JUDGE DESALVO CALLS for a ten-minute break. I put down my knapsack, a Guatemalan weave, and startwashing my hands when the door to one of the bathroom stalls opens. Anna comes out, hesitating for just amoment. Then she turns on the tap beside me.

“Hey,” I say.

Anna goes to dry her hands under the blower. The air doesn’t feed out, not reading the sensor of her palm forsome reason. She waves her fingers beneath the machine again, then stares at them, as if trying to make surethat she’s not invisible. She bangs on the metal.

When I lean over and wave a hand beneath it, hot air breathes into my palm. We share this small warmth,hobos around a kettle-bellied fire. “Campbell tells me you don’t want to testify.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Anna says.

“Well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”

She leans against the bathroom wall and crosses her arms. “Who died and made you Confucius?” Anna turnsaway, then reaches down to pick up my knapsack for me. “I like this. All the colors.”

I take it and slip it over my shoulder. “I saw old women weaving them, when I was in South America. It takestwenty spools of thread to make this pattern.”

“Truth’s like that,” Anna says, or it’s what I think she says, but by then she has left the room.

I am watching Campbell’s hands. They move around a lot while he is talking; he almost seems to use them topunctuate whatever he’s saying. But they’re trembling a little, too, and I attribute this to the fact that hedoesn’t know what I’m going to say. “As the guardian ad litem,” he asks, “what are your recommendations inthis case?”

I take a deep breath and look at Anna. “What I see here is a young woman who has spent her life feeling anenormous responsibility for her sister’s well-being. In fact, she knows she was brought into this world tocarry that responsibility.” I glance at Sara, sitting at her table. “I think that this family, when they conceivedAnna, had the best of intentions. They wanted to save their older daughter; they believed Anna would be awelcome addition to the family—not just because of what she would provide genetically, but also becausethey wanted to love her and watch her grow up well.”

Then I turn to Campbell. “I also understand completely how, in this family, it became critical to do anythingthat was humanly possible to save Kate. When you love someone, you’ll do anything you can to keep themwith you.”

As a little girl, I used to wake up in the middle of the night remembering my wildest dreams—I was flying; Iwas locked in a chocolate factory; I was queen of a Caribbean isle. I would wake with the smell of frangipaniin my hair or clouds caught in the hem of my nightgown until I realized that I was somewhere different. Andno matter how hard I tried, I might fall asleep again but I could not will myself back into the fabric of thatdream I’d been having.

Once, during the night Campbell and I spent together, I woke up in his arms to find him still sleeping. Itraced the geography of his face: from the cliff of his cheekbone to the whirlpool of his ear to the laugh linesravined ............