Priya Requested The Royalty Books Wesley Said Did Not Exist

Priya Menon put three royalty statements in a row across her desk.

"Only these?" she asked.

"For three years. Wesley said sales were slow."

"Were they?"

"The rooms were full. Trucks came twice a week. But fresh mushrooms weren't covered by this agreement. Cultures and starter blocks were. I couldn't see the split."

She nodded and marked that distinction.

Priya was thirty-eight, an Indian American woman with square glasses and a voice so calm I leaned closer to hear it. Her office faced a wet parking lot near downtown Eugene.

She did not promise me a victory.

"What did you sign after the wedding?"

"Nothing about the library."

"Did you ever give him permission to sign for you?"

"No."

"Did he ask?"

"He asked me to trust him."

Her pen stopped.

"Those are different requests."

I set my notebook beside the agreement. It opened to an old entry: J-04, toasted oats, rain on bark.

The first mother cultures had come from my own crosses and selections, grown in a spare room before our marriage. I had kept dated plate photos, batch sheets, and the methods I used to keep each line stable.

"I don't own a kind of mushroom," I said. "I own these stocks and the private growing records. The contract covers their use."

"Good," Priya said. "We will ask for exactly what the contract gives you."

Her letter requested sales ledgers, bank records tied to covered sales, customer agreements, and an audit. It also told Wesley to preserve records.

I paid her a $3,000 retainer from savings I had kept at a separate credit union.

On the way out, I asked whether she needed my notebook.

"A copy of the early entries," she said. "Keep the original safe."

It was the first time someone had asked to copy it instead of asking me to put it away.

That evening, Wesley held the printed letter at our kitchen sink.

"A lawyer? Over a card?"

"Over three years of missing reports."

"You live in the house the business pays for."

"That isn't a royalty statement."

He laid the letter flat and smoothed it with both palms.

"You know what you do well? You notice tiny things. You know what I do well? Everything around them."

I looked at the bowl between us. He had bought pears that morning. I used to think he remembered I liked them. Now I wondered whether he simply liked choosing what entered my mouth.

"Send the records," I said.

The next day, he changed the farm office code.

Lena met me by the loading door.

"My check cleared," she said. "Should I be worried about next week?"

"I don't know yet. Keep your hours written down."

"I already do."

She tapped her phone, then looked toward the office.

I kept working my scheduled hours. I also copied my own shift sheets and the royalty statements I had been sent. I did not take office files or guess passwords.

Priya wanted a clean trail.

Wesley's first response arrived through a lawyer. It said no additional royalties were due. Attached were six pages of totals with no customer names.

Priya sent back one question.

"Where are the underlying records required by section nine?"

A week later, an outside bookkeeper sent a folder. She wrote that Wesley had authorized its release. It contained sales sheets, deposit lists, and charges marked packaging.

Priya hired an accountant, Beth Ahn, for a review capped at $2,400.

Beth called us two days later.

"You have $6,500 a month going to Alder Fold Packaging," she said. "Twenty-four payments. Same amount every time."

"That's $156,000," Priya said.

"Correct. No unit counts. No shipping slips."

I looked at the empty filter bag on Priya's desk. I had brought it because Beth had asked how our blocks were packed.

"Our bags came from a supplier in Salem," I said. "We paid by the case. Our labels were printed in Eugene."

"Could Alder Fold have supplied cartons?" Beth asked.

"Lena ordered those. I can ask her to tell you directly."

The name meant nothing to me. The address below it did.

Not because I had been there. Because Wesley had once sent me a photo of a porch painted that shade of yellow. He said he was checking a rental for visiting buyers.

Priya brought up the business filing. Alder Fold's mailing address was a rented mailbox. Its organizer was Wesley Finch.

"He said we needed a separate packaging arm," I said.

"When?"

"Last summer. I thought he meant another room."

Beth shared the next page. A transfer note sat below one payment, left in by mistake.

It read: Oak Terrace household, March.

Before I could speak, my phone lit up with a message from Wesley: Stop looking at that address.