He slid the stapled printout across the desk and capped his pen with a faint plastic snap.

“Do you need certified copies for your legal records?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Three certified copies.”

Mr.

Henderson walked to the heavy copy machine in the corner, which hummed as its scanner light flashed twice across the glass.

I picked up the top original page and looked at the date again.

September second was the exact evening Mark sat at our kitchen table and told me we had to cut our weekly grocery spending to forty dollars because money was tight across the whole county.