Following the familiar road out of San Francisco, Bruce quickly left the city behind. He drove north toward Santa Rosa along the coastal route, but instead of heading into town, he turned onto a narrower road near the outskirts.
After another ten or so kilometers of winding turns, he finally stopped in front of a sign that read:
**Guo Farm**
He stared at the bold black lettering for a moment, and memories tied to the place began surfacing one after another.
A complicated look crossed his face.
Then he turned the wheel, took the gravel lane to the right, and slowly drove up to the yard.
After getting out with his bag, he took in the property with a quiet glance.
The yard was enclosed by a waist-high wooden fence. In the middle stood a weathered two-story wooden house painted gray, its surface worn and faded by years of wind and sun.
Bruce pushed open the simple wooden gate and stepped inside.
A second later, a German Shepherd came charging toward him from the side like a black streak.
He instinctively took two steps back, fear flashing across his face. He had always been afraid of dogs, especially large ones.
But the dog stopped in front of him, wagging its tail eagerly and looking up at him in open expectation.
That was when Bruce remembered.
To this dog, he wasn't a stranger.
He was home.
Maybe it was instinct left behind in this body, but the fear faded quickly. He reached out and rubbed the dog's fluffy head.
"Carl. Go on, go play."
"Woof! Woof!"
After a few eager barks, the dog trotted back to the kennel by the edge of the yard and lay down, though its dark eyes remained fixed on Bruce.
Letting out a small breath, Bruce looked around the yard again. Grapevines, roses, orchids. There was a quiet, almost old-fashioned charm to it, something warm and carefully kept.
He followed the neat stone path, climbed the steps, took his keys from his pocket, and unlocked the front door.
The moment he stepped inside, a strange feeling washed over him.
The chandelier, the couch, the television, the recliner. Everything in the living room felt unfamiliar, yet at the same time eerily familiar.
His eyes eventually landed on a wall of framed photos in the corner.
Most of them showed him at different ages.
But the face that appeared most often besides his own belonged to an older man of medium build, sturdy and solid-looking.
From the memories left behind in this body, Bruce knew exactly who he was.
His adoptive father.
The old man had lived a life far less ordinary than his quiet appearance suggested.
Born in Fujian Province in 1920, he had originally been a fisherman. If war had never broken out, he probably would have spent his whole life at sea.
Instead, history had other plans.
In 1938, at eighteen, he was conscripted like so many young men of his generation. Because he was an excellent swimmer, he was assigned to the navy rather than the army, serving aboard the gunboat Xianning. After that ship was sunk during the Battle of Wuhan, he was transferred to the destroyer Danyang, a ship that somehow survived through the war and earned an almost legendary reputation.
He lived to see the war end.
In 1955, he retired from naval service. Because of the political situation at the time, he was unable to return home, so he found work as a second officer with a shipping company. He stayed in that line of work for sixteen years.
Then, in 1981, while at the docks in Hong Kong, he found an abandoned baby.
That baby was Bruce.
Wounded during the war and never having married, he chose to adopt the child and raise him as his own.
By then, he was getting older, and his body could no longer handle the damp air and constant motion of life at sea. So he left shipping behind, brought the baby with him to the United States, and used his pension, his salary, and more than two hundred thousand dollars saved over years of hard work to buy a small farm near Santa Rosa.
At the beginning, it had been just a hundred acres or so.
After twenty years of steady work, the farm had grown to more than five times its original size. It now covered 560 acres and included full easement rights.
At current California farmland prices, the farm alone was worth close to six million dollars.
On top of that, the family owned two Guo Fresh Produce stores in San Francisco's Chinatown, selling farm goods directly through their own retail outlets.
Taken together, everything added up to roughly 6.5 million dollars.
Unfortunately, time had finally caught up with him.
He made it past seventy-three, but not eighty-four.
Bruce had gotten into the accident while rushing to the hospital after hearing the news of his father's death. That crash had taken one life and left this body to be claimed by another soul, one that had come from nineteen years in the future.
Ring. Ring.
The sudden sound of a phone pulled him out of his thoughts.
