The Booking Archive Led Me To Four Roof Bills Nobody Explained

I slept in pieces that night. Each time Conrad shifted beside me, I thought of the crooked letters on the loan form.

By six, I was at the kitchen table with my headphones on. No music played through them.

Conrad came down at seven.

"Early rehearsal?"

"I have pages to sort."

"Don't wear yourself out."

He set a mug by my hand, then asked whether I could buy milk with my own card. The cottage account was tight again.

After he left, I saved the loan email, its attachments, and the message details. I put copies on a small drive I usually used for rehearsal tracks.

I did not try to enter his email. I worked from accounts that were mine.

The booking site still showed me as its owner. Conrad had added himself as manager years earlier. I could see payout history, old messages, and the business account's last four digits.

I could also see four split payouts sent straight to Cape Lantern Repair.

$9,800 in February. $12,400 in April. $18,600 in July. $27,200 in October.

I checked the sum on paper and on the calculator.

$68,000.

That was more than nine years of the allowance he said I should be glad to get.

The months bothered me. Only the last payment came after the fall storm Conrad blamed for our empty account.

I opened a clean notebook.

In rehearsal, I marked a missed cue beside the exact bar. Telling a child to sing better did no good. Showing her where to breathe often fixed it.

I gave each payment its own line.

Beside the payments, I compared the two signature pages. On my repair approval, a fold in the paper had caught my pen, leaving a break in the R. On the loan consent, the R broke in the same place, though that page had no fold.

Someone had copied a flaw as if it belonged to my name. I photographed the original in slanting light so the crease showed. Then I saved the photographs with the pages, without writing on either one.

Then I matched booking receipts to our shared tax folder. Conrad had kept that folder current because our tax preparer asked for it. Each Cape Lantern payout had a bill attached.

All four bills named Odessa Green as the roofer who led the work.

Each said Cape Lantern handled billing for her crew.

I recognized the name. A woman with that name had come to look at a porch leak years before. She had told Conrad that caulk was not a religion.

He had disliked her at once.

I printed the bills at the theater, paid the office fifty cents for the paper, and put everything in my score bag.

Our stage manager, Mae, found me counting pages beside the copier.

"You look like somebody moved the pit stairs."

"I found a loan application with my name on it."

She waited.

"I didn't sign it."

Mae pulled a chair out with her foot.

"Sit down."

For the first time, I said the whole thing aloud. The allowance. The storms. The $240,000 loan. My voice sounded flat, as if I were reading someone else's stage directions.

"Do you need somewhere to sleep?" she asked.

"Maybe. I need to understand it first."

She gave me the name of a lawyer who had handled her family's property dispute. I wrote it under the four payments.

At lunch, I called the loan processor using the number on the owner message.

"My name is Alessia Rinaldi. I own the properties in this packet. I dispute the signature on the consent page."

The woman asked me to send a written statement through their secure link and complete an identity check.

"Will that stop the loan?"

"I'll flag the file for review. The closing team will need to address it."

She did not promise anything else.

I sent a plain statement. I had not signed that page. I had not approved that loan. I requested no disbursement based on the disputed form.

Then I called the lawyer and took the first opening, Monday at nine.

Conrad texted while I was putting fresh tape on a torn score.

Why is the lender calling me about owner questions?

My fingers found the seam of my coat on the chair beside me. I pressed the chord once, then typed.

I asked to review the loan.

He answered at once.

You have no idea what you've started.

I saved that message too.

Odessa Green's phone number was on an old estimate in the tax folder. I called after rehearsal, sitting in my car while rain dotted the windshield.

"Green," a low voice said.

"You may not remember me. Alessia Rinaldi. The cottages near Bradley Creek."

"I remember the gutters."

"Did you replace our roofs this year?"

Silence filled the car.

Then she said, "Honey, I never set one boot on those roofs. Tell me whose paper says I did."