"Who designed the original?" she asked.
The room grew quiet. An older employee named Simon Greer explained that the collection came from a smaller design firm Sterling Living had acquired years earlier. The paperwork documented the transfer of the commercial rights, but individual design credits had been absorbed into the broader company identity. "We may have the source sketches in storage," Simon said. "Nobody's requested them for a long time."
Victoria asked to see them. Two days later, a pair of archive boxes arrived in her office, smelling faintly of old paper and cardboard. Inside were photographs, fabric swatches, production notes, and several large sheets of drafting paper with pencil lines that had faded to silver. She spread them across her table and began studying the early versions of the Arden cabinets.
The handwriting stopped her. Beside one drawing, the designer had written a note about how to leave enough clearance for an uneven household floor. Beside another, he had marked an edge detail with the instruction to keep the corners soft where children's hands might rest. The letters slanted slightly to the right, with unusually narrow capitals and a little hook on the final stroke of the word edge. Victoria had seen that writing on labels in Daniel's workshop, on measurements near his tool rack, and on the scrap of paper where he had written his telephone number.
She opened the project ledger. Daniel Brooks appeared in a list of junior designers who had contributed to the line, his name reduced to a small entry between material cost estimates and a note about the supplier. A dated photograph showed him in his twenties, standing beside the first prototype with a pencil behind one ear and the shy expression of someone pleased by a result but unwilling to take credit for it. Another photograph showed Claire at an informal studio event, her hand resting on his shoulder while he looked at the cabinet.
Victoria sat down. Sterling Living had sold thousands of versions of those cabinets, sometimes changing the finish or the dimensions, sometimes combining their design with other pieces. The intellectual property had been purchased through a legitimate acquisition before the line became profitable, and nothing in the archive suggested anyone had stolen the designs outright. Yet the people who made the original work had been erased by the process that turned their ideas into products, and one of those people had been quietly repairing furniture in a small workshop while her company profited from the lines he helped imagine.
She called Ethan. "Find the original design credits and contracts for the Arden Collection," she said. "I want to know who created it, how the rights transferred, and whether those people received the recognition they were promised. Please have legal review the agreements before anyone draws conclusions."
Ethan listened, then asked, "Is this about Daniel?"
"Partly," she said. "But it should have been a question before I knew him."
That evening she took photographs of the sketches to Daniel. She found him working on a desk for a local schoolteacher, carefully removing a water ring without destroying the surrounding finish. He looked up when she entered and noticed the unusual excitement in her face.