And she had learned the one thing she most wanted to give these clients, which was not merely a legal strategy but a certainty: that being unheard is not the same as being wrong, and that the truth, documented and patient, tends in the end to surface.

Sam set up a homework desk by the window.

Sometimes, after a hard consultation, he’d look up and ask, “Did we win today, Mom?” and she’d tell him, “We helped someone today.

That’s what counts.”

One afternoon she found him turning her old recorder over in his hands, resting in a velvet-lined box.

“Do you want me to throw it away?” she asked gently.