Chapter 106: Keep the Six
I had spent twelve years making six books; ending a marriage did not require me to erase them.
On Wednesday, a North Quay warehouse supervisor placed one copy of each Blackwater Rooms title on a steel table.
Every spine still carried Marian Crowe.
The termination option sheet offered immediate out-of-print status or limited continuation of the completed six.
Destroying remaining stock would have created the cleanest photograph and the worst reader remedy.
Bookshops had paid for copies under valid licences.
Readers had bought six completed stories whose central mystery already closed.
Oliver and I still received equal royalties under the existing title schedules.
None of those facts authorised a seventh book or future use of the name.
The supervisor scanned the first ISBN into the warehouse control panel.
Its record showed existing edition, existing print authority and ordinary replenishment against the current licence.
The same status appeared for the other five titles.
The optional final volume carried no valid delivery acceptance or warehouse identifier.
I asked the rights officer to display the boundaries before I chose.
Limited continuation would preserve existing editions and necessary stock maintenance.
It would require an accurate contribution statement on future reprints and catalogue pages. That statement would identify both collaborators without implying that either had approved a new shared manuscript.
It would authorise no new series title, successor, continuation, adaptation or final-volume extension.
It would not let either creator use Marian Crowe for an independent new work.
The old royalty schedules would remain fifty-fifty unless separately amended by both parties.
The warehouse could replace damaged units and fulfil authorised reprints of the six.
It could not create a seventh ISBN or classify an unrelated manuscript as a series book.
I selected KEEP SIX — LIMITED CONTINUATION.
The choice preserved books already made without pretending our partnership still had a future.
The supervisor applied a control flag to every title record. The supervisor explained that the flag would travel with every replenishment request, printer instruction and catalogue export rather than depend on one employee remembering our dispute.
It read EXISTING SERIES MAINTENANCE — NO NEW SERIES ISBN.
A second warehouse officer verified the six identifiers against the rights archive.
No Saltmere or Larkspur identifier entered the list.
No optional-volume file entered the production queue.
North Quay stored the signed option sheet, inventory scan and two-person verification record.
I received the completed title list and control receipt read-only.
Oliver would receive the same option result through his solicitor.
His consent to final termination terms still required a later deed.
My selection set the negotiating position; it did not sign for him.
I lifted the first novel and saw annotations from a life I would not resume.
The book remained partly his work and partly mine.
Keeping it available did not require calling either truth a marriage.
The cost arrived as a shelf image I could not control.
Marian Crowe would remain visible in shops while Grace Ellison launched separately.
I accepted that overlap rather than make readers and booksellers finance my emotional severance.
The rights officer closed the out-of-print option without marking the final deed complete.
The next unresolved section concerned the unaccepted final volume and its frozen obligations.
That question remained outside the warehouse choice.
At 15:12, my phone displayed a PageTurn scheduling notice through the participant channel.
The notice concerned the restored Midnight at Larkspur bonus episode.
It listed no private comments, user identities or detailed performance file.
It announced ordinary release at 09:00 the following morning.
My access would be limited to the same aggregate panel available under the project-comparison rules.
The six old books would remain in print under a no-new-title control.
The next morning, their replacement episode would return without my words.
I would be allowed to see only whether readers stayed.