The Bookkeeper Spread My Missing Royalties Across Her Kitchen Table

I photographed the letter before I called anyone.

Then I called Prairie Fold from the porch, where Travis could not hear me over his morning news.

"I need to speak to the person who sends my royalties."

The woman who answered knew my name.

"The cucumber plate is on my office wall," she said.

Her name was Ellen Pike. She handled accounts.

I asked her to tell me the date and amount of my last payment.

"September fifteenth. Twenty-eight thousand five hundred dollars."

I gripped the porch rail.

"And the one before that?"

"Twenty-six thousand seven hundred. Is there a problem?"

Across the street, a school bus let down its red stop arm. Everything else kept moving at the proper speed.

"I believe there is. I didn't sign the change of payment form."

Ellen stopped talking. Then she asked me to send a written dispute through the publisher's secure message page. She would flag the account while her manager reviewed it.

"Please preserve the records," I said. I had written those words on my palm.

The frame shop owner on Walnut had given them to me. When I asked if she knew someone who understood missing income, she wrote a name on the back of a receipt.

Nadine Bassett.

"She found eight months of unpaid artist shares in a gallery's books," the owner said. "She doesn't scare easily."

Nadine met me that afternoon at her kitchen table.

She was fifty-seven, a Black woman with close silver curls and square red glasses. A quilted potholder held down a stack of bank records. On her wall hung a small painting of a bent spoon.

"Everybody bought the landscapes," she said when I looked at it. "I liked the spoon. Artist needed the sale."

She was a forensic bookkeeper. Her voice had the flat edge of a ruler.

"I'm charging $600 for this first review," she said. "Anything larger gets a written scope. No surprise bills."

I paid from my brush fund.

She put on gloves before she touched my envelope.

"Is that necessary?" I asked.

"Probably excessive. But you're shaking, and I'd rather give you something steady to watch."

I laughed once. It hurt less than crying.

We made copies. She numbered them and gave the originals back to me in a clean folder.

"Don't write notes on these. Write on separate paper. Don't enter his office or guess his passwords. We use what you own and what we can lawfully get."

I spread out the licensing contracts.

"I drew the original plates before we married. These later agreements renewed the right to print them."

"Good. Your lawyer will need the dates. I follow dollars. I don't decide who owns them in a divorce."

The word divorce sat between us.

I had not said it yet.

Nadine waited while I moved my wedding ring with my thumb.

"I need to know what happened first," I said.

"Then we'll know."

By evening, Ellen had sent records to the new secure account I opened. Nadine read them with my written permission.

Six payments had gone to Ash Pin over three years: $18,600, $22,400, $24,900, $25,300, $26,700, and $28,500.

Nadine added them twice.

"One hundred forty-six thousand four hundred dollars."

I thought of the winter I had worn my old glasses because Travis said new lenses cost too much.

"He said the catalog wasn't selling."

"The catalog did fine."

The payment form named Travis as the business contact. It used an email address from his tax office. The account holder was Ash Pin Services LLC.

Under my copied signature, one box was checked: RIGHTS OWNER AUTHORIZED.

I had never seen the form before.

Ellen called again before we finished.

"We found the returned verification letter in our old scan file," she said. "The change was processed even though that verification never came back signed. Our manager is having counsel review that failure."

"Will you keep paying them?"

"No. Nothing further will go to Ash Pin while this is disputed. The next payment is projected at $31,200 in March. We'll need proper identity and bank verification before releasing it."

March sounded far away. So did a life in which money came to me without first passing through Travis.

Nadine drew a line down a fresh page.

"Your white vein," she said, nodding at my cuffs. "Leave yourself a clear space. Facts on this side. Questions on that side."

Under facts, she wrote the six payments.

Under questions, she wrote: Where did the money go?

Then she turned her laptop toward me. A public company record showed Travis as Ash Pin's organizer.

Its mailing address was a townhouse east of town.