They were not.

It was there in plain type, a name on the intake sheet, a name I had not expected and could not have prepared for, and the sight of it changed everything, in an instant, from a story about a stranger’s kindness into a story about my own blood.

I stood very still.

Maya shifted against my chest.

“May I use your phone?” I asked, when the woman returned.

“Mine is out in the car.” She slid it across the desk to me, and I dialed a number I had not called in nine years, and I understood, even as my finger moved, that I was doing two enormous things at once, and that they were bound together and could not be separated.