9 min read · 1,764 words
I told my sister she could leave our pottery business, then acted surprised when she wanted her money back.
I know that sounds bad. It was bad. I still had a reason in my head at the time, and that’s the part I’m ashamed of, because I knew my reason wasn’t the same as being right.
My sister Bonnie and I rented a small workshop in a river town in southern Illinois. We’d been making pots together for five years. I worked the sales table at weekend markets and answered most of the online messages. Bonnie made more of the pieces, handled the kiln, and fixed things when they broke. At least that’s how I’d have described it if anyone had asked. I didn’t say it out loud like that. I called myself the business side.
We did good work. People came back for our blue bowls, and there was a lady who bought a mug every Christmas because she said ours fit her hand just right. Bonnie would remember what glaze she liked. I remembered the price.
That was the split, except I slowly started acting like one half counted more.
The first time Bonnie asked to change our opening hours, I told her we couldn’t close early on Thursdays because I’d already posted the hours online. She said she had to pick up her grandson that afternoon. I said I understood, but the post was up. She changed her plans and came in anyway.
I remember that because she brought a bag of those little orange crackers she liked and ate them standing over the sink. The sink had been leaking for months. She was the one who fixed it the next week.
I didn’t know she was keeping track yet.
When the kiln started acting up, Bonnie paid for a new heating element, then for the electrician who said the wiring needed work. I thanked her. I also said we’d settle up after the holiday market, when we knew what we’d made. I said that kind of thing a lot. It sounded fair when I said it fast.
The holiday market did well. I paid myself back for the table fee and supplies I’d bought, then put the rest toward rent and clay. Bonnie didn’t argue. I took her quiet as agreement because it was easier than asking.
By spring, she asked me to sit down and talk about the lease.
She said, “I want my name off it.”
I’d been pricing a new display shelf, and I still had my phone in my hand. “Are you quitting?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, what does it mean, then?”
“It means I’m tired of being responsible for this place and asking permission to change the hours.”
I laughed a little. Not because it was funny. Because I felt accused and wanted to make it sound smaller.
“I run the sales table,” I said. “I’m here all the time.”
Bonnie rubbed the side of her thumb with her other hand. She does that when she’s trying not to get mad. “I paid for the kiln. I fixed the sink. I pay half the rent. And I still need your permission to close at three.”
I started to say the kiln was a business expense, which was true. I stopped because she’d paid for it herself, which was also true.
“Do you want to close the business?” I asked.
“No. I want us to decide together if you’re buying my share or if we’re changing the agreement.”
That should have been the part where I listened. Instead I felt that hot, stupid embarrassment of being called out in a place I thought of as mine. My name was on the online store. I handled the customers. I’d put in plenty of unpaid hours, I told myself. Bonnie knew that.
I said, “Fine. We’ll meet with the landlord and look at the numbers.”
She said, “Before that, list every repair I covered.”
I heard it as a challenge. I also heard it as a chance to prove she was overstating things. So I said yes.
At home, I opened the bank app and searched payments. I made a spreadsheet on my laptop, mostly so I could show that the numbers were messy and nobody had been keeping score. Then I found the receipts Bonnie had sent me over the years. Some were in text messages. One was a photo of a hardware store receipt with her thumb over the total.
I could have guessed. Instead I added them up.
The kiln was the biggest line. The electrician was next. Then the sink parts, the plumber’s visit, two shelves she’d built, and a replacement wheel after mine started wobbling. There were smaller things I’d forgotten: a new shop vac filter, a lock, bags of clay she’d bought when I was short on cash.
The total was $8,416.
I checked it twice. Then I checked the payments I’d sent her. There was one transfer for $300, marked “kiln,” and another for $175 because I’d remembered the electrician’s call. Together, $475.
I sat at the kitchen table with that number open on my screen. My first thought was that it didn’t include my time. I hate admitting that, but it was the first thought. I was already looking for a way to make the list less true.
Then I remembered Bonnie in the workshop, lifting the shop vac hose with one hand while she held the receipt in the other, asking if I wanted the paper or a photo. I’d said, “Just text it to me.” I never followed up.
I wanted the list, but I didn’t want to see it.
I brought the spreadsheet to the workshop the next afternoon. Bonnie was trimming a mug, and I set my laptop down far enough from the clay that she wouldn’t have to move her tools.
“I got the numbers,” I said.
She wiped her hands on a towel. “Okay.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t pay these. I’m just saying the business also owes for my time.”
“I know you work hard.”
I’d expected her to argue. That answer made me feel worse.
I tapped the screen. “It comes to $8,416.”
Bonnie looked at the total, not at me. “And you paid me $475.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I started explaining that some of the supplies had been for both of us, and I’d covered rent when she was sick last winter, and I’d spent whole Saturdays at markets. All of that was true. None of it changed the number on the screen.
She said, “I’m not asking you to pretend you didn’t work.”
I said, “I’m not pretending you didn’t.”
“Then why do I have to ask before I can change the hours?”
I had an answer ready. I’d posted the schedule. Customers expected us to be open. It would look unprofessional. I had said all of that before. In that room, with the repair list between us, it sounded like I was saying my choices counted as the business and hers counted as a request.
I closed the laptop.
“I thought you wanted out,” I said.
“I want a say.”
That was the sentence I’d been avoiding. I’d turned her asking for a say into her wanting to leave because it let me picture myself as the one being abandoned. It kept me from asking what I’d done to make staying feel like that.
We still met with the landlord. I almost canceled the morning of. I told Bonnie I had a headache, which wasn’t a lie exactly, but it wasn’t why I wanted to stay home. She said we could reschedule. I heard her being polite and knew I was making her do one more thing for me.
So I went.
The landlord, Mr. Hanley, had us sit at his little desk with the rent ledger open. He said Bonnie could come off the lease if I qualified on my own, but he’d need a new lease and a deposit. I didn’t. Not without using most of the money I’d saved for replacing my car.
I said, “I can’t take the whole lease right now.”
Bonnie nodded. “Then we need another plan.”
I’d been hoping she’d soften once we got there. She didn’t. But she wasn’t trying to punish me. She said she wanted the business to work, just not with one person making decisions and the other person carrying bills.
We talked through the options. I could buy her share over time, or we could keep working together and put the rules in writing. We agreed to split the unpaid repair costs from future profits before taking owner draws. We also agreed that either of us could change the hours, as long as we both had a chance to talk it through first. The landlord let us renew the lease in both names.
It wasn’t a clean fix. I couldn’t repay $7,941 right then. Bonnie didn’t ask me to. She said she wanted the number written down so neither of us could pretend it hadn’t happened.
I signed the new agreement at the workshop a few days later. Bonnie signed under me. I’d brought the old key ring, the one with the little brass tag that said “shop” in my handwriting. She asked if I wanted her key back.
I said, “No. Keep it.”
She didn’t thank me. She put it in her pocket.
We haven’t gone back to how we were. I still handle the sales table. Bonnie still makes most of the pots. But she picked the Thursday hours last week, and I didn’t change the post without asking her. That should be ordinary. It took me too long to get there.
The door was open while we signed, because the latch sticks unless you pull it shut hard. Bonnie left before I did. She didn’t close it behind her, and I let it stay open.