The third name was Fletcher Capuano.
The same name that was printed across the top of the sale agreement as the seller. The buyer, an LLC with a clean name and a shiny website, had three members. The first two were the pharmacy chains vice president and her partner. The third was the man across the table, who had just grabbed the page out of the lawyers hand.
It was a quiet thing, how long it took the room to understand.
The lawyer, whose name was Mr. Aldridge, did not raise his voice. He said, Mr. Capuano, you are the seller, and you are a one-third owner of the company that is buying. You did not disclose that.
The vice president said, No, he did not. She was holding a very cold glass of champagne and looking at Fletcher the way you look at a man who has just sold you a used car.
Here is what had happened, and Mr. Aldridge laid it out in four sentences. Fletcher had formed a partnership with the chain to buy his own fathers building at a below-market price, so that when it was resold at full value to a developer, he would pocket a third of the profit on top of the sale. To make it work, the building had to be empty. That is why he put a notice on my window. That is why he called me the yarn lady.
He had also not told his partners about the right of first refusal, because he did not know about it. His father had signed it in 1995 and never mentioned it. Neither of them had read page four.
Horton had kept our original lease at the bottom of a cash drawer wrapped in a sweater for twenty-nine years, and it turned out to be the best investment we ever made.
The deal did not close that night. Mr. Aldridge told his clients that they could not in good conscience proceed, and the vice president thanked me for the lease and said she wished she had met me before the champagne. They withdrew in writing the next morning.
Fletcher tried to argue that the right of first refusal had lapsed. A judge in Providence Superior Court disagreed in two pages. A right of first refusal runs with the building, and he was bound by his fathers signature the same as his father would have been. The judge also noted the disclosure issue, referred it to the Attorney Generals office, and awarded me my legal fees.
I could not afford to buy the building. Everybody knew that. But Atwells Avenue is not a street where a woman stands alone. The week after the ruling, four of the neighbors came into the shop: the baker, the man who runs the shoe repair, a young woman who owns a flower stand, and Mrs. Iacono from the pasta place. They had formed a small cooperative. They offered to buy the building together at the same price Fletcher had agreed to, and give me a lease for as long as I wanted it.
I read the new lease on the counter. Every page. Page four says that Marie Russo may stay as long as she wishes.
Denise cried when I told her. She said, Ma, I am sorry I said let it go. I said, You were not wrong, sweetheart. It is a lease. It just turned out to be a very good one.
I knit for an hour in Hortons chair every February now, with the sign turned to CLOSED EARLY. This year four people came in anyway. They did not buy anything. They sat and watched me knit.