The Auditor Asked For The Page My Husband Had Ignored

Leila Darzi's office stood above a repair shop near Washington Boulevard. The stairs smelled of clean dust and warm rubber.

She met me at the door with two mugs.

"Tea, if you want it. No need to tell the whole story at once."

Leila was forty-two, Iranian American like me, with dark hair cut at her jaw and a habit of letting a question rest before asking another.

She audited licenses for writers, photographers, and people whose work fit inside other people's products.

I handed her the blue folio.

"He says I was helping."

"Helping can still have a contract."

She read all seven pages. I watched the clock and tried not to speak for Curtis.

At last, she put a small yellow tab beside paragraph nine.

"Thirty percent of gross receipts from licensed map products," she said. "Not thirty percent of profit."

"He always said printing ate the money."

"Printing costs matter to his profit. What does this agreement say they do to your royalty?"

"Nothing."

She nodded.

The license let Bell Field Safety use my maps and grant limited rights to others. It did not let Curtis sell my copyright. New plates needed signed schedules. A transfer to another company needed my written consent.

Paragraph nine required records for every sublicense. If an audit found an underpayment above five percent, the company paid the reasonable audit cost. A later paragraph covered reasonable costs of enforcing the agreement.

"Did you approve a transfer to Bell Ridge?" she asked.

"No."

"Did you ever assign the copyrights?"

"No."

"Then we ask for records. We don't start by guessing what they contain."

She gave me an engagement letter. Her rate was $180 an hour. She estimated the first review at $2,160.

I had $8,400 in a savings account Curtis had called my rainy-day fund with a laugh.

I signed.

By noon, we had made a list: the original agreement, each plate schedule, my royalty deposits, old statements, and messages about buyers. I could still reach my own email. I saved the messages with their dates and headers, then copied them to a drive.

Leila asked me to leave the files as they were.

"Keep the messy originals. Make notes somewhere else."

My first box of records was a shoe box. My second was a grocery bag. I felt ashamed setting them on her tidy floor.

"Paper doesn't have to arrive beautifully," she said.

That afternoon, I met Maya Chen, a lawyer Leila suggested. Maya agreed to handle the divorce and bring in a colleague if the license case grew beyond her practice.

She read the divorce petition.

"The marriage and the maps overlap," she said. "They aren't the same question. You owned the original work before you married. We'll also account fairly for money earned during the marriage. Don't spend anything on assumptions."

It was the first advice I had heard that left room for both fairness and anger.

Maya sent the audit demand with my authorization and a copy of the signed license. She also asked Curtis to preserve business records.

His answer arrived in eighteen minutes.

"This is harassment," he wrote. "Parisa has already received generous support."

Leila read it without changing her face.

"Does he identify a payment?" she asked.

"No."

"Then we'll keep asking for payments."

Three days later, Tessa sent a spreadsheet. It had twelve rows, no customer addresses, and a total labeled OWNER SUPPORT: $18,600.

That number matched every royalty deposit I had received during the three years under review. It included nothing about licenses or sales.

Leila called with me beside her.

"What does owner support mean?" she asked Tessa.

"Money Curtis gave Parisa."

"For what?"

"Her maps, basically. But the family benefited."

"Which customer receipts support these twelve rows?"

"The distributor stopped operating. There aren't receipts to match."

Leila waited.

Tessa filled the silence.

"Well, there may be older settlements. Those aren't current sales. Curtis can explain."

"Please include those settlements," Leila said.

After the call, I poured sugar into my tea and missed the cup. I drew a ridge through the spill.

"I sound foolish," I said. "I took his word for three years."

"You asked for statements. He gave you an explanation. Those are different acts."

The next morning, a padded envelope arrived at my apartment. Granite Lantern's name was printed above the return address.

Inside was a new training kit. My north-facing bowl map filled its cover. A note thanked me for the renewal of their best-selling series.

At the bottom sat an invoice number dated six weeks earlier.

I called the sender.

"There must be some mistake," I said. "I was told your company had closed."

The woman on the line went quiet.

Then she said, "Mrs. Bell, we sent your husband's company $162,000 last month."