Two Locksmiths Arrived While My Attorney Explained The Next Step

I went downstairs with Ruth still on the phone.

"Don't stand in front of their van," she said. "Ask who ordered the work."

The taller man showed me a work ticket. Dolores had requested a lock change on the west service door. Under access notes, she had written, Vacant workroom.

Behind me, my sewing machine lamp was on. A customer's coat hung on a chair.

"This room isn't vacant," I said.

I showed him my identification and the trust plan. Then I offered him the phone.

Ruth explained that my right to occupy the room was disputed by the person who had hired him, and that legal notices had already gone out.

The man lowered his toolbox.

"We don't settle those questions," he said.

"Neither does a new lock," Ruth answered.

He canceled the work and gave me a copy of the ticket. I thanked both men. They hadn't known what they were walking into.

Dolores came through the connecting door as they drove away.

"That was my appointment."

"The ticket called this room vacant."

"You make every simple thing difficult."

I stood beside a roll of gray upholstery cloth. Three red tacks marked a test panel pinned to it. I had planned to spend that morning checking the opening for a customer's transfer handle.

"I have work," I said. "Send anything else to my lawyer."

"With what money did you hire one?"

It was such an honest question that I almost answered.

Then I shut the connecting door.

Ruth's office was in a plain building near downtown. Her waiting room held a fern and a low shelf of battered paperbacks. Nothing there had been chosen to make a visitor feel poor.

I paid a $2,500 deposit from my equipment fund.

"That's money for a replacement machine motor," I said.

I watched the payment clear on her screen. My machine had started slipping on thick seams. Until I could rebuild that fund, I would have to turn the wheel by hand through the worst spots.

"We'll track every expense," she told me. "Recovery isn't certain. I won't promise otherwise."

She asked what I wanted.

"My rooms protected. The rent demand withdrawn. The accounts Everett said I should receive."

She wrote those three things on a yellow pad.

"We can ask the court to enforce the trust and require an account. The lock order gives us a reason to seek prompt protection."

"Will I have to tell everyone about taking care of him?"

"Only what helps prove the disputed facts. You don't have to earn the gift again."

I looked down at my wrist. The metal end of my tape had left a square mark on my skin.

That afternoon, Ruth filed a petition in Elkhart County. The stamped copy arrived in my inbox at four seventeen. It asked the court to confirm my occupancy right, stop interference, and order the missing accounts.

It didn't call Dolores a thief.

"First we find out what happened," Ruth said.

Dolores hired a lawyer named Peter Ames. His first letter said she had acted in good faith to improve family property. It also said the $28,800 demand was being reviewed.

I filed that beside the locksmith ticket.

Nine days later, Nora Finch brought a cardboard box to my door.

Nora kept the company's books. She had worked at Clearspan since before Micah and I married. Her sleeves always had pencil marks near the cuffs.

"Mrs. Baines told me to deliver these," she said. "Her lawyer's sending the formal answer."

"Do you want coffee?"

"I should get back."

But she didn't move.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Read the property names carefully."

Then she left.

The box held annual summaries and company ledgers. No bank statements. No invoices behind the trust expenses.

I spread the pages across my table after clearing away the gray cloth. Ruth joined me by video call.

"There's legitimate rent on the east showroom," she said. "Six thousand a month. Dolores owns that building personally, according to the schedule."

"And the west building?"

"Listed as a trust asset."

I turned another page.

There was a second rent line: West Suite Lease, D. Baines, $4,200.

It appeared each month. I counted twelve entries, then twelve more, then another twelve.

Thirty-six payments.

I entered them into my calculator twice.

"A hundred fifty-one thousand, two hundred dollars," I said.

Ruth stopped turning her pages.

"Paid to Dolores personally?"

"That's what the ledger says."

The west suites were the fitting room, the parts room, and the old office. Everett had bought them with the brick building long before I met his son.

My phone lit up beside the calculator.

Dolores had sent one message: "Stop reading things you don't understand."