Wade had the endorsement waiting on the workbench when I came in Friday morning, a single page with a signature line beneath words I hadn't written. My name was typed above it. He slid a pen toward me. "Just sign it. We finish the print arrangements today, we're in front of people by the weekend, and we can get the purchase paperwork moving." I read the page all the way through rather than letting him summarize it. There was no condition requiring evidence before Owen's name went out. I laid it flat again, with the pen still on Wade's side.
I didn't pick up the pen. "I'm not endorsing anything that names Owen Pell," I said. "Not as a possible person of interest, not as an example, not in small print at the bottom of the page. I want my name off the campaign entirely, and I want every piece of contact information I control, the shop number, my cell, the business address, pulled before anything else goes out."
Wade's face didn't change much, which somehow made it worse. "That's not a counteroffer, Maren, that's just no." "It's not no to everything," I said. "I'll put together a plain appeal, Ellis's photo, the agency's number, what we actually know and nothing we don't. No accusation. No name that isn't his. If you want the anniversary to bring in work, that's a story that can still do it honestly."
He shook his head slowly, like he'd already run this conversation in his mind and knew where it ended before I'd finished talking. "Honest doesn't move people the way a mystery does. You know that. I've watched you chase this for twenty years, I know exactly what moves people, and it isn't a flat little appeal with nothing in it that hasn't already been printed a hundred times."
"Then we don't agree," I said, and the words felt lighter than I expected, like something that had been balanced wrong for a long time finally settling into its true weight. Wade picked the unsigned page back up off the bench, folded it once, and set it in the drawer where the buyout papers had been sitting for a week. "Then the offer's gone," he said. "I told you where I stood. I'm not changing it because you've decided to get particular about a man who quit working here twenty years ago."
I didn't argue the point further. I went to the shelf at the back and pulled down my impact driver, turning it in my hand before setting it in a box. The pin punches went beside it. I reached toward the next case, then stopped; that one belonged to the shop. "That stays," I said, more to myself than Wade. "I'm only taking what I bought myself." I carried the box out and pushed it against the front of the truck bed, then came back for the folding sawhorses. One hinge caught, and I had to set them down and work it loose with both hands. There was nothing dignified about it. I was leaving, and a sawhorse wouldn't fold. When it finally gave, I carried them outside too. The shared equipment stayed on its shelves, the van in its place, the account books untouched.
Wade watched me from the doorway without offering to help and without telling me to stop, and when I had the last box loaded he said, quieter than before, "You're really walking away from the buyout over this." "I'm walking away from putting his name under something I can't prove," I said. "The buyout was never worth that, Wade, no matter how many years you think it's owed to you." He didn't answer, and I didn't wait for one. I pulled out of the lot with everything I actually owned and nothing I'd come there hoping to keep.