Settled at her desk, with coffee Rachel Dawson wasn’t going to drink, Nancy asked gently, “Tell me what you’re comfortable telling me so all of us here can help you. I want you to think of this firm as your extended family. Everyone here works for the client, and it doesn’t matter which attorney is assigned to you. Do you understand that?”

“I can’t afford to be here. My husband is going to be upset when he finds out I…”

“Let’s not talk about payment right now. But for the record, we do quite a bit of pro bono work. I’m usually the one who makes that particular decision, so we aren’t going to worry about whether you qualify or not right now. Tell me how we can help you.”

Rachel Dawson fooled Nancy. Before she spoke, she gulped at her coffee and drained the cup. “I can’t have children. It’s me, not my husband. I’ve had every test in the book. I’m thirty-seven. My husband is thirty-eight. We both have very good jobs, but right now I’m on a leave of absence. We were desperate to have a child, but the wait was so long, and going outside the country didn’t work for us. A friend of a friend told us about a lawyer who arranged adoptions. We went to see him a year or so ago, and in the end what we did…what my husband did was donate his sperm to a surrogate. It was all legal. We paid the lawyer a hundred thousand dollars. I don’t know how much of that went to the surrogate. We paid all her medical expenses. I even drove her to the doctor’s when she had to go. She was a student at George Washington University. We bought her clothes, food, and paid her rent.

“She gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. We were overjoyed. I can’t tell you how giddy we were. We went into panic mode the day we found out. We had to redo the house—you know, make room for two babies instead of one. I guess I should tell you we had to borrow forty thousand dollars from our parents. Call us foolish, but we’d been saving for a college fund even though we had no children. We hoped that we would eventually be blessed. We’re savers, Miss Barnes.”

Nancy watched Rachel peer into her cup. She seemed surprised that it was empty. So Nancy reached for the cup and went to the kitchen for a refill.