The woman reached out and laid a hand on Mma Ramotswe’s forearm. When she answered, she spoke in a low voice, so that Mr. Polopetsi had to lean forward to hear what she said. This made the woman lower her voice even further. “Her parents, you say, Mma. You say her parents. I say her parents. But that girl, she thought that they were not her parents at all! She said that herself. Not to everyone, but she said it to me once, and to another lady who knew her mother. And to a woman in the Women’s Guild at the church. She said it. She said that she came from somewhere else.”

This revelation was greeted with complete silence. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke. “And was this true, do you think?”

The woman suddenly stood up, straightening her skirt and brushing imagined dust off her sleeve. She looked up at the sky. “It is going to rain, Mma. At long last it is going to rain.”

Mma Ramotswe glanced over her shoulder at the clouds that had built up to the east. They were heavy and purple, stacked in towering layers; so sudden, so welcome. “Yes,” she said. “That is very good. The land is very thirsty.” She reached out and touched the woman’s shoulder. “But tell me one thing, Mma, and then we will leave you to get on with your…with your resting. Tell me, was it true that this girl was the child of another lady?”

The woman laughed. “Certainly not, Mma. It is certainly not true.”

“Can you be sure?” Mma Ramotswe probed.

Again the woman laughed. “Can I be sure, Mma? Of course I can. I can be sure because I was there in the house when she gave birth. We had been friends since we were girls, and I helped her when she had her baby. It was myself and the woman from the village who helped at births. We were both there, and some other women too. All the women together. I saw that girl come out of her mother. I saw it myself.” She looked at Mma Ramotswe; there was something triumphant about her manner, the look of one who had laid a canard to rest. “And I’ll tell you something else, Mma. I saw the baby open her eyes for the first time—I was right there, as close as I am to you—and I saw the look in those eyes. It was a complaining look, and I said to myself, This one will do a lot of shouting. And, do you know, Mma, straightaway that baby started to cry and make a fuss about being born. That is the sort of baby she was.”