Garcia: You seem to be editing yourself a little bit.

Francie: I…well. A little. I don’t want to bad-mouth her.

Garcia: I want you to be honest.

Francie: The Russians are never easy to deal with. But both adoption trips—it was like Danielle was a different person than we knew in Texas. Distracted. Like…she had something better to do than shepherd us through getting our kid. It was just odd. Like when your doctor is normally really attentive and the next time you go in, he can’t find his stethoscope. Like that.

Garcia: Why would she be distracted?

Francie: I don’t know. It was certainly not the experience the other moms had with her. I heard them all—well, not Iris, but she wouldn’t talk much about it anyway—say how fantastic she was. Susan and Georgina never mentioned problems in Ghana or China with Danielle. And I remember, once, a mom talking like that, and Iris and I looked at each other like, Oh yeah? I asked Iris once: “Was there a problem in Russia?” And Iris looked at me like I’d dumped a bag of vomit on her foot. Seriously, just shock. She was hard to shock. I knew that from volunteering with her at the schools; you hear the things the kids say, and c’mon, she’d worked in entertainment. There was, like, a really painful moment of silence. Us looking at each other. And Iris said, “No. Did you have a problem?” And I told her about what we’d dealt with.

Garcia: Which was what?