It was the most peaceful two years of my life.
Then, on an ordinary Tuesday morning, a man in a navy courier uniform stood on my front porch holding a rigid legal envelope with my name printed across it.
“Claire Mercer?”
I kept one hand on the door.
“Yes.”
“I need to see identification.”
That alone made my stomach tighten.
The envelope wasn’t thin. It had the weight of something that had already passed through several expensive hands. A red PRIORITY label stretched across one corner, and the return address belonged to Whitaker, Sloan & Pierce, a downtown Chicago law firm whose website practically smelled like leather chairs and seven-hundred-dollar billable hours.
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