The lower outer ring of the round stamp had a tiny but visible flaw, a chipped notch running through the letter E in the county name.

“That notary stamp didn’t come from the county clerk’s office on Main Street,” I said.

“No, it didn’t,” Arthur said.

“That notch belongs to the second notary stamp sitting in your father’s desk drawer at the Pine Street house.”

I moved the glass two inches higher, to the handwritten signature just above the seal.

The name written in blue fountain pen ink was Sarah Miller, a legal assistant who worked at Bradley Collins’s law firm on Elm Avenue.

The date next to her name was from three weeks earlier, a Tuesday afternoon when Ethan had been sitting in his tenth-grade geometry class.