Once she’s walked away from me and the door’s banged shut, there’s a dreadful silence in the bakery. The woman behind the counter stares at me. Then suddenly there’s a collective reclattering of spoons, a general and forced murmur. I look around, my stomach churning, but I know it’s not morning sickness this time. Every single person in the room has heard what Alex just said.

ALEX

It’s a short walk from the bakery to my work after lunch break, but I have to hustle: as much as I’ve dealt with the Ruth problem for now, she’s also made me late. I hurry into the elevator and press the faded button for the third floor.

As the elevator rises, clanking, I stare at the screen of my cell phone. No word from Chase, so whatever Ruth told him over breakfast can’t have been too disastrous. But Morris has texted me. That’s unusual. Normally he just catches me on the fly. I tap on his name and the sentence appears: Can you come straight to my office?

What has happened?

The elevator jolts, and the doors open for me, presenting with zero flourish the corridor to Family Services that I walk down every day, its walls, roof, and carpet entirely devoid of color. It’s like they’re trying to make the place as depressing as the work itself. The corridor is lit with strip lights that buzz as I pass underneath them, and there are cameras in murky semicircular globes, like squid eyes, suctioned to the roof. Family Services is the fourth of the cloned brown doors; once inside the office, though, it’s a barrage of rainbow stripes. It’s like walking into an explosion in a candy factory. There are pictures drawn by children in care on every wall, as if pinning up their work will surely slow the pace at which they replicate. I buzz myself in through the security panel.

“Is Morris here?” I ask the new receptionist.

“In his office, I think. He was looking for you about ten minutes ago. Can you tell him he forgot his toast again? He made it at seven a.m.”

Morris is the team leader, British, imported here from London when he married an American. We can’t always decipher him. He’s a stout man in his late fifties, divorced now, gappy in the front teeth. He makes toast every morning, often leaving it to grow rock-hard in the toaster.

“Has anything gone wrong while I was out?” I ask, and the receptionist looks at me like the question’s too vast to consider. “Never mind.” I head down the long corridor to my left. Social workers’ offices splay off to each side, little windowless cubicles, like hutches. Morris turns when I knock on the open door of his office.