The Tour Producer Brought A Contract With My Name Attached

I printed the notice at the public library because our shop printer sent Nolan a record of every job.

Five seasons. Sixty masters. My name sat under those words like a hand pinned under a door.

At Priya's office, I laid the page across her desk.

“Can they make me do it?”

“An announcement can't put your hands to work,” she said. “Let's see what they were promised.”

She called the tour office with me beside her. She asked for the person who had signed the costume contract.

An hour later, Mara Keene arrived carrying a red folder. She produced The Lantern Road, a new stage show built around a traveling choir. Its first stops would be in Indiana and Ohio.

“Nolan said Tessa was shy about meetings,” Mara told Priya.

“I was busy making the samples,” I said.

Mara turned toward me. “He said you approved everything.”

She opened the folder.

Pennon had signed a $640,000 supply contract. That price covered materials, fittings, copies of my old patterns, and sixty new masters over five years. A separate page called my future work exclusive.

I couldn't even grade a school coat on the side under those terms.

“You paid already?” I asked.

“A $175,000 advance.”

My grocery card had been locked the week that payment cleared.

Priya put a blank sheet beside the contract and began making notes.

“Who signed for Tessa?”

“Nolan, as her authorized agent.”

Mara pulled out another page. At its bottom was my signature.

For one awful second, I doubted my own memory.

Then I saw the little dot after Whitcomb.

“That's from a shipping card,” I said.

Priya waited.

“I signed it at the shop last September. Permission for Nolan to pick up a crate of pattern boards. My pen leaked. That's why there's a dot.”

Above that signature, the page said I gave Nolan power to accept exclusive work and license all my masters.

The type was dark. My name was pale around its edges.

“Keep that copy,” Priya told Mara. “Please preserve the email that brought it, too.”

She didn't call it a forgery yet. She wrote down what I remembered and asked me to find the original card.

Mara covered her mouth.

“I booked rehearsal space.”

“I believe you,” I said.

That surprised her. Maybe she had expected me to fight for a place in a show I had never agreed to join.

“Can the opening still happen?” she asked.

Priya looked at me.

I liked that she did that.

“Someone else can make the new patterns,” I said. “I won't promise sixty pieces because he spent a check.”

Mara nodded slowly.

“What would you have charged?” she asked.

“First I'd need the dance ranges, the size list, and the fitting dates.”

“He said you could start from photographs.”

“A photograph doesn't tell me whether a singer can lift both arms.”

She uncapped her pen and wrote that down. It was the first note anyone had taken about my actual work all morning.

Before she left, she gave Priya the contract, payment receipt, and emails. One email said Nolan's wife preferred a quiet role and left money matters to him.

I had kept the shop's needle stock within three dollars for eleven years.

Apparently that had made me poor at numbers.

At home, I found the shipping card in my September folder. It named the crate, the pickup date, and the freight desk. No theater. No masters. No five years.

I placed it inside a clear sleeve.

Nolan came upstairs while I was labeling it.

“Mara called me,” he said.

“Then you know I saw the contract.”

“It would have saved this family.”

“By selling my time?”

“Our time. We're still married.”

I pulled the sleeve closer.

“You asked to end that.”

He leaned against the doorway and softened his voice.

“You're tired. Let me explain the deal tomorrow.”

“Explain the signature now.”

His face changed. It wasn't rage. It was the look he got when a buyer found a cheaper quote.

“Don't say things you can't prove.”

“I gave the original card to Priya.”

That wasn't true yet. It would be true at nine the next morning.

He looked past me at the folders.

“You think those scraps make you a businesswoman.”

After he left, I called Jo. She helped me arrange a room in a friend's duplex near Rum Village. I took my work tools, clothes, and records. I photographed what I took and emailed the list to both lawyers.

I left the shared furniture and the good dishes.

My friend Ellen set clean sheets on the narrow bed.

“How long?” she asked.

“Until I can pay for my own place.”

She put a spare key on the dresser without counting any days.

At six the next morning, a message arrived from the shop alarm service.

My access code had been removed.

One minute later, Nolan sent a picture of the flat cabinet standing open.

The drawers were empty.