Nora suggested a visit to the Blue Lantern workshop.
She made clear that I didn't have to go.
I had already seen enough documents to understand what happened.
But I wanted to see the place.
I wanted to know whether the business Daniel had concealed existed only in numbers or in people's ordinary working lives.
The workshop occupied two rooms behind a former furniture shop.
There were shelves of envelopes and wrapping paper.
A heavy printer sat near the rear wall.
A woman named Beatrice packed cards into cardboard sleeves.
She was nearly seventy and wore a purple cardigan with wooden buttons.
She greeted me without knowing who I was.
“Careful with that corner,” she said. “The floor dips.”
I stepped over the uneven board.
Anne Keller met us beside the packing table.
She looked nervous.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Mercer.”
“Claire is fine.”
She nodded.
We walked past displays of cards I knew better than I wanted to.
There was the robin.
There were the red boots.
There was a fox asleep beneath a flowering tree.
I'd drawn that fox after visiting a wildlife sanctuary with Emily.
She had bought me a notebook in the gift shop that day.
I looked at the same fox printed in seven different colors.
“How many versions are there?”
“Quite a few,” Anne admitted.
“Are the originals all mine?”
“Not everything. Some designs were commissioned from others.”
I was relieved that she didn't claim otherwise.
Anne showed us shelves of unsold stock.
There were orders waiting to be filled.
There were returns from retailers that had closed.
There were sketches sent by other artists under clear contracts.
I studied those agreements briefly.
They had payment schedules and renewal dates.
Someone had understood how to ask an artist for permission.
“Why wasn't I treated like that?” I asked.
Anne looked miserable.
“I didn't know you hadn't signed.”
I believed her.
She'd joined the business only three years earlier.
She wasn't responsible for the beginning.
She had still depended on the work it produced.
Beatrice approached us with a box.
“Anne, do these go out today?”
Anne answered.
Then she introduced me.
Beatrice's face changed.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“You drew the birds.”
“Yes.”
She touched the edge of a card.
“My granddaughter keeps one of these on her dresser. Her mother bought it after she passed her exams.”
I didn't know what to say.
For years, strangers had bought little pieces of my work.
Some kept them on shelves.
Some gave them to people they loved.
Some probably threw them away after a birthday.
I had not known any of it.
The discovery hurt in an unexpected way.
Daniel had not only taken money or authority.
He had taken the chance to know where my art went.
Outside, I sat on a low wall while Nora spoke with Anne.
Beatrice came out with two cups of tea.
She offered me one.
“You don't have to drink it,” she said. “The kettle tastes like old pennies.”
I smiled.
We sat together beneath a gray sky.
She told me about the workshop's slow months.
She told me how cards were packed and counted.
She said Emily always made sure wages were paid on time.
“She could be sharp,” Beatrice said. “But she wasn't careless with people.”
I stared into my tea.
People were rarely one thing.
Emily could be generous with an employee and disloyal to me.
Daniel could be a thoughtful husband and still deceive me for years.
I could remember a happy marriage without pretending that happiness canceled the harm.
Those truths didn't fit neatly together.
I was tired of trying to force them.
On the way home, Nora asked what I thought.
“I don't want to shut the place down just to hurt Emily.”
“That isn't necessarily the available or best remedy anyway.”
“But I won't let them use the drawings without resolving my rights.”
“Then we document that position.”
We discussed options.
A negotiated license could allow existing stock to be sold under a transparent accounting.
A sale or orderly closure might be possible.
Disputed past income would still require review.
No choice had to be made that afternoon.
At home, I opened an old birthday card Daniel had given me.
It showed a printed flower, not one of my drawings.
Inside, he'd written that I made every place feel like home.
I held the card for a while.
Then I put it back in its box.
He had meant some things he said.
I wished he'd also meant the promises about telling me the truth.
Before leaving, I asked Anne whether the other artists knew about the dispute.
“Only what they need to know about their own contracts,” she said.
That seemed right.
They had not created the problem.
They shouldn't have to learn private details about my marriage simply because their work appeared beside mine on a rack.
We examined one sample licensing agreement.
It specified a fee per design and a limited term.
It included a process for approving altered colors.
The artist could inspect proposed changes.
I thought about my fox under the tree.
The company had printed it in shades of pink and purple.
The original was brown and green.
I wasn't offended by the adaptation.
I was offended that no one had asked.
I told Anne I wanted to see every version still in use.
She promised to provide the catalog.
Then she showed me a small room at the back.
There were boxes of unsorted returns.
A handwritten sign read Check before recycling.
“Daniel used to insist we keep a sample of everything,” she said.
“Did he explain why?”
“He said the artist might want to see the collection one day.”
I stood very still.
The sentence sounded like a promise he'd made himself.
One day.
As though telling me would always be possible later.
I asked Anne to set aside examples for documentation.
We photographed the shelves.
We recorded the stock numbers.
Nora made notes on which designs would need specific review.
When Beatrice returned from lunch, she showed me how she packed a card without bending its corners.
She used a small cardboard guide to align each sleeve.
Her hands moved quickly despite the arthritis in her knuckles.
I tried packing one.
The card slid crookedly.
She smiled.
“Everyone starts somewhere.”
I tried again.
The second looked better.
It was strange to learn a small skill inside a business that had been built without my permission.
I wondered how many things had happened here that I'd never be able to reconstruct.
Birthday cakes for staff.
Arguments about orders.
Quiet cups of tea.
The business had a history that belonged to many people.
My part of it had been concealed from me.
Both facts needed room.
As I left, Anne handed me a sealed packet of sample cards.
“Only if you want them,” she said.
I accepted it.
At home, I spread the cards on the table.
They were not all beautiful.
Some colors were too bright.
Some lettering crowded the drawings.
But several made me smile.
I wrote notes in the margins of a catalog.
For the first time, I was reviewing the work as its maker, not discovering it as an outsider.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Daniel’s Brother Told Me About a Conversation I Had Never Heard and Did Not Want to Believe
The Last Photograph Emily Asked Me to Take Beside the Water Before She Told Me About Daniel
Part 9 of 16
