I Kept Him Eleven Weeks

Six sample garments walked out of my studio. I found out where they went in one afternoon, from a freight docket, in my own fiance's handwriting.

They went to my sister.

I did not throw him out. I did not scream. I sat down at my own table and wrote a list of seven documents I needed his signature on, and then I put the ring back on and smiled at him for eleven weeks while he signed every one without reading a word.

He thinks I forgave him. He is wrong. He is a director of my company, and I am taking my company back one page at a time.

Then the letter came. A luxury group wants my name on their shelves in two countries, and all I have to do is promise them the name is mine.

It is not.

Nine years ago my father lent me his lawyer for free and I said thank you twice. The trademark has been sitting in his portfolio ever since, and nobody tricked me, and nobody lied, and I signed it myself.

My father will sell it back. He quotes me a price in six seconds, and the price is the exact amount I raised for my second shop, to the thousand, because I told him that figure over his own dinner table when I was proud he had finally asked.

So now I choose. The shop I built, or the name I was born with.

And the only man who tells me the truth owns a small factory, eleven people and a dying boiler, and he will not lend me a dollar.

Eleven weeks. Seven signatures. One name.