Sloane Demanded My Binder While Her Courier Waited For Friday

I read the demand letter three times before I noticed I had missed my bus stop.

The driver let me off beside a dark shop window. I could see my own face in it, small above a screen full of words like theft and damages.

I called Ruth.

"Keep the letter," she said. "Don't answer it tonight."

"Can they take my binder?"

"The cooperative retained you to hold that copy. I'll answer the demand about our records. We'll also arrange separate advice for your employment issues."

At home, I put the binder on the kitchen table. For the first time since I had been fired, I cried.

I was not brave about $125,000. I had counted quarters for laundry that morning.

Then I took a clean sheet of paper and wrote where every document had come from. Beside each one, I added its date and the person who had given it to me.

I stopped crying before I reached the last page.

The next morning, Ruth answered with the cooperative's board resolution appointing me records agent. She included the receipt for my $1,800 fee, dated four months before my Wakeglass start date.

She attached the original exchange in which Sloane had asked that I keep a signed copy because I was "the only person who knows which boats go with which files."

The email still had its old subject line: Final Terms, Boat Review Complete. I remembered sending it from this same kitchen table. Back then, I had been proud that every captain could read the payment page without calling a lawyer. Now I was glad we had saved each reply.

That line had felt kind when she wrote it.

Now it helped explain why I had the binder.

Ruth asked Sloane's lawyer to identify any company material I had taken. The lawyer sent no list.

Instead, Sloane emailed me directly.

"I can make the job issue disappear. Come in, return the paperwork, and we can discuss a better title."

I forwarded it to Ruth. I did not go in.

The cooperative paid for its own legal work from a reserve its members had built over years. Beatrice approved each expense. I watched her sign a $4,000 retainer and felt sick.

"That's money for a dock repair," I said.

"It's money to protect twelve boats' work," she said. "We'll seek it back."

Helen requested that Wakeglass preserve its records. Ruth sent a separate demand. Together, they asked for access logs, signed agreements, invoices, and all versions of the file delivery lists.

Wakeglass had three directors. Sloane held one seat. Two investors held the others. One of those directors, Ada Porter, called a special board meeting and hired an outside accountant to preserve the books.

She did not promise us the board would side with us.

"I need the facts in a form I can defend," she told Beatrice.

"So do we," Beatrice said.

That afternoon, Joel sent Ruth a delivery request he had received from Wakeglass. A courier was due Friday to collect an encrypted drive for one of the outside customers.

The inventory still listed the cooperative's file codes.

Helen said her buyer would neither receive nor fund that shipment. It was outside her control.

Ruth asked Wakeglass for a written promise to stop it.

Sloane's lawyer answered that the cooperative was overreaching. His client would honor her lawful business duties.

"That isn't a promise," Beatrice said.

"No," Ruth agreed. "We need a judge to settle what happens while the facts are checked."

Ruth filed the cooperative's complaint in Essex Superior Court in Salem. She requested a prompt hearing to stop any further use or transfer of the named recordings. The filing included our license, the unpaid invoices, the consent refusal, and the courier inventory.

I signed a statement about my work and the seven matching files. Ruth made me separate what I had heard from what the documents showed.

"You don't need to make it bigger," she said.

I also spoke with an employment lawyer through a referral. We sent a written demand for $1,260 in final wages and earned vacation still missing from my pay. My old bank account showed no deposit. The office manager had confirmed the balance.

That was a small number beside the sale, but it was my number.

By evening, the court had set a hearing for the next morning. I pressed my only dark jacket on a towel laid across the kitchen counter.

My phone rang while the iron cooled.

Ruth had received Sloane's sworn statement opposing our request.

"She says the customer samples came entirely from a separate shore pilot," Ruth told me. "She says none came from your twelve boats."

I opened the blue binder to the March deployment sheet.

Mercy Bell's recorder had stayed aboard for thirty days. There had been no shore unit in that pilot.