Technically, that was true.
What he didn’t know was that there were now twenty-seven stores.
He had never been interested enough to ask.
The first one had opened thirty-six years earlier.
It was a tiny grocery shop near Dayton.
My wife, Mary, and I had rented an old storefront between a laundromat and a hardware store.
We called it Hayes Market.
We sold vegetables.
Bread.
Milk.
Canned goods.
Cheap cuts of meat.
And whatever else people in the neighborhood needed.
Mary ran the register.
I stocked shelves.
At night, we cleaned together.
The store barely made money for the first two years.
Then things changed.
A factory opened nearby.
The neighborhood grew.
We extended our hours.
Added fresh produce.
Added a deli counter.
Then opened a second location.
Then a third.
Mary died when Ethan was nineteen.
Cancer.
After she was gone, I buried myself in work.
The business kept growing.
