The Promised Buyer Brought A Receipt And Changed Sides

Ada kept one hand on her floor plan so the breeze couldn't take it.

"He said you had agreed to retire," she told me.

"He offered me five thousand dollars to leave. I didn't take it."

Her face went still.

"He told me he'd already paid you."

I called June. She asked Ada to bring her papers to the office, preferably with her own lawyer. Ada made a call from the curb while I watched traffic move along Belmont.

I wanted to be angry with her. She had drawn a wall through my tuning room. But she looked at my closed door the way I had looked at the new lock.

"What were you going to open?" I asked.

"Dance rooms. Classes after school. Some evening groups."

"They would have liked the wood floor."

She rolled her plan slowly. "I didn't know anyone was being pushed out."

She showed me a photograph of folding chairs in the room she currently rented by the hour. Every Friday she had to carry them down a flight of stairs before the next group arrived.

"I wanted a place where we could leave things set up," she said.

I knew that wish. I had spent twenty years paying for mine.

I held the end of her floor plan while she slipped a rubber band around it. Neither of us had to fight the wind alone.

At two, we sat across from each other at June's office. Ada's lawyer joined by phone. Lucinda put an unused place mat under her binder, which seemed to please no one but Lucinda.

Ada's proposed purchase price was $620,000.

The $45,000 had gone to Dorian's company under a separate reservation agreement. It was to count toward the purchase. The receipt said he would keep it in a separate account and refund it if he couldn't deliver clear title and vacant possession.

"He showed us his appointment to handle the estate," Ada said. "He signed that there was no outstanding purchase right."

She pushed the signed statement across the table.

June read its date aloud.

"August twenty-seventh."

One day after escrow had reminded him that my purchase agreement still bound the estate.

I hummed without meaning to.

Ada looked at me.

"Sorry," I said. "There's a note I keep waiting to hear."

Lucinda opened NOTICE RECEIVED and set Dorian's email beside his promise to Ada. Two dates, one day apart. No raised voices could have made them say more.

Ada's lawyer asked for copies, and June agreed with my consent. In return, Ada gave us her full message chain with Dorian, including attachments.

One message said, "The old purchase arrangement can be canceled. Father left me control."

Another said, "Keene needs a small retirement payment. Possession is my problem."

There was no mention of my refusal.

"I don't want your building," Ada told me. "I want my money back."

Her lawyer sent a written demand that afternoon. June added Ada's sworn statement to our request for temporary relief and served the new papers through the proper channels.

Nobody asked Ada to surprise Dorian in a hallway or record him in secret. She had enough words from him already.

At home, I checked Neal's accordion one last time. The repaired F sharp sounded clean both ways, on the push and the pull. I closed the case and set it near the door.

Neal arrived with a bag of peaches from his sister's place outside town.

"Are you going to win?" he asked.

"I have good records."

"That wasn't what I asked."

I smiled at hearing my own words come back.

"I don't know what a judge will do. I know I paid."

He lifted the case. "Then I'll tell people that."

He had my permission to share the receipts showing payment, with the account numbers covered. I wanted the truth to travel, but I didn't need my bank details traveling with it.

By Monday, Dorian had replaced the CLOSED BY OWNER notice with one that said PROPERTY UNDER CONTRACT.

Ada sent June a photograph.

"Not with me," she wrote.

That afternoon, June called to prepare me for Tuesday's hearing. I would answer only what was asked. If I didn't know something, I would say so. Lucinda would explain her payment chart. The escrow officer had supplied a sworn declaration and copies of the original instructions.

"Will he be there?" I asked.

"His lawyer says yes."

"Should I wear a tie?"

"Wear something comfortable enough to tell the truth in."

I chose the blue shirt my wife had liked. I laid my apron across the green stool and left the tuning file in its pocket.

At eight the next morning, Dorian's lawyer handed June a new declaration outside the courtroom.

Arthur, Dorian now claimed, had canceled my purchase agreement before he died.

Attached was a single sheet with the shop's address at the top and a signature line I couldn't see through June's hand.