Kelly swung into a parking lot, her car sputtering a little as if cringing in the company of Audis and BMWs. She reached across the seat and grabbed her sample bag emblazoned with Rubicon Pharma. Branded, like all cattle were.

Kelly pulled down her sun visor to look into its mirror. As she dabbed at runaway mascara, she tried her best customer-service smile. It sagged under the grief of the day and placed another brick in her wall of resentment toward work. More than anything, she wanted to draw a big line through that day’s calendar square, to hold Milly, to be held by Daniel. But the choice wasn’t hers. In so many ways.

Gramps burst back into her thinking, regaling her with the importance of honesty—a crusade he’d championed in the final year of his life. His gentle voice, firm but insistent: The truth will set you free. And in those last few months, he had said things to her—things with such clarity—that she wondered where he was getting his information. Whispered secrets with Daniel out of the room, based in truth she dared not speak aloud.

The lid on her emotions bubbled as more tears welled.

With a deep sigh, Kelly pasted a smile on her face as she strode toward the clinic, the doors gliding open as she ran through the script in her head. The script that would promise a wonder drug for grateful parents losing the battle against a tiny screen for their child’s hands.

A script that was getting harder to deliver and impossible to believe in.

Three

The woman shook her frazzled brunette locks in disbelief as she clung to one end of the couch in Daniel’s office. Crammed into the other end—across pristine leather in the middle section on which no one ever sat—was a balding, broad-shouldered man bursting out of a tight polo shirt, wringing rough hands, and staring at the carpet.

Two sofa chairs sat unoccupied, and Daniel smiled. Mark and Laurie Wood might be far apart, but they were still together. A good sign. Couples who chose the single chairs came to him far too late.

Mark gave his halting take on a stalled marriage to the carpet. “To answer your question, things have changed.”

Daniel made another note, although he might as well have ticked a box. He heard that every day. The spark that brought this couple together had faded like their framed wedding photograph after years in the afternoon sun. He looked at the frames on his desk, captured moments of family happiness, his credibility to new couples. Gramps’s camera sat waiting for the last few minutes of this final appointment of the day to tick over.