My Wife Put The Workshop Deed Beside An Empty Bowl

Simone set a bowl of rice before me, then laid a deed beside it.

“Sign before it gets cold,” she said.

I looked at the bowl.

“The rice or the building?”

She slid a black pen across our kitchen table.

At thirty, I was a lean Black man with dark brown skin, close-cut hair, and a pale scar across my left thumb. I made boat canopies in our waterfront workshop in Beaufort, South Carolina. Most days, my shirt carried bits of white thread home.

Simone was a Black woman with smooth brown skin, a sharp chin, and neat braids gathered in a low bun. At thirty-two, she dressed for bank visits even when she stayed home.

That night, she wore pearl earrings and the blue blouse I had bought her.

“The oyster money is gone,” she said. “Storm repairs ate everything. We need to put the workshop under one name.”

“Yours.”

“The name with good credit.”

I read the top sheet. She wanted my half of the workshop for one dollar. We had bought it together five years earlier. Last fall, an appraiser had put its value at $186,000, with no mortgage left.

My half was worth $93,000.

The pen had cost more than her offer.

“Show me the repair bills,” I said.

She drew the deed back an inch.

“Darius, I handle those things so you can work. You get upset over numbers you don't understand.”

Beyond the window, the marsh lay dark. A shrimp boat moved along the river, its lights shaking on the glass.

I turned the cord around my wrist.

It was plain cotton. One knot meant a width. Two knots close together meant a bow curve. A small loop marked something I needed to check again.

Men who ordered canopies sometimes laughed at it. Then their new tops fit on the first try.

“I understand one dollar,” I said.

She sighed, as if I had made her carry something heavy.

“You sew. I keep us safe.”

Our oyster lease sat apart from the workshop deed. The lease belonged to Moultrie Tidal Farm, the small company we owned equally. Simone ran its books. Hired crews worked the beds while I stitched canvas and fitted clear side curtains.

I had asked about our winter sales twice.

Both times, she had said storm damage.

Yet I had replaced our torn dock awning myself. The only repair crew I had seen had fixed two pilings in January.

Their truck had stayed half a day.

“I'll read it at the shop,” I said.

“It stays here.”

I left the rice untouched.

At the workshop, I switched on the lamp above my sewing table. Salt had made tiny white stars on the window. The old walking-foot machine waited with a strip of blue binding under its needle.

Beside it stood the computer Simone thought I used only for canopy shapes.

When we opened the oyster business, I had signed up as the landing contact at the city's working dock. The dock office sent duplicate weigh tickets to that address. Simone got the invoices. I got the weights.

I had kept both the email files and printed copies since our first load.

Canvas taught me to save measurements. You could cut cloth smaller. You could not make a bad cut grow back.

I opened the winter folder.

Six tickets. Each showed a net weight of 3,600 pounds. Each carried our harvest lot number and the same receiving account: Nine Reed Recovery LLC.

Twenty-one thousand six hundred pounds.

Our agreed winter price had been three dollars a pound.

That made $64,800.

I put a loop in my cord.

The public business listing gave Nine Reed a mailing box in Port Royal. Its manager field led to an attached filing, but the page would not load.

I saved what I could see.

At ten, Simone called.

“Are you making this difficult on purpose?”

“I'm checking something.”

“Check your seams. Come home.”

After she hung up, I searched the shop inbox for Nine Reed.

A message had arrived that afternoon from the office handling our lease. It asked both owners to confirm the contact details on a pending transfer. Simone had already replied that she spoke for us.

I opened the attachment.

Nine Reed was the proposed new leaseholder. The next review was Friday morning. A harvest crew was listed to take oysters out at Friday's early high water.

The owner consent page held two signatures.

Hers leaned right, neat as always.

Mine had a tall D and a long tail under Moultrie.

I had stopped signing that way after I hurt my thumb three years earlier.

I checked the date beside it.

According to that sheet, I had signed away our lease Monday morning.

Monday morning, I had been forty miles away, fitting a canopy.