The mail courier laid his heavy clipboard down on the laminate counter and handed me the long manila envelope without first asking me to sign anything.

Yellow pine pollen had stuck itself to the still-wet ink on the delivery receipt.

“You’ll need to sign the green card on the back,” he told me.

David came out of his office holding a thick pile of freight manifests in his left hand.

He glanced at his watch twice on the way to the front desk.

“Is that the second-quarter shipping audit, Natalie?” David asked, his words coming quickly.

“We have to optimize those dock schedules before the noon freight rolls in from Greensboro.”

I pulled the blue ballpoint pen out of the plastic cup beside the desk register.

I hesitated a moment before I answered him.

“No,” I said.

“It’s a certified legal summons.”

“Well, let’s keep the workflow moving,” David said, looking at his watch once more.

“We can’t afford any low-bandwidth disruptions on a Tuesday morning.”

I wrote my full name on the little green postal slip and tore the thin carbon copy loose.

In the upper left corner, the return address said Bellamy and Vance, Attorneys at Law, downtown, set in sharp black block letters.

My key ring lay on the counter beside the open shipping binder.

Next to the gray plastic fob for my sedan hung an old brass key, heavy and notched at the tip, that Walter had handed me four years earlier when Spencer and I first bought the townhouse.

“Who’s Thomas Bellamy?” David asked.