An Old Agreement Opened A Door Into His Other Company

I carried the tube home under my arm.

Nolan had taken the downstairs bedroom. My sewing room upstairs had a folding cot, a lamp, and a door that latched. I spread the returned coat on the floor and closed one eye.

The broken blue ladder was there, right at the joining edge.

So was a small curve at the elbow that I had changed eleven years earlier. The old curve had pulled when an actor reached up. I had moved the dart, then marked the change in my blue book.

I found the entry. Master 17. October 6. Elbow allowance increased three eighths.

I photographed the paper, the payment sheet, and the tube label. Then I called the cutter, Lea Ortiz.

“Did I send the wrong piece?” she asked.

“No. Who rents you these patterns?”

“Pennon. Nolan said you two moved the touring orders there.”

“When?”

“About two years ago.”

I thanked her. I didn't ask her to take sides.

The next morning, a check for $1,860 arrived for grading work I had done directly for a school. Nolan reached for it on the kitchen counter.

I put it in my apron.

“That's usually deposited with sales,” he said.

“It's made out to me.”

His mouth tightened, but his phone rang before he answered.

By noon, I had an appointment with Priya Menon.

Her office faced a narrow parking lot near downtown South Bend. A wet glove lay on the curb outside. Inside, nothing rushed. Even her clock seemed to take its time.

Priya was thirty-nine, an Indian American woman who wore round glasses and kept her dark hair in a low knot. She read my agreement without speaking, then went back to the first page.

“You brought the schedules,” she said.

“All forty-eight.”

“Stubborn?”

“I've been called worse.”

“Good. I like stubborn clients who keep attachments.”

Her first payment was $1,500. She explained what it covered and what it did not. She also gave me the name of Jo Bell, a divorce lawyer she worked with.

“The marriage and these contracts touch,” she said. “We need both sets of hands.”

“Do I own the patterns?”

“This agreement says you kept the listed masters. The shop got permission to rent copies and owed you six percent of the receipts. Whether a coat shape has other protection is a separate question. We can start with the promises people signed.”

She tapped Nolan's initials.

“He understood enough to agree.”

The shop had been formed before our wedding. I brought my masters. He brought sales contacts and $8,000. We each owned half the business. My master list had stayed outside that ownership split.

I had wanted that in writing. Nolan had laughed and said paper was my department.

I told Priya that.

“He was right about one thing,” she said.

She laid the returned pattern next to my tracing book.

“These marks help connect the copies to your records. They don't replace the agreement or the sales records. We'll need those too.”

She asked before making each copy. That small thing nearly made me cry.

From public business records, we found Pennon's mailing address at a rented office in Mishawaka. Sloane had signed its formation paper. That did not tell us every owner, Priya said, and she wrote a request for the ownership records.

“We won't turn a guess into a fact.”

I told her about the coat Nolan had bought Sloane.

“Did he buy you one?”

“He said mine still zipped.”

Priya looked at me for a moment, then returned to her notes.

We listed what I could reach without opening anyone else's account: my originals, shop invoices sent to me, the shared business records, and Lea's returned papers. Priya sent notices asking Nolan and Pennon to preserve records. She demanded royalty statements and an inspection under the agreement.

Jo filed my answer in the divorce case and asked for full financial records. She told me to keep buying food and to save the receipts.

That night, Nolan stood in the sewing room doorway.

“An audit?” he said.

“An inspection. That's what the agreement calls it.”

“You'll eat up anything we have left.”

“Then the books should be quick to check.”

He watched me square the corners of my copies.

“You don't know what you're pulling apart.”

After he left, I put the originals in a small rented storage box and gave copies to both lawyers.

At eight the next morning, Lea called again.

“Tessa, have you seen the tour announcement?”

She sent me a picture of a theater trade notice.

The Lantern Road would tour for five seasons. Pennon had secured its costume supply, with exclusive pattern development by Tessa Whitcomb.

I read the line three times.

Below my name were the words sixty new masters and guaranteed personal services.

The notice said my work had already been sold through the next five years.