The math said yes.
Not comfortably — the math never said anything comfortably. The math said yes the way my father's truck said yes to the I-70 pass in January: it would make it, but the engine would complain and the tires would grip and the woman behind the wheel would hold on and trust the machinery because the alternative was staying at the bottom.
Dana reviewed the lease. Red ink. Corrections. The specific, aggressive scrutiny of an attorney who charged four hundred dollars an hour and earned every dollar because the woman paying her had learned the difference between a lease that looks clean and a lease that is clean. Dana found two issues — a maintenance escalation clause that favored the landlord and an exclusivity radius that would have prevented Treeline from opening a third location within three miles. Both were corrected before I signed.
