The old man ran his hand over the smooth grain of an unfinished oak table.

“Things were simpler out here, Alvin,” he said.

“Why, Dad?” “If a board was warped, you could see it.

You knew exactly where the flaw was.” Alvin sat on a workbench across from his father.

“Tell me what happened with Derek,” he said.

And Manuel, with a heavy sigh and slumping shoulders, finally told him.

Five years earlier, Derek had invested in a commercial remodeling venture that had collapsed under mismanaged contracts and predatory loans and a partner who fled the state, leaving Derek facing nearly a hundred and seventy thousand dollars in immediate debt.

“Where did the money come from to bail him out?” Alvin asked quietly.