Mai Learned The Sale Could Not Carry My Designs

At the next hearing, Mai produced the cashier's check from an envelope in her purse.

Forty thousand dollars. Payable to herself. Still uncashed.

The judge asked why it had not appeared on her sworn disclosure.

"I thought the form meant money in accounts," she said.

Anika pointed to the line for cash and cash equivalents.

Mai's lawyer bent his head toward her. She stopped talking.

Under the order that followed, the check and the $169,880 remaining in MX went into a restricted account held by counsel. That secured $209,880. It left the $84,000 with Gideon's company to recover.

I wrote both figures inside my binder. I did not write the word won.

We still had the designs to settle.

Gideon's lawyer claimed that Small Repeat had promised to sell its entire pattern library. If the deal failed, his client might seek damages for work and lost opportunity.

Anika asked for a meeting with everyone present.

We sat around a table in her office. Felix came with a ledger. I brought the metal box.

Mai stared at it.

"You're bringing old sketches to a business meeting?"

"They're on your inventory."

I took out the twelve master drawings. Each had a date, my name, and the little blue seed placed where two lengths of cloth would meet.

Then Anika set down the copyright records, the printing bills, and a copy of our marriage certificate.

The first collection predated the wedding. The studio agreement, signed years later, named me as the owner and the company as the licensing agent. Its attached schedule listed all twelve designs.

Mai had signed every page of that schedule.

"The business earned fees," Anika said. "The marriage received income. Neither arrangement gave the company ownership of these copyrights."

"I made those drawings worth something," Mai said.

"That work matters," Anika said. "It doesn't change this grant into an assignment."

Gideon pushed his chair back.

"We weren't buying paper. We were buying the right to keep selling."

"Those rights have limits," Anika said. "The licenses name Seng and require his written consent to assignment. He never gave it."

Mai looked at me as if I had built a wall overnight.

"You let me run everything."

"I let you speak for the shop. I kept the rights to my work. You signed that agreement with me."

"You never cared about contracts."

"I cared enough to keep them."

For years, being quiet had made me seem absent. That afternoon I understood the bargain she thought we had made: she could call something worthless when paying me, then valuable when selling it to someone else.

The same thing could not stay both.

Gideon reached for a drawing, and I moved the box between us.

"You can inspect the copies," I said.

Anika slid a numbered set toward him. I had made them that morning, checking every page against the inventory. Once, I would have handed him the masters because he sounded sure of himself. Now I waited while his lawyer counted the copies and signed a receipt. My work crossed the table under its right name, with a record of where it went.

Felix opened the exhibit attached to her agreement with Gideon.

It set aside $50,000 of the transferred royalties for his final studio purchase payment. The other $34,000 was labeled an earned transaction fee.

"Where are the approved invoices for that fee?" Felix asked.

"My client advised on the deal," Gideon's lawyer said.

"While buying it," Felix said.

The proposed $15,000 deposit had been due only after both sellers signed. I had never signed. No deposit had been paid.

Gideon had planned to use $50,000 from the hidden royalty stream to finish buying our studio, then keep $34,000 for arranging the purchase.

Mai would have collected a sale price while Gideon gained the shop and, they hoped, the designs.

I would have received some machines and been told to be grateful.

"You thought I was only the sewing half," I told her. "I held the rights this sale needed."

She stood up.

"This meeting is over."

Nobody stood with her. Her warmth was gone, and this time taking it away changed nothing.

After they left, I asked Anika whether keeping my copyrights meant I could claim all the recovered royalties.

"No," she said. "We will account for income earned during the marriage and seek a fair division. We aren't hiding your side of the ledger."

"Good."

I meant it. I wanted my name back on the right line. I did not need hers erased from work she had done.

That evening, the independent document examiner sent her preliminary report. The questioned signatures showed signs of the same copied image. She needed the source files to finish.

Anika had already requested them in the civil case.

The next day, Gideon's lawyer delivered a batch of emails. One subject line read: Seng Won't Sign.