The letters were perfectly formed, the long sweeping line of the capital D matching my handwriting exactly, even down to the small, precise dot I always left inside the lower loop.
It was a perfect replica.
The knock on my apartment door came at twenty past seven the next morning, before the kitchen faucet had stopped dripping.
I opened it to find a short man in a salt-stained nylon jacket holding a clipboard and a thick manila envelope. He had a smudge of blue ink on his thumb and did not look me in the eye.
“David Miller?” he asked, his voice flat with the indifference of someone who delivered bad news for a living.
I nodded, and he slid the envelope into my hand before I could ask who had sent him.
“You have been served,” he said, turning back toward the stairs without waiting for a signature.
I pulled the stapled documents from the envelope and leaned against the cold wood of the doorframe.
