Chapter 6: The Chair

I read his name three times.

Then I peeled the notice off my father's glass, folded it in quarters, and put it in my pocket.

"He sold it the day of your wedding," Carmela said. "While he was handing you the ring."

"I know."

"I'm going to key that Escalade so deep it bleeds."

"Get in the car, Carm. I need my father's files."

My father kept every lease he ever signed, in banker's boxes under the basement stairs.

At noon on Monday, Carmela screamed from the basement.

She was holding up a lease from 2019, my father's last renewal, nine pages, and stabbing a paragraph with a pink fingernail.

"Read it. Read it out loud, I want to hear it."

I read it out loud.

If the landlord sold the building, the tenant had the right to buy it first, at the same price, within thirty days of notice.

My father's lawyer had put it in every lease he ever signed.

"He was paranoid," I said.

"He was a genius. He knew a Scarpa would own this building one day." Carmela kissed the page. "You can match it."

"With what? I have eleven thousand dollars and a dental chair from 2004."

"You've got thirty days. We'll think of something."

At five o'clock Dom came in the front door.

His two men stayed on the sidewalk.

One of them bought a lemon ice from the corner cart and ate it with his pinky out.

Dom took one look at my face and at Carmela's.

"What happened?"

I took the folded notice out of my pocket and gave it to him.

His face didn't move. But the paper creased under his thumb.

"I'll buy it," he said. "Tonight. I'll write him a check for six."

"No."

"Daniela."

"Term three," I said. "I don't take a dollar from you. Not one. Not for this."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Married to My Ex-Father-in-Law from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.