Bruce took the phone from his pocket.
"Hello?"
"Mr. Guo? This is George Davis from Baker McKenzie. I'm the attorney handling your father's will."
Bruce immediately understood.
"Hello, Mr. Davis."
"Mr. Guo, I didn't want to disturb you right after your discharge, but the estate matter has already been delayed for a month. The sooner we finalize things, the better it will be from a tax standpoint."
"I understand."
Bruce thought for a moment, then said, "How about tomorrow? I'm heading back to school anyway, so I can stop by your office."
"Of course. I'll send the address to your phone in a moment."
"Sounds good."
"Then I'll see you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow."
After hanging up, Bruce looked down at the Motorola flip phone in his hand. It already felt like an antique.
He had no interest in playing with it. Once the message from Davis came through and he confirmed the time and address, he slipped it back into his pocket.
Just then, he heard footsteps approaching from outside.
A moment later, someone knocked.
"Come in."
The heavy wooden door opened with a dry creak, and a broad-shouldered middle-aged man stepped inside. He wore worn denim, a brown hat, and a rough, unshaven look that fit the farm life perfectly.
The moment he saw Bruce standing in the living room, his face lit up.
"Bruce, so it really is you. Why didn't you tell us you were getting out today? Mary and I were planning to pick you up ourselves."
He came over at once and pulled Bruce into a warm, enthusiastic hug.
Bruce froze for a second, caught between familiarity and awkwardness, then gently pulled back.
"Uncle Blair, I'm an adult now. There are some things I should handle myself."
"You hear that, Blair? Our little Bruce says he's all grown up now."
A cheerful voice followed from the doorway.
A large woman in a light blue dress stepped inside.
"Aunt Mary."
Blair Lincoln and Mary Lincoln had worked on the farm ever since it was first bought. After nearly twenty years, the kind-hearted couple had long since stopped feeling like hired hands. They were family.
Mary, especially, had looked after Bruce from the time he was still an infant.
The Guos and the Lincolns might have been two households on paper, but in practice they had lived like one family for years. Even the funeral arrangements had been handled largely with Blair's help.
Smiling, Mary walked over, shoved her husband aside without ceremony, and gave Bruce a long, careful once-over from head to toe.
Then she pulled him into an even tighter hug.
"Thank God my boy's all right."
Hearing the concern and relief in her voice, Bruce felt a quiet warmth rise in his chest.
Even after living through two lifetimes, that kind of care still reached somewhere deep.
In his previous life, his parents had divorced early, and he had been raised by his grandparents. Since both parents had remarried, he rarely saw them outside of holidays. Even then, aside from a little child support, they had never given him much in the way of real affection.
He had always been short on that kind of love.
Which was why moments like this hit harder than they should have.
"Mom, I came back for your Orleans-style roast and pasta, not to watch you and Bruce have a family reunion scene in the middle of the living room. Seriously, this is so unfair. Just because he's got a handsome face, he gets all the extra attention."
The voice came from the doorway.
Bruce turned to see a young man standing there in a neat suit, arms folded, a grin on his face.
"Matta, what brings our unpaid councilman home? Don't tell me you finally got your master's from Berkeley Law."
Matta Lincoln, Blair and Mary's eldest son, had graduated from Berkeley Law and had been set on politics from the time he was young. Right after school, he ran for a seat on the Berkeley City Council. Thanks to strong grades and a good recommendation network, he had actually pulled it off two years after graduating.
Of course, compared with state office or Congress, being on the city council was more public service than real power, and it didn't even come with a salary. So while doing civic work for Berkeley, Matta also held a job at a law firm.
The moment Bruce finished speaking, the pride in Matta's expression collapsed into something a lot more awkward.
He considered himself talented, and not without reason. He had always done well in school and later in work, and he had never been the kind of son his parents needed to worry about.
But then there was Bruce.
No matter how well Matta did, standing next to him always made it feel ordinary.
That was why, growing up, aside from his younger brother Gordon, who was the same age as Bruce and too simple-minded to care, neither Matta nor his sister Katherine had ever liked spending too much time around him.
The pressure was just too much.