The Rural Diaries by Hilarie Burton

Author:Hilarie Burton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Next, we went to Ira’s husband and asked whether he would be interested in selling the business to us. We offered to buy it for the amount of debt that the shop owed so he could pay off all the debt and clear Ira’s name.

Grief is a confusing thing, and everyone grieves differently. Given the shop’s debt, Ira’s husband seemed to see-saw between being happy that we were trying to save the shop and resentful that Samuel’s existed at all. The negotiations lasted from May to December, but during that time, the friendships among our group of friends were fortified, along with our resolve to make sure Samuel’s thrived.

Meanwhile, other people were circling the shop, coming in the doors with real estate agents. One investor wanted to turn it into a cybercafé, and another person wanted to turn it into a bicycle shop. All of a sudden, people who had not been friends with John Traver were showing up asking a lot of questions.

The building was owned by a gentleman who owned a number of places in the historic district and lived in Florida. The landlord, Joan, ran everything for him in town, and her son Bill was the building manager of the shop; so I went out to lunch with Joan and learned everything I could—that they hadn’t been charging Ira what they could have for rent, and that they hadn’t raised the rent in years because they knew he couldn’t afford it. Joan was gun-shy about asking us for more, but we knew that there were things that needed to be fixed that Ira hadn’t mentioned to them because he was so ashamed that he wasn’t paying the rent. The bathroom had a leak, the floor needed to be fixed, the place had electrical issues and a number of outlets that didn’t work, and the back screen door was falling off and needed paint. During the months that we were negotiating with Ira’s husband, we were also getting our ducks in a row.

We decided that Andy, Julie, and I would be the managing partners and that we would report back to Phoebe, Paul, and Jeff. Andy and I would take our kids with us when we met with the accountant who had been doing Ira’s taxes. We saw this as an opportunity to teach our kids about business so when they grew up they’d have no issue going into the office of an accountant or a lawyer. We took them to our lawyer meetings with John Marvin. We took them to the bank branch in Rhinebeck when we opened our new account with David Tellerday—yes, he’s a banker and his name is Tellerday. He let the kids play with the stuff on his desk while we figured out what type of account to open.

The town rallied around the preservation of Samuel’s. Everybody wanted the business to succeed. It was Ira’s legacy, and a Rhinebeck institution.

Friends and neighbors in the community doubled down. David began coming in regularly for coffee and maybe a sweet or two.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.