Sixteen Deposits Turned A Second Workshop Into A Refund List

We did not open the register until Nolan and his lawyer agreed to include it with the records.

I stood beside the table while Imani made the copy. Sixteen names ran down two pages. Each had paid $1,800. The total was $28,800.

Every order promised my split-heel design.

"You couldn't make one pair here," I said.

Nolan stared at the unfinished walls.

"I was going to bring you over."

"After telling people you'd fired me?"

"I thought you'd calm down."

Nobody answered that.

Luis packed M-06. I put the yellow washer in the case with it. We signed a receipt showing its condition, its number, and the damaged insert.

The mold returned to Lime Key on Friday, as the order required.

I didn't run it. A local tool shop inspected the insert and quoted $1,800 to replace it and check the mold faces. I sent the quote to Mara.

Then I waited for the financial records.

Waiting had become work. I checked the nine shop orders, answered customers, and made a list of supplies we would need if production started again. I used my allowed access to inspect the presses with Luis present.

Both were sound.

The cloudy trial stock failed my bend checks. I bagged and labeled it for disposal. Nothing from that tray had reached a customer; the stock log and shipping records agreed.

That was one good line on a page full of bad ones.

On Monday, the records arrived.

Imani spent two days matching the deposit register to receipts, bank entries, and invoices. She called me only when she had a specific question.

"Did you approve this $7,200 transfer?"

"No."

"Were you ever paid by Outer Channel?"

"No."

"Did these drawings come from your notebook?"

"Yes. Pages thirty-two through thirty-eight."

I sent the dated scans I had saved before the lock change.

Our equipment-use agreement had allowed the shop to use my tooling and drawings at its leased address. It had not given Nolan a personal right to take them into a separate venture.

Mara kept her claim tied to that signed promise. She didn't tell me that owning a drawing meant I could stop everyone in the world from making a fin.

"We have enough real facts," she said.

I started keeping my own hours on a paper pad. Customer calls, stock checks, time at the bench. Imani wanted the labor recorded, even when there was no finished pair to bill.

"You keep treating your time like it's free," she said.

"I don't know what else to do with it."

"Write it down. We'll know where it went."

That night I put the pad beside my test notebook. Both showed work I had done. Neither needed Nolan's approval.

The tool contractor answered through Nolan's lawyer. He had believed Nolan had permission. His trial copy had failed. He still held it, plus the files Nolan had supplied, and agreed to preserve both until our lawyers arranged their return or disposal.

I asked for a written inventory from him too.

On Wednesday, Imani spread her report across my kitchen table.

Outer Channel had received $36,000: the sixteen customer deposits, plus $7,200 taken from our shop.

It had spent $14,400. That covered the failed tooling copy, rent and a unit deposit, fixtures, and sales costs.

There was $21,600 left.

"Enough to refund twelve deposits," I said.

"Enough to partly fund sixteen refunds," she corrected. "We don't choose favorites. The gap is $7,200."

She drew a box around that number.

Below it was another $7,200, owed back to Lime Key. Then $1,800 for the damaged mold insert.

"Different harms," she said. "Keep them on different lines."

Mara's legal bill, including the earlier charges, stood at $4,900. The running settlement demand came to $21,100 beyond the $21,600 already in Outer Channel's account.

Nolan's lawyer checked the report against the bank statements. He disputed some wording but not the arithmetic.

We arranged a neutral update to the sixteen customers through counsel. It told them production had not begun, that I had not agreed to work for Outer Channel, and that refunds were being addressed.

Cal called after he received it.

"So there really was a list."

"There was."

"I still want out."

"I understand."

All sixteen asked for refunds. Nobody needed a better sales pitch.

That evening, Nolan sent a proposal through his lawyer. He offered to restore my key if I signed a release, accepted the tooling damage, and agreed the $7,200 transfer had been a business loan.

I read it once.

Then I put it beside the sale schedule.

"No," I told Mara.

"What would you accept?"

"A clean break. The shop keeps going. The customers get their money. He stops speaking for me."

The next morning, a mediation appointment arrived in my inbox, with Nolan's signed agreement to attend.