Paige Explained the Signature While Victor Waited Outside the Room

The image came from a delivery form I had signed three years earlier.

I remembered the delivery. Forty bags of washed pumice had arrived during a July monsoon storm. I had signed under the shed roof while rain bounced off the gravel.

On the delivery form, a stray mark crossed the tail of the R in Rosen. The same mark appeared on the release.

"That tells us where the image came from," Leah said. "It doesn't tell us who placed it."

The editable file and the company's messages helped answer that.

I had once thanked Victor for saving scanned copies of deliveries. He told me it kept us organized. Now Leah put that same good habit to work against his lie.

Before the deposition, she asked what I hoped Paige would say.

"That she didn't know," I said.

"Would that change the records?"

"No. It would change how I felt about her."

Leah closed her folder.

"Let her give her own answer."

I took that advice. When Paige came into the room, I did not greet her or turn away. I made space for her to reach her chair.

Six weeks after the gate was locked, Paige sat for a deposition. A court reporter recorded her sworn answers. Her own lawyer sat beside her. Grant represented Victor, who waited outside during part of her testimony by agreement.

I sat against the wall with my hands around a paper cup.

Leah put the delivery form and release side by side.

"Did Judith Rosen sign this release in your presence?"

"No."

"Did she tell you to use her signature?"

"Victor said she had agreed."

"I'm asking what Judith told you."

"Nothing."

Paige's lawyer touched her notebook but did not interrupt.

Leah showed her a company message, produced with the file. Victor had sent it the night before the release went to Alma.

Use the signature from the gravel delivery. She will never know which paper it came from.

The supplier called pumice gravel on its invoices. Victor had never learned the difference.

"Did you receive this?" Leah asked.

"Yes."

"Did you follow it?"

Paige stared at the page.

"Yes."

The reporter's fingers moved. A vent clicked overhead.

I had expected that answer to feel like victory. Mostly, I felt tired for the woman who had signed for heavy bags in the rain and gone back to work without suspecting anything.

Then Leah asked about Copper Basin.

The company had been formed six years earlier. That was when I had approved it to fill nursery orders. I had never approved a transfer of my license rights. Paige had managed its account from the start.

"Your sales job at the nursery began two years ago," Leah said.

"My work for Copper Basin was separate."

"What did it sell before then?"

"Seed rights."

"Whose breeding lines?"

Paige swallowed.

"The Rosen lines."

Leah showed her the contract that bound Copper Basin to my approval rights. Paige had signed it as manager. On the next page was the paragraph requiring accurate royalty reports.

"You read this before signing?"

"Victor explained it."

"Did you read it?"

"Yes."

Her lawyer asked for a break.

In the hall, Victor stepped toward me.

"She made a clerical mistake," he said. "Don't destroy her life."

"You sent the instructions."

"I sent a draft."

"Then explain that under oath."

He lowered his voice.

"I kept those plants alive with my sales."

I thought of the dawn visits, the brushes, the trays I had turned one inch at a time so young plants would not burn.

"We can count your sales," I said. "We can count my work, too."

He looked past me, searching for someone who might laugh with him.

Nobody did.

When the deposition resumed, Paige admitted she and Victor had used the east-side house as their home together. He stayed there on the nights he told me he was visiting growers in Phoenix.

There were no tenants. There had never been rental income.

Nessa's completed audit traced $178,960 from unreported seed payments to the down payment, mortgage, and household bills. She allowed proper business expenses and listed each bank entry supporting her total.

The tax returns were another problem. Our preparer had received Victor's incomplete sales summaries. Leah referred me to a separate tax professional to correct the affected filings and work out what I owed.

"We'll deal with the actual figures," she said. "Not his assurances."

For the first time, I understood how expensive his calm voice had been.

That Friday, Evelyn received her deposit after Grant persuaded Victor to release the funds. I sent her the payment receipt. She replied that she would consider ordering again once the license question was settled.

It was a small door left open.

On Sunday evening, the independent grower called from the nursery.

"Victor canceled the cooling-fan service," he said. "There's an email saying the benches will be cleared Monday unless you sign away the hold."