The Demand Letter Reached Me While We Lowered The Moon

I read the letter on an empty stage while the choir's painted moon rested on two padded chairs.

There were three pages. My name appeared seventeen times. By the last page, I felt like someone I ought to avoid.

The letter called the folder part of a family historical collection that Garrick had loaned me for exhibit work. It said I had used his property to spread false claims.

I had never prepared the exhibit with him.

I counted the letter's pages again, as if the missing truth might be stuck between them.

My stage manager, Anika Bell, sat beside me.

"Do we need to take you off the fly rail?"

"For tonight," I said.

She nodded and reassigned the cue. I hated needing that. I would have hated dropping scenery more.

At home I spread my bank statements beside the demand. I had $2,614 in savings. My truck needed tires. For a minute, the $4,000 Garrick had offered seemed less like an insult and more like a door I should have used.

Then I pictured the glass case.

I called a Rockford lawyer named Nora Finch the next morning. Her first meeting cost $200. She asked me to bring the envelope too.

"Why the envelope?"

"Dates and delivery can matter. Also, people throw away things that turn out to help."

That was a language I understood.

Her office was upstairs over a vacant storefront. A space heater ticked near her desk. She read the letter, my permission sheet, and the exhibit versions without making a face for my benefit.

"Has he actually filed anything?" she asked.

"Not that I know of."

"We'll check. Then we'll answer the claims he made. No guesses about his motives."

I put down $1,200 toward her work, including the meeting. She wrote the amount on our agreement and explained when she would ask before doing more.

"I can't afford a war," I said.

"Then we keep this narrow. Who owned the copy, what you said, and what supports it."

She asked for an older photo of the folder. I almost said there wasn't one.

Then I remembered the basement leak.

In 2018, I had photographed everything damaged for my landlord. One picture showed my open closet, a wet shoebox, and this folder on the high shelf. The permission letter lay across its clear front.

Garrick's claimed loan had happened this October.

I found the original email where I had sent the leak pictures to the landlord. Nora asked me to preserve it in place and send her a copy with the attachments.

"That helps," she said.

It was the first thing anyone had said that let my shoulders drop.

She sent a reply rejecting the demand and asking Garrick to preserve his drafts, messages, and client claims about the flight. Mei received a copy with my permission.

I went back to hanging the moon.

For nine days, life became work, home, and waiting. I did not post the packing card online. Leo wrote his account at his own kitchen table. Ruth checked the date and signed only as a witness to his signature.

Chief Vale called Mei. She remembered rejecting H-441, but she would not claim to remember the minute on the clock.

"The card should tell you that," she said when Mei let me listen to a later call. "My memory isn't a time stamp."

She still had an old shop photograph. In it, I stood beside the bench, younger and thinner, with blue lacing cord caught around one wrist.

Garrick called Aunt Denise.

That evening she came by with a casserole and an argument.

"He says you're trying to ruin him."

"Did he tell you what the plate said?"

"He said it was a tribute."

I handed her the two exhibit drafts. She read them without her glasses, then put her glasses on and read them again.

"Why didn't you tell us back then?"

"I thought the shop report was enough."

She touched the scar on my thumb, where a theater clamp had caught me years later.

"Your mother would've wanted peace."

"She also made us put our names on our own homework."

Denise left the casserole. She took copies of the drafts.

Before bed, I made a plain list for Nora: the day I got the copy, each place I had stored it, and every person who had handled it that month. I left blank spaces where I wasn't sure. Filling them with guesses would only give Garrick something else to use.

On Friday, Nora called while I was checking a rope lock.

Garrick had filed a civil complaint in Winnebago County. He wanted damages and an emergency order making me hand over the folder.

"The hearing is Thursday," she said. "Bring the originals."