Ada Compared Her Photo Permission With The Buyer's Sale Packet

Ada took the receiver from my hand.

"I signed permission for someone to enter and photograph the walls," she said. "What did my father give you?"

Leah asked if we could come to her office that afternoon.

We took copies, leaving the originals in the red box. I put a sheet of clean board beneath the papers so the corners would not fold.

Vale House occupied a plain rented office south of the river. There was no marble desk. Leah wore reading glasses on a cord and had a tape measure beside her keyboard.

"We're planning a showroom," she said. "We haven't bought the building. Our contract depends on clear title and vacant possession."

She placed a sales packet between us.

The cover showed my workroom, bright and tidy, with sunlight across the old brick. Ada had taken that photograph.

"That's from my condition survey," Ada said.

"Your father supplied it. He said you were handling the transition."

"What transition?"

Leah turned a page.

The sale included all presses, benches, brass tools, cabinets, and paper stock on the premises. It also included what Victor called the display collection of antique books.

I felt cold beneath my collar.

"Those books belong to customers."

Leah picked up a pen.

"None belong to him?"

"One. A family atlas he asked me to mend. Everything else is entrusted work."

She crossed out the whole paragraph on her copy.

"And the equipment?"

"Mine. I have invoices."

Ada kept reading. Her thumb stopped halfway down another page.

"He said Dario worked for him."

I leaned closer.

The seller's statement described me as a family employee who used the building without any ownership interest. Victor promised that my relocation payment of $5,000 had already settled all claims.

"Did you get five thousand dollars?" Leah asked.

"No."

"Any payment?"

"No."

Ada looked up.

"Dad told me the photos were for an insurance update. He asked me to let his inspector in because Dario was teaching a class."

Leah laid out the access form.

Ada's signature was real. The single page allowed a visit on April seventeenth. It did not give permission to sell anything.

But Victor's cover email called it the family's consent to clearance.

"That is quite a jump," Leah said.

Ada took out her phone. She found the email she had sent her father with the photographs attached.

She read her own message aloud.

"For insurance records only. No permission to publish or use for a sale listing. Please keep the damage notes with the images."

"He left off the damage notes," Leah said.

"Of course he did."

I had heard Ada angry before. I had never heard her sound so awake.

Leah asked for copies of the purchase agreement and our equipment receipts. She said her company's lawyer would contact Simone.

"We've spent fourteen thousand eight hundred dollars on plans and surveys," she said. "Our forty-one-thousand-dollar deposit is still in escrow. It will stay there."

"Did you know about the option?" I asked.

"The title search flagged the recorded notice last week. Your father said it had expired and he'd obtain a release. We were waiting for proof."

"He was planning to get our signatures after he announced it," Ada said.

Nobody corrected her.

On the drive back, she called Victor through the car speaker. I sat with the packet on my lap.

"Why did you tell the buyer Dario was your employee?"

"Because that's easier for people to understand."

"It isn't true."

"He works in my building."

"And where's this five thousand dollars you paid him?"

There was a small silence.

"It was an allowance in the deal. Money set aside."

"Your signed statement says already paid."

"You went to the buyer?"

His voice had changed. The numbers had not bothered him. Our visit did.

"You used my name," she said. "You used my pictures. You sold other people's books."

"Don't be dramatic. Those are props. We would have sorted it out."

I looked at the closed packet. One photograph showed a schoolteacher's family Bible waiting for new boards. Her mother had written every birth on its endpapers.

"They're not props," I said.

Victor heard me.

"You have poisoned my daughter against me."

Ada pulled into a parking space before answering.

"I asked three questions, Dad. You haven't answered one."

She ended the call.

Back at the bindery, I moved the entrusted books into locking cabinets and made a full inventory. Ada photographed each shelf and each machine beside its serial number.

Near six, we heard a van stop in the lane.

A man carrying a locksmith's case approached the door. Behind him came Victor, turning a new brass key between his fingers.