The Excluded Asset Schedule Was Still In My Kitchen Box

At home, I put the kettle on and opened the gray box beneath my kitchen table.

The box smelled faintly of cedar. I had bought it when I was fitting equipment out of a rented garage, before Thawline existed. Inside were invoices, bank statements, and our signed partnership agreement.

I laid them out in date order.

Six seated skis: $42,600.

Twelve pairs of custom outriggers: $6,020.

Total: $48,620, paid from my own account before we opened.

Some of that money had come from years of saving. The rest came from selling my old pickup and working extra repair shifts. There was no secret family fortune. There were just receipts I hadn't thrown away.

The partnership agreement had two schedules.

Schedule A listed the things we owned together: benches, a boot dryer, tools, a counter, and office gear. Their opening value was $6,420.

Schedule B matched my short asset numbers to each maker's serial number.

Excluded Property. Owner: Shahbaz Abbasi.

Below that, a plain paragraph said the partnership could use the fleet for $100 a month. Storage inside the workshop did not transfer ownership. Neither partner could pledge excluded property for a debt.

Eric had initialed every page.

There was also a line for the yearly safety checks. I had to keep the fleet fit for rental use; the workshop had to let me inspect it. Those duties were why I had wanted the agreement written down. A bad seat angle could hurt someone long before a bad business deal reached a courtroom.

I remembered that afternoon. He had been impatient because a family was coming to see the shop.

"You're really making me sign for every little ski pole?" he had asked.

"They're outriggers."

"You know what I mean."

I had put the pen back beside his hand.

He had signed.

I called a local lawyer named Dana Holt. She had reviewed the agreement when we started. Her assistant found a late appointment for me.

Dana read Eric's client message without changing her face.

"Were you ever his employee?"

"No. We split profit. We both signed the tax returns."

"And this $900?"

"An offer he made today. I didn't accept it."

She made a note.

"Good. Tell me about the lender."

"I know one sentence."

I showed her the text.

She read it twice.

"We'll need to find out what he's promised. Meanwhile, no angry posts. No taking equipment through a window."

"I wasn't planning a window."

"People make plans after midnight."

For the first time that day, I laughed.

Dana scanned the agreement and my original invoices. She matched the payment dates to the bank statements. Then she had me describe each frame and each change I had made to it.

"The padded side rails on S03?"

"Added last fall. The original frame number is still underneath."

"We should photograph that."

"He won't let me in."

"Then we ask in writing."

Her letter went to Eric that evening. It disputed my removal, required him to preserve the records, and demanded access for an equipment inventory. It also told him my fleet could not be sold, pledged, or moved.

She copied his uncle, Neal Lund, because Neal owned the building.

Neal called me ten minutes later.

"Eric says you two had a blowup."

"He changed the passwords and told clients I was hired help."

"Well, people get heated."

I watched steam rise from my untouched tea.

"He also says the equipment belongs to him because it's in your building."

There was a pause.

"That's not something I told him."

"Then please don't let anyone remove it."

"I can't referee your business."

"I'm asking you to read the letter."

Neal said he would.

At eight, Mabel called. Her voice was quieter than usual.

"Three parents got Eric's message and asked if their kids' equipment was safe. I said the fittings were safe. I couldn't promise the grown-ups were behaving."

"I'm sorry they had to ask."

"Don't carry his suitcase for him."

She explained the deposits. Her independent lesson contract let her hold refundable equipment security deposits until each student's rental block ended. Six students had paid $300 each. All $1,800 was still in her separate deposit account.

"My receipts name the owner," she said. "You. Eric got copies every time."

"Dana will want those."

"Dana can have a tidy packet. I own a stapler and strong opinions."

I slept badly, then woke to freezing rain ticking against the window.

At seven, Dana forwarded Eric's reply.

He would allow an inventory Thursday at four. He denied that Schedule B still applied. He said years of booking work had made the fleet a partnership asset.

Attached was a flyer for his new Waterbury shop.

Across the bottom ran a bright promise: Opening With Our Full Adaptive Fleet.

Behind that attachment was a lender's equipment list, showing my eighteen numbered assets beneath a proposed $78,000 loan.