Ruthie Opened The Old Agreement While The Hauler Knocked At Home

"That's not his supply company," Ruthie said.

She did not touch the yellow slip again until she had washed and dried her hands. Then she placed it on a plain white board and took a picture of both sides.

"We keep the order," she said. "Book, pocket, slip. No guessing later."

I called Pranav from her workroom.

"What is Cypress Bend Rights?"

There was a pause long enough for me to hear his television.

"A billing service."

"Why does it collect eighteen thousand five hundred dollars for Marsh Window?"

"You're reading a quote. Nobody paid that. Come home."

"I will come for my clothes tomorrow."

"Don't let Ruthie make this ugly."

Ruthie stood beside the table, folding the tarp.

"He's managing that fine himself," she said after I hung up.

I slept in her spare room under a quilt made of flour-sack cloth. For the first time in years, nobody asked why I had left a light on.

At seven the next morning, we drove to my house. The hauler was early. His empty trailer stood across our driveway.

"Four boxes?" he asked.

"Already removed," I said.

Pranav came out in slippers.

"She changed her mind. Charge the call to me."

He sounded generous. He wanted witnesses to hear him sound generous.

I took two bags upstairs. From the back of my sewing cabinet, I lifted a flat tin that had once held wedding sweets. Inside were my passport, an old show leaflet, and an envelope marked ORIGINAL AGREEMENT.

Pranav appeared in the doorway.

"You don't need business papers."

"This one has my signature."

"It has mine too."

"Then you have your own copy."

My fingers shook as I shut the tin. I let them shake. They still closed the latch.

We took the papers to Elena Voss, a lawyer whose small office faced a drainage ditch full of bright green grass.

Her assistant brought water. Elena asked me to tell the story without starting with an excuse for my husband.

That took some practice.

"He handled the accounts because—"

"Tell me what he did," she said.

"He canceled my cards. He hid a payment instruction. He ordered the proof hauled away."

"Better. Now let me read."

The agreement was six pages long. In 1998, I had transferred paper drawings and physical display samples to Desai Interior Supply for $6,000. The firm could show them to buyers. It could not grant reproduction licenses without my written approval.

Elena put a small tab beside paragraph nine.

"You kept the copyright and reproduction rights in these listed designs. The licensing fees were to be paid directly to you."

She marked another paragraph near the end. It allowed the court to award reasonable enforcement costs if someone broke the agreement.

"That doesn't make a case free," she said. "We will track every bill."

I had spent years hiding a twenty-dollar yarn order inside the grocery budget. The thought of paying someone to stand beside me felt both strange and wasteful. Then I looked at the yellow slip again.

"He said his firm owned the archive."

"It owned certain objects. This agreement treats the rights separately."

She checked the attached schedule. Twelve patterns. Twelve old initials.

I handed her the show leaflet from 1985. It listed my maiden surname, Srinivasan, and showed a grainy picture of Marsh Window hanging behind a younger version of me.

"Before the marriage?"

"A year before."

"Keep that. Ownership and marital accounting will need care. I won't promise a result from one page. But he can't make this paragraph disappear by calling your work scraps."

I had brought another paper too. In 2019, Pranav had asked me to let his office receive licensing money and send it on to me. He said buyers hated separate invoices.

The collection appointment required a yearly accounting. It said I could end it in writing.

I had never received an accounting.

"We'll revoke this appointment," Elena said. "We'll demand records, preserve the books, and seek court protection if money may move. First, we need to know who runs Cypress Bend."

Ruthie pushed her glasses up.

"Can you check that without asking him?"

"Yes."

For the first time since the store, I laughed.

Elena's assistant found the company filing while we sat there. It had been formed in 2021. The listed manager was Celeste Boudreaux. The mailing address was a rented office suite in Lafayette.

There was no mill, warehouse, or design staff in the filing. That did not prove fraud. It gave us a place to send a demand.

Elena made copies and put my originals back in the tin.

"No calls to threaten them. No going into accounts you can't lawfully access. Bring me what belongs to you. We get the rest through records requests and the court."

I nodded.

My phone lit up as we left.

The message came from Celeste.

Your husband says you stole our sample books. Return them by five, or we report it.