I left Douglas Hayes’s law office with the copy of the blue document folded up in my coat pocket.

By four o’clock I was pulling my sedan up the paved driveway of our house in Dublin.

The brass garage key slid three-quarters of the way into the front door deadbolt and stuck fast at forty-five degrees.

I backed the key out two millimeters, lined up the notch, and tried the lock again, but the hardened tumbler pin wouldn’t turn.

The frozen mud by the garage driveway crunched under my boots as I climbed the two brick steps to the front porch.