For a long time, that was enough.
Then the garage began struggling.
First came a major equipment failure that forced me to finance repairs.
Then one of our biggest commercial customers went out of business owing us several months of invoices.
And when a construction project closed the road leading to our shop for nearly four months, customer traffic dropped sharply.
I borrowed against the property to keep paying wages and cover necessary expenses.
I told myself business would improve.
It did, a little.
But interest charges and delayed payments continued eating away at the account.
Then Union Trust Bank sent the notice.
Forty thousand dollars was required to cure the default and bring the loan account into compliance, including charges the bank claimed were due.
Fourteen days before the next major enforcement step.
The notice wasn't an immediate auction date, but it meant the bank was moving toward foreclosure remedies if the problem wasn't resolved.
To somebody else, fourteen days might have sounded like enough time.
To a mechanic with eighty-seven dollars in his personal checking account and a daughter who needed new winter boots, it might as well have been fourteen minutes.
I tried everything.
I called customers who owed outstanding invoices.
Negotiated payment dates with suppliers.
Asked the bank for an extension.
Even considered selling the service truck I'd spent years restoring with my father.
Nothing came close to forty thousand dollars.
My sister, Danielle, told me to speak with an attorney and challenge several charges she thought looked suspicious.
I said I couldn't afford one.
She said I couldn't afford not to.
We argued.
Then she did something completely unexpected.
She arranged a blind date.
“You need one evening away from that garage,” she told me over the phone.
I was standing beside my workbench, staring at the bank letter.
“Danielle, I need forty thousand dollars, not a girlfriend.”
“I know.”
“Then why are we talking about dinner?”
“Because you've spent three years acting like being miserable is your second job.”
I sighed.
She continued.
“Maya needs a father who remembers he's a person, Marcus.”
That hurt.
Mostly because part of me knew she was right.
Danielle softened her voice.
“Her name is Vanessa. She's thirty-four, intelligent, independent, and apparently just as unhappy about this arrangement as you are.”
“Wonderful. Two people who don't want to be there.”