravel grinding under a heavy boot. ""She told me you needed a job.""

Mark kept his eyes fixed on the ground. ""Yes, sir.""

""We don't have executive desks here, kid,"" Joe said, pointing a calloused finger toward a massive stack of rough-cut white oak timbers. ""Those timbers need to be hand-planed, sorted by grain density, and stacked in the kiln shed. Ten hours a day. Minimum wage. You're thirty seconds late, you're fired. Get your gloves on.""