I had forgotten, in nine years of casting him as the villain of my story, that he had also once been, and could be again, its ally.

I was about to find out how completely.

Chapter 11 — Evelyn Vance

“I’m standing in a county child placement center in Colfax,” I said.

“Right now, as we speak, I’m holding a fourteen-month-old baby girl.

She has Down syndrome.

Twenty families have refused her.

And I’m looking at her intake sheet, Arthur, at her biological mother’s maiden name.” I had to stop for a moment to get the next words out.