The Judge Asked Soren To Find His Missing Purchase Receipt

At the courthouse, Soren wore a blue jacket I had never seen at work.

He nodded at me as if we were meeting a customer together. Then his lawyer guided him to the other side of the room.

Ruth had brought copies for everyone. I carried the originals in my steel box.

“Answer the question asked,” she told me. “If you don’t know, say so.”

I rubbed the scar across my thumb. Inside my pocket, the marble rested in its pouch. I left it there.

The hearing concerned temporary orders. The judge explained that she was deciding how to protect things while the case continued. She was not finishing our whole business dispute that morning.

Soren’s lawyer spoke first about the machines.

He said they had served Flatline from its first job. The company had insured them. Customers knew them as Flatline’s equipment.

Ruth agreed that Flatline used and insured them.

“Under a written lease,” she added.

She handed up the signed pages.

When it was my turn, I explained the plate numbers. I described building the sleds and buying the other machines before our partnership began.

“Were you paid for them by the partnership?” the judge asked.

“No.”

“Did you promise to give them to it?”

“No. I agreed to rent them to it.”

Soren’s lawyer asked about the $612 payment.

Ruth had the freight bill ready. She passed it across without a speech.

The lawyer read it, then moved to another question.

“You allowed the machines to remain in the partnership’s shop?”

“Yes. The lease required the company to store them.”

“For nearly three years?”

“Yes.”

“And you expect this court to believe you still owned them?”

“That’s what the same lease said each month the company paid me rent.”

I had worried that my voice would shake. It sounded like the voice I used to call measurements over a running motor.

Then Soren took the chair.

He said there had been a later understanding. He said business had grown and the arrangement had changed.

“When?” the judge asked.

“Last spring. Around then.”

“Was a price agreed?”

“It was part of being partners.”

“Is there a purchase receipt, a transfer, or a change in the books?”

Soren looked toward his lawyer.

“We didn’t write every conversation down.”

Ruth showed him an equipment rent payment from after the date he had given. Then she showed him a later email in which he promised to catch up on my rent.

He read the email twice.

“We used the word rent loosely,” he said.

The judge made a note.

Mira testified next. She confirmed that Soren had offered the machines as company property and promised he could transfer clear title. She also confirmed that closing had not happened and her deposit remained in escrow.

“Would you have signed that agreement if you had seen these leases?” Ruth asked.

“Not with that equipment schedule,” Mira said.

Nobody shouted. No one came through the doors with a last second secret. The clerk marked each document, and the judge turned its pages.

That slow part was worse for Soren than any speech I could have made.

He had always counted on people wanting to leave the room. He filled the quiet until they agreed to something. Here, the judge could sit as long as she needed. When he started explaining our bright future, she asked again for the date of the supposed gift. He gave the same loose answer, and the clerk wrote it down.

The temporary order barred either partner from selling or pledging the disputed machines. It required both signatures for unusual company payments and preserved access to the records. It allowed Alma’s existing job to finish.

The judge also told Soren that any storage claim would have to rest on actual proof. His demand email gave him no right under her order to seize the machines.

She looked at both of us.

“Keep the workers and the customer out of this dispute,” she said.

Outside, Soren stood beside a courthouse bench.

“Happy now?” he asked.

“No.”

That seemed to unsettle him more than yes would have.

“You’re going to get an old company with one customer and a shop bill.”

“Then why did you tell someone it was worth $186,000?”

His lawyer touched his sleeve. They walked away together.

I returned to Alma’s to check the finish as it cured. We had applied the coats over the weekend. The crew had followed the same plan we used before the sale ever existed.

Alma met me at the door.

“How was court?”

“A lot of reading.”

“Good. Reading got you farther than his talking.”

That evening, Ruth forwarded a proposal Soren had sent through his lawyer.

He offered me $8,000 for the machines if I signed a bill of sale dated before he had signed Mira’s contract.

The date was already typed in.