The School Receipt That Fell Out Of My Husband’s Folder

Nolan had put a red dot beside the grocery total.

“We need to get this down,” he said. “Forty-seven thousand dollars doesn't pay itself.”

I had bought rice, eggs, and the cheap oranges with thick skins. The total was $63.18.

“Show me the statements,” I said.

“I just showed you the total.”

He tapped his own sheet of paper. It had no bank name. Just a row of numbers and that red dot, as if I were a faulty machine he had marked for repair.

I was a thirty-six-year-old Italian American woman with olive skin, dark curls cut at my chin, and a small silver streak above my left ear.

As a planetarium projectionist at River Bend Sky Center in St. Louis, I spent my days making darkness useful. I could locate constellations on a ceiling full of burnt-out bulbs. At home, I had stopped trusting what I could see.

Nolan was a tall white man of forty, with neat sandy hair and a smile that made bad news sound like a favor.

He slid the oranges away from the edge.

“You understand projectors, Alessia. Let me understand money.”

Then he left for what he called a district sales dinner.

His folder stayed on our kitchen chair.

I lifted it to sit down. A receipt fell against my shoe.

It was from a school district near Cape Girardeau. The school had paid $9,600 for a three-year license to a show called Our Borrowed Night.

My show.

My name, Alessia Moretti, belonged on its opening credit.

I knew the title font. I had picked it at our old kitchen table, before Nolan and I married, when he was a licensing manager with good manners and a secondhand briefcase.

The receipt named North Meridian Distribution LLC as the seller.

Nolan had told me that show had earned $800 that quarter.

My share had been $320.

I sat with the receipt until the refrigerator motor stopped. In the sudden quiet, I could hear children playing in the next yard.

I did not call him.

I took a picture, then put the receipt exactly where it had fallen.

At work the next morning, a third grader asked whether dead stars stayed in the sky.

“Their light can keep reaching us,” I said.

“Even after?”

“Even after.”

I nearly missed the next cue.

There was a blank patch above the west side of the dome. One small lamp had failed. In the booth, I put a red dot beside it on the repair chart. That was what those dots were for: a place to check, not proof of what was wrong.

After the last school group left, I opened my storage locker.

Behind an old focus chart stood a flat metal box. It held my birth certificate, my mother's recipe cards, and the signed production agreement for my three star shows.

Nolan had once offered to scan it and clear out the paper.

“We don't need two versions,” he had said.

I had kept mine because his signature was blue and the office copy was gray. My father had taught me to keep the blue ink.

Now I laid the agreement under the booth light.

I had made the shows on my own time, using rented gear, before our marriage. The center paid me to run its dome. It had never bought my scripts, music, or master files.

The agreement said I kept ownership. Nolan received a limited seven-year right to sell licenses. I received forty percent of every licensing payment, before his expenses came out.

One paragraph covered money collected by any business he owned or controlled.

Another gave me the right to inspect the books behind every sale.

If he broke those payment terms, a written notice gave him thirty days to fix it before I could end his licensing rights.

I remembered asking for that paragraph.

“You expect me to cheat you?” Nolan had asked then.

“I expect us both to forget things,” I had said.

I read the paragraph twice now.

That evening, Nolan set a restaurant box on the counter. He had brought home half a steak.

“Thought you'd like this.”

“Did you sell Our Borrowed Night to a district near Cape Girardeau?”

His hand stayed on the box.

“Through a distributor. That's not income yet.”

“They paid $9,600.”

“Gross isn't profit.”

“My agreement says gross.”

He laughed softly.

“Please don't start reading contracts at me. We're married.”

I washed a fork. I dried it. My hands had begun to shake, and I wanted them busy.

“Who owns North Meridian?”

“A business structure. You'd hate the details.”

After he went upstairs, I searched my contacts for the accountant our center used when a grant account would not balance.

I sent one sentence asking for an appointment about unpaid show royalties.

At 8:14 the next morning, my phone rang.

“Alessia? Yvette Marchand,” a bright voice said. “Before we talk about what your husband told you, can you bring me what he signed?”