Garrett Sat Beneath A Clock While His Own Records Answered

Garrett wore a dark suit to his deposition. He brought no jewelry box and no soft voice for worried customers.

I sat beside Alma while the court reporter checked our names. A clock ticked above the door. Nora waited outside because her testimony would come later.

Garrett looked at my apron, folded over my bag.

“Still playing the humble craftswoman?”

His lawyer touched his arm.

The reporter asked him to raise his right hand.

After the oath, Alma began with a page he couldn't dispute: his contract with me.

“Are these your initials?”

“Yes.”

“Did you agree that Ms. Feld retained her original technical images?”

“That language wasn't meant for this.”

“What limit did you write beside it?”

He stared at the page.

“None.”

My fingers found the apron through the open top of my bag. Four silent beats. The reporter's keys made their own quick rain.

Alma moved to Nora's pouch receipt.

He admitted he had signed it. He admitted no cutting had been approved. He said he couldn't recall which pouch he had opened that Monday.

Then Alma showed him the shipping record.

“You described two sapphires as personal stock.”

“A clerical error.”

“Who made it?”

“I handle my own shipping.”

She let that answer sit before turning the page.

He asked for water. Alma waited while he drank. I looked at the page numbers in the lower corners of our copies. Once, his voice had filled the shop so completely that mine had seemed to vanish. Here, the reporter asked him to slow down whenever he spoke over a question. Every answer had room on the page. Mine would have room, too, when it was my turn.

The dealer had supplied the original sales photograph and his email exchange with Garrett. Garrett had requested a blue stone close to 3.86 carats. He had asked that the damage be easy to see.

“Why?” Alma asked.

“Training.”

“Who were you training?”

“It's a jewelry shop. We test things.”

“The dealer marked it for cutting practice. Did you give it to Ms. Feld for practice?”

“No.”

“Why did you then demand $18,400 from her for it?”

Garrett's chair creaked.

“She brought back the wrong stone.”

Alma placed the lab report in front of him.

“Your auction account offered the stone shown in her intake images. The broker received it from you. Where did Ms. Feld enter that transaction?”

His lawyer asked for a break.

We took one. No one ran after Garrett in the hall. No one needed him to make a grand confession.

When we returned, he declined to answer several questions on advice of counsel. The reporter recorded each question and each response.

The next week, the county attorney filed theft and attempted theft by deception charges. The filing described the two customers' stones and Garrett's effort to get my insurer to cover his demand.

I hadn't submitted that demand as a loss. I had sent my insurer the dispute notice, my denial, and the later lab report. Its adjuster closed the claim file without paying Garrett.

His criminal case moved on its own schedule. Alma told us the state would make its own decisions about it.

Our civil case kept moving, too.

Garrett's lawyer first offered $8,000 and a private apology. Alma sent back the two canceled work orders, my unpaid invoice, and the bills I had paid to defend myself.

“What matters most?” she asked me.

“The people he warned need the truth in writing.”

“And the money?”

“I need that, too.”

We agreed on $32,000 after three more weeks. It included my unpaid invoice and settled my claims for lost work, harm to my name, and legal costs.

I read every page before signing.

Garrett would dismiss his lawsuit with prejudice. I could discuss what had happened. The settlement would be entered as a public judgment, and payment would come through the sale of shop equipment already placed with a dealer.

The same correction had to go to everyone who received his accusation. It would say the recovered sapphire matched my intake images and that I had neither substituted nor damaged Nora's stone.

It would also appear on the shop's website for sixty days.

“He says that will hurt his business,” Alma told me.

I thought of my empty work calendar.

“It's accurate.”

Nora and Evelyn made their own claims. Their agreements covered their costs and the return of their stones when the evidence hold ended. Neither woman agreed to call anything a misunderstanding.

On a bright morning in April, I watched the court clerk stamp our signed judgment.

The stamp made a small, flat sound. It carried farther inside me than Garrett's shouting ever had.

That afternoon, Detective Voss called.

“He's entered guilty pleas,” he said. “The court has set sentencing. The prosecutor asked me to find out whether you want to speak.”