"Or a release carrying a signature I never gave."
Her face tightened. "You signed plenty of things. You don't remember half your paperwork."
"Then let the records show which one I signed."
She stepped closer. "You know how much I've done for your business? The contacts, the cataloguing, the pitches you hated making. I gave four years to a future you kept postponing."
There was pain in her voice, and I didn't doubt some of it was real. I'd been slow to talk about marriage. I'd hidden inside the workshop when conversations became difficult. I could acknowledge those failures without allowing them to explain the removal of property I owned.
"If you wanted to leave," I said, "you could have left. If you wanted to sell your work on this collection, you could have asked me to pay you fairly. None of that gave you the right to sign my name."
She stared at me. "I didn't sign your name."
"Good. Then the records should settle it."
She crossed her arms. "Adrian is trying to save himself by making me look guilty."
"He may be. That doesn't make you innocent."
That line seemed to strike harder than anything else I'd said. She took a step back, looked at the suitcase beside my feet, and asked whether I was really leaving Chicago. I told her I was returning to Pittsburgh. She demanded the flight details; I declined to give them. Then she said we had to talk about the house, the furniture she'd bought, and the money she'd spent supporting my career.
"We will," I replied. "With inventories and receipts, not in a hotel lobby before dawn."
For the first time, anger replaced her tears. "Your problem is that you think being calm makes you right."