The First Invoice Arrived At A Desk Nobody Could Clear

By the following February, the court had entered my divorce decree and the royalty case had been marked satisfied.

The two files sat in separate folders on my new shelf.

My divorce lawyer had accounted for the value of the design business and the recovered money in the property division. Nothing was counted twice. I kept the rights I had held under the license, and Kamran kept the house after paying my agreed $86,000 share of its equity.

I used some of that money for a small place of my own. I did not need the guest room he had built over my desk.

He sent one message about a box of kitchen plates. I answered with a pickup time through the agreed channel. That was the last thing we needed to arrange.

At the business court's final deadline, Denise confirmed that Prairie Meridian had closed. The money was returned, the records were retained, and the false forms had been withdrawn everywhere our review found them.

Mara's returned draws helped satisfy the judgment. She left the shared office and no longer had any role in my license. The last correction letter bore her signature beside Kamran's. This time each had signed a statement that was true.

"Anything still open?" I asked Denise.

"Your bill for the divorce is paid. The judgment is satisfied. The license addendum is active. We keep copies, and you get on with work."

I paid Laurel to handle future royalty reviews. She sent me a one-page report each quarter, with the lot schedule behind it.

The first arrived with no missing lines.

"This one seems dull," I told her.

"That was the goal."

I rented a two-room studio near Central Avenue for $680 a month. One room held my drafting table. The other had a sink, a cabinet, and two chairs for visitors.

My sister helped paint the walls a warm white.

"Should we put a bed in here?" she asked.

I looked at her.

She laughed before I did.

We hung my father's brass scissors above the table. The blue folder went into a fire-resistant document box. A second set of signed records stayed with Denise, and copies went into an account only I controlled.

Keeping the proof no longer took most of my day.

Wes brought over a piece of the intake assembly his shop had cut for training. He had mounted it on a plain board so people could see the path air took around the offset.

"For your waiting room," he said.

"My waiting room has two chairs."

"Then they can both see it."

He asked what to put on the little label.

"Ventilation Design By Fariba Mehrabi," I said.

He wrote it down without shortening anything.

My first new job came through a builder planning two community shelters outside Wichita. The fee was $7,200 for the ventilation design and site checks. The structural work belonged to the project's engineer, and we put that division in the contract.

At our first meeting, the builder asked whether someone else handled my business decisions.

"I do," I said. "Laurel reviews the license accounting. Denise reviews new contract terms when needed."

He nodded and moved to the next question.

I had braced for a joke. None came.

Work returned in small, steady pieces. I measured an intake opening. I changed a screen detail so it could be cleaned without reaching behind a pipe. I argued with a supplier about a flange and won by sending the right drawing.

At night, I sometimes missed being married before I remembered which marriage I had left. Then I called my sister or made soup or let the feeling pass without trying to fix it.

One afternoon, Ruth Miller stopped by with a jar of pear preserves.

"We got the maintenance sheet," she said. "My husband keeps it beside the flashlight."

I showed her the training assembly. She traced the air path with one finger.

"So this is what you did."

"Yes."

"I'm glad your name's on it."

After she left, I sat at my table while a cold Kansas wind rattled the bare branches outside.

The new builder had signed my contract that morning. My design license named the owner, the fee, the sites, and the audit right. I had read every page before sending my own signed copy back.

I folded a tiny turbine from a clean scrap of tracing paper and set it beside the open window. Its blades turned in the thin draft. Nothing else on the desk moved.

Then the printer woke, and the receipt for my first $3,600 deposit slid into the tray beneath my name.