“It wipes out our emergency fund completely.”

“Write the check,” Mariana said.

I made the check out to Vance Family Law and signed my name at the bottom right.

The balance in our register dropped to seventy-two dollars and fourteen cents.

We gathered the papers into my leather job binder and went out to the truck before eleven.

The drive down Indian School Road took twenty minutes through heavy construction traffic under the blazing noon sky.

Marcus Vance’s strip mall office smelled of fresh copy paper and cold herbal tea.