The Lease Closing Required A Signature Curtis Could Not Supply

The lease draft had been prepared before the judge restricted transfers. It still had a Friday closing date on its cover.

"He can't sign this now," I said.

"He couldn't grant your interest before the order, either," Nora said. "The order gives us another clear reason to stop him."

She sent the deed, the ownership dispute, and the court order to the proposed lessee's lawyer. She also notified the title company handling the bonus.

That afternoon, its closer called Nora with me on the line.

"We won't disburse," he said. "We need the actual owner's consent. Mr. Adler suggested a ratification."

"A signature after the fact," Nora explained to me.

"Then no," I said.

The closer marked the file suspended.

I had stopped a $48,000 payment without leaving my chair. My hands still shook when I set down the phone.

Curtis called within an hour.

"You could sign one page and settle everything."

"Send it to Nora."

"You know what? I will. Then she'll tell you what a good offer it is."

His offer arrived that evening. I could keep $25,000 if I agreed that High Basin owned all four interests. It would release him from any accounting for the old checks.

Twenty-five thousand dollars to buy my silence about $186,420, plus everything the land might pay later.

I put his offer in the file.

The divorce was moving slowly. Winter was not. Wind packed snow against our garage, and Curtis began staying elsewhere most nights. Under the temporary arrangement, I kept using the shop and we shared the house on set terms until one of us moved.

I latched my document case in a rented storage locker. I kept working. The shale order became sixty sections, enough to pay the next bills without asking anyone to save me.

Miriam came by to check the deed descriptions against the exhibits Nora planned to use.

"How did he make a royalty release cover an unleased tract?" I asked.

She pointed to the granting paragraph.

The title at the top said royalties. The small paragraph below claimed every mineral and royalty interest conveyed to me under Ruth's deed. All four descriptions were attached.

"That's the chain he tried to create," Miriam said. "Your aunt to you. You to his company. His company to whoever paid him."

"And the broken link is me."

"The false link," she said. "Your ownership didn't break because someone wrote a lie. But we need the record corrected."

She had spent years tracing ownership for clients across Wyoming. Once, she told me, a missing probate file had taken six weeks to locate.

"What did you do while you waited?"

"The other work," she said.

So I did mine.

I made a fresh sample log with wide columns. Each stone got a number before I touched the saw. At lunch, I checked the log against the rack, then checked my document list against the blue case.

The small acts did not make me calm at once. They gave my hands something useful to do until the calm came.

I trimmed a bentonite sample for a teaching collection. The clay needed care. Too much water and it would swell. Too much pressure and its edges would crumble.

I bonded it gently and left it overnight.

On Thursday, the notary named on the release gave a statement through his own attorney. He had once shared office space with Curtis. He had not met me, checked my identification, or witnessed my signature that June.

His journal had no entry for the release.

He supplied a genuine old affidavit he had notarized for Curtis. The stamp image on that page had the same tiny white gap as the one on my false release.

Nora sent the material to a document examiner. She also gave the growing file to investigators. I signed a complaint and answered questions without guessing at anything I hadn't seen.

"Do you want him arrested?" the investigator asked.

"I want an accurate record," I said. "What happens from that is your work."

There was a harder choice still ahead.

Nora said we could try another private settlement before the ownership hearing. Curtis wanted me to agree that neither of us would tell neighbors or clients what had happened.

I thought about June lowering her fork. I thought about the splash guard I had taped because he claimed we were broke.

"I'll discuss money," I said. "I won't agree to repeat his story."

We asked for the hearing to go forward. Nora served our exhibits by the deadline. Curtis would have time to read every page.

The next morning, Tessa's lawyer requested a meeting. He attached emails produced from her account.

One message from Curtis read: Use Deb's old signature. She keeps the originals downstairs.

Tessa's reply read: The lease buyer needs clean title. Can we get this recorded before she finds out?