The Judge Asked Which Line Made My Drawer His Property

I sent Perry's voicemail to Nina and the investigator handling my interviews.

I did not call him back.

His question about going home was one I could not answer. By morning, he had his own lawyer. The lawyer arranged an interview and brought the route book in with him.

Nina told me only that much before we met at court.

"You don't need his story to tell yours," she said.

Keene sat outside the courtroom with his hands folded over a narrow leather case. He nodded when he saw me, a sad little nod meant to make me feel rude.

I looked at the room number instead.

Inside, his lawyer said Lantern Road had purchased a complete delivery service. My records, he argued, belonged with the purchased goods.

The judge lifted the order terms.

"Which line gives your client the maker's archive?"

"The materials were created in connection with our orders."

"That wasn't my question."

Nina offered the six paid invoices, the pickup messages, and the signed terms. Twenty-four urns at $320 each. All delivered. No delivery-monitoring service listed anywhere.

Then I took the witness chair.

My hands wanted something to shape. I folded them and let them be empty.

"Why did you keep photographs?" Nina asked.

"To prove condition and packing if something broke."

"Why the tiles?"

"If a glaze runs or a lid cracks, I need to find the other pots from that firing."

"Did you agree to sell those records?"

"No. The terms said I kept them."

Keene's lawyer showed me a photograph of the animal shelf.

"These figures were made with clay paid for through customer orders?"

"I bought my clay by the ton. These came from scraps."

"They're keepsakes, aren't they?"

"Yes. They have batch codes too."

"You understand my client runs a serious business?"

Nina stood.

The judge told him to ask about the claimed property.

He had called them keepsakes as if a thing could hold love or facts, but never both.

I looked at Keene.

He had thought I was a broke kid who played with leftover clay. He did not know I held the original record of every urn, with the dates and pictures his office could not quietly change.

Those records had been mine before I suspected him of anything.

The judge denied the request for immediate possession. Keene had not shown a right to take the archive.

That did not end the lawsuit. It did not put my files beyond a lawful request for evidence. Nina and his lawyer still had to work out limits so unrelated customer names and private glaze recipes stayed protected.

But nobody was allowed to empty my drawer that morning.

The clerk stamped a copy of the order for Nina. She gave it to me in the hall. I checked the date and case number, then folded it along the edge of my invoice folder. Keene had made his demand look official. Now I had something that actually was.

Outside, Keene stepped toward me.

"I gave you a chance to be respectable."

Nina stood between us before I could answer.

"Contact my office."

We walked past him to the elevators.

In Nina's car, I cried hard enough to lose a button from my cuff. She handed me a tissue, then picked the button off the seat and gave me that too.

"Things can be fixed," she said.

I was not sure which thing she meant.

Back at the shop, I finished the star urn. The customer held it against his chest before we wrapped it.

"You listened," he said.

That was worth keeping alongside the court order.

Two days later, the witness coordinator called. Perry's book had led investigators to records his official mileage sheets left out.

The crews had carried urn cartons because nobody questioned a funeral van unloading vessels at a funeral home. Payment photos let Keene check what each crew collected.

The route book listed the stop, the urn's batch, the money taken, and the amount turned over at the office.

It was one man's account. Investigators still checked it against the owners, messages, dispatch logs, and deposits.

"He doesn't get a free pass?" I asked.

"No. His conduct is part of the case too."

That week, investigators obtained search warrants for Lantern Road's office and computers in the warehouse Keene owned south of downtown. I learned about the search from the coordinator, not from a van at my door.

The following afternoon, Nina asked me to come to her office.

Two investigators were waiting. One placed a copied document on the table.

It was an empty-vessel certificate for Nora's second delivery.

The date matched K62. The route matched LR-17.

At the bottom sat my full name, written with the long hook I always put beneath the V.

"Before we ask anything else," the investigator said, "did you sign this?"