My Husband Cut Off The Money Before My Morning Fitting

The card failed while I was buying six small magnets for a woman's leg cover.

The total was $38.16. I had $41 in my wallet, so I paid cash and put the coins in my apron pocket. Then I called my husband from the parking lot.

"Did you move money?"

"I secured it," Lucian said. "Come home."

I stayed beside my old car. Across the street, a bus rolled toward downtown San Antonio. Heat rose from the pavement, though it was barely nine.

"I have a fitting."

"You have a hobby appointment. We need to discuss what it costs."

At twenty-five, I made custom covers that fit around prosthetic legs. I had brown skin, a cloud of dark curls, and a pale scar that cut through my left eyebrow. My mother was Mexican American, my father was Black, and both had taught me to fix things before throwing them away.

That was how I started drawing on discarded packing paper. A good sheet could hold a whole garden of prickly pear flowers, or a map of a street someone missed.

I always drew a small moth in the margin. It helped me remember which way the paper had faced when I marked the attachment points.

Lucian called the paper trash.

On camera, he called it my gift.

He was twenty-nine, Mexican American, and very good at talking until other people forgot their question. Lucian had warm tan skin, neat black hair, and a smile that deepened one dimple before the other.

He had used that smile to become my booking manager two years earlier.

"You make beautiful things," he had said. "Let me handle the boring part."

Now the boring part had locked me out.

At home, he sat at our kitchen table with my laptop closed under his hand.

"The bank said you removed my card access," I said.

"You kept buying supplies."

"Customers paid for those supplies."

"Customers gave us tips because they liked your story."

I took off my apron slowly.

"They ordered covers, Lucian. Not a story."

He slid a printed sheet across the table. It listed $6,240 in materials over twelve months. There was no column for income.

"That doesn't include rent," he said.

"Where are the payments?"

"You never wanted to check the online side. Don't start pretending now."

I had wanted to check it. Each time, he had promised a report after dinner, after the weekend, after tax time. I had let each promise become the next one.

That was my mistake. It wasn't proof that the money hadn't existed.

"I'm going to my fitting," I said.

"With what gas?"

There was enough in the tank.

At the clinic on the South Side, Amara Okonkwo was adjusting a socket when I arrived. She was thirty-three, Nigerian American, and the prosthetist who checked every cover for safe clearance before it went home.

I made art around the leg. She handled the leg itself. Neither of us blurred that line.

"You're late," she said.

"Card trouble."

She looked at my face.

"That explains buying something. It doesn't explain shaking."

Our client, Rosa Bell, arrived before I answered. She wanted copper-colored vines around a deep green shell. We checked the knee's movement and left room around the release button. Rosa walked down the hall twice.

"Worth every dollar," she said.

I set my pencil down.

"How many dollars did you pay?"

Her smile faded. "Twelve hundred. Your husband sent the link."

Lucian had told me Rosa's payment was late.

"Would you show me the receipt?"

Rosa held out her phone. The merchant line read Lattice House Design LLC.

I had never heard that name.

"Is something wrong with my order?" she asked.

"Your cover is yours. I need to check my records."

After Rosa left, Amara shut the fitting room door.

"Now the whole answer," she said.

I told her about the card, the laptop, and the sheet with no income column.

"What records do you have?"

"Order book. Carbon copies. Signed consent forms."

"Where?"

"Bottom drawer of my workbench."

She handed me a spare clinic envelope. "Get them somewhere he can't reach. Don't change a thing on them."

Lucian was out when I got back. I took the book, my packing-paper patterns, and the forms clipped behind each numbered order.

He had laughed at that thick book when I bought it.

"What are you, a plumber?"

I had kept using it because a phone was hard to hold with dusty hands. Each customer left with the top sheet. My copy stayed behind.

That evening, I laid Rosa's copy beside her receipt at Amara's kitchen table. Same order number. Same amount. Same payment date.

My phone lit up with a message from Lucian.

It was a photograph of my empty drawer.

Where Is My Book?