Felix Found The Email Wallace Had Told Him To Delete

I knew the signature before I read the page.

The Z had a broken stroke. The end of Whitcomb ran into a printed line. I had signed that way on an inspection sheet when a cheap pen began to fail.

The inspection had happened the previous winter.

"I think he copied it," I told Mara.

"Do you have the sheet?"

I did. Wallace had emailed me a copy after checking the heaters. I forwarded that email without changing the attachment.

Mara sent back an image of the two signatures, side by side.

"That needs an answer," she said. "But we won't call our eyes an expert report. What else shows you didn't agree?"

"Every message where I asked for my racks."

"Good. And no payment?"

"No dollar. No sale. No meeting."

The transfer listed the frames as permanent drying fixtures. It also claimed I had given Wallace the Last Light name and customer files.

It said nothing about my fourteen remaining lease months, the $1,150 security deposit, or the fact that Wallace had been asking me to renew only six weeks earlier.

Mara added my denial and the old inspection sheet to the court papers. She asked Wallace's lawyer to bring the original transfer.

I went back to work.

That was the part nobody put in stories about standing up for yourself. The rain fly still needed seam tape. A customer still needed a quote. My checking account still had an opinion about groceries.

I had given $960 in credits to customers whose work I couldn't finish on time. The canceled new jobs cost another $1,480 in net earnings, after the supplies and labor I no longer had to spend.

I wrote down how I got each number. I kept the canceled orders.

Then I stitched until my shoulders went stiff.

A woman came to collect a patched tent floor. I put a light inside and showed her where no pinholes remained. She paid the $86 balance and asked when I would be back in my shop.

"I don't know yet," I said.

I hated saying it. I could usually give people a date, a price, and a clear answer about a repair. I wrote her payment in the book, placed the cash in its envelope, and finished the job I could answer for.

Felix called at three.

"He offered me some money."

My needle stopped above the fabric.

"How much?"

"Eleven thousand five hundred. He'd keep the first deposit. I'd sign that I walked away by choice."

I could hear traffic behind him.

"That's your choice," I said.

"He said I'd get nothing if I helped you."

"I can't promise what you'll recover."

"I know."

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he asked, "Did that transfer have a line about customer files?"

"Yes."

"Read it."

I did.

He let out a sharp breath.

"I've seen that page. But yours had a signature?"

"Yes."

"Mine didn't."

He came over with his laptop. We sat at a folding table beside three drying tent bodies while he searched his email.

Wallace had sent him an unsigned transfer as part of the sale packet. The page carried the same date as the signed version, three days before the email.

The message above it said, "I still need Zora's signature. Don't bother her about paperwork. I'll handle it."

Felix stared at those words.

"He told me to delete the drafts after I got the final packet," he said.

"Did you?"

"I put them in a folder. I thought I might need them for taxes."

We sent the full email to Mara, with the unsigned attachment. Felix brought the laptop so she could see it in his account. She had him write down what he had received and when.

He read his statement twice before signing.

"I feel stupid every time I say it," he told me outside her office.

"Then say what he did. Leave the insult out."

He tucked his copy under his coat.

"He took twenty thousand dollars for things he didn't own."

"That's a useful sentence."

We walked down the steep block toward our cars. A thin snow had started, catching on the dark windows above the shops.

Felix stopped at the curb.

"I'm not taking his offer."

"Get someone to read it before you answer."

"I will. But I already know I won't sign that I chose this."

That evening, Wallace called me six times. I let each call go to voicemail. In the last message, he said people who made trouble in Butte had a hard time finding space.

I saved it.

Then I sharpened chalk, counted zipper sliders, and packed my work bag. The next morning's hearing wasn't going to do my repairs for me.

At seven twelve, Mara called from her car.

"The judge wants the original papers on the table at eight thirty," she said. "Wallace's lawyer says he only has a scan."