And Gerald sat me down and said the company needed one of us home, and it made sense for it to be me, because he was “better with the investors.”
So I stepped back.
I let him take Lakeside forward.
I trusted him to protect what we’d built, because we were a team, because what’s yours is mine.
Over the years, Lakeside grew.
Gerald incorporated it, renamed it Meridian Systems, brought in partners, moved into a glass office.
Every few years he’d have me sign something — “just paperwork, El, the accountant needs it” — and I’d sign at the yellow tabs without reading, the way you trust someone you’ve slept beside for decades.
I never thought about the box in the garage.
I’d forgotten it existed.
Gerald, apparently, had forgotten too — or assumed those old provisional filings had lapsed and been swallowed up by the incorporation.
They hadn’t.
Here’s what I learned when I finally opened that box and spent a night reading, and then took it all to a genuinely excellent attorney named Ruth Okafor:
