Thirty-Nine Million Dollars and a Brown Folder on the Kitchen Table

I hadn’t bought a sprawling mansion to impress anyone.

I had bought huge, empty land.

I opened a tin of dark roast coffee and scooped the grounds into a paper filter.

While the water heated, I set the cardboard box on the kitchen table and unpacked it.

I took out the brown folder.

Inside the folder were the closing documents for the thirty-nine million dollars, lying right next to the deed for this new property.

The deed proved I owned the entire mountain outright.