The Newark document was tucked inside the middle one, beneath a stack of tax returns, and I carried it to the window to look at the ink in natural light.

The blue of my signature stood slightly raised against the paper, the pressure marks of a heavy pen still sharp, and when I ran the tip of my finger across the final curve of the letter C, a tiny dark smudge of blue oil transferred to my skin.

The ink was fresh.

Not three months old.

Fresh.

I have been told that this is the moment people find hard to believe, that a thing so small as the oil in a signature could overturn a man’s confident account of events, and I understand the difficulty, because most people are trained to weigh a claim by how certainly it is asserted, and Jonathan asserted everything with total certainty.

But certainty is not evidence.