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have preferred her to be in the office with him to help if Mr. Katz didn’t speak Spanish. But Mateo and Dulce would get wild without her, and in truth, Luna had been through all the events of that terrible day so many times, she had no wish to go through them again. The front window of their apartment still had tape across it from where the police broke the glass and forced their way in. The police turned everything in the apartment upside down. They broke the clay bird Luna had made in second grade for her mother’s birthday. Her grade-school graduation photograph had disappeared entirely. In her dreams, she could still hear the police screaming in English and Spanish at her father: “Where are the drugs?” as Papi lay on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back, his eyes wide with incomprehension and fear.
    The Lake Holly police never admitted they’d messed up the address and raided the wrong apartment. Not that an admission or even an apology would have helped them now anyway. The raid turned out to be the least of their problems.
    Luna heard the three men’s voices from the waiting area. She picked out her father’s soft tenor, which rose and fell in fits and starts of English peppered with Spanish. She pictured him spilling out the contents of his envelope, the history of his thirteen years of life in the United States written on faded pay stubs and copies of money orders and handwritten receipts.
    Señor Gonzalez and Mr. Katz would have had to look more closely to see the real price her father had paid to work in this country. When Luna was six, a meat slicer took off the tip of his middle left finger at a food processing plant where he worked in New York City. He’d had to hail a cab and get himself to the emergency room after his boss told him to just “put a Band-Aid on it” and then docked him two days’ pay for his “carelessness.” To Luna, at least, her father’s scars were stronger proof of how hard he’d worked to make it here than any piece of paper.
    She wandered the waiting area while Dulce and Mateo played some sort of game where the black leather couch was a school bus. Along one wall were head shots of all the firm’s lawyers. One of them she recognized from ads on TV: Steve Schulman. He was running for Congress. Her father was right: these were important men. She hoped they could help him.
    â€œThis must be very hard for you.”
    Luna turned to find Señor Gonzalez standing behind her, holding out a glass of water. She hadn’t heard him enter the room.
    She took the water to be polite and mumbled her thanks. She didn’t want to say anything that could get her father into more trouble.
    Señor Gonzalez swept a hand toward the window. “Quite a view, yes?”
    â€œIt’s very nice,” said Luna. Actually, she preferred Lake Holly, with its wooded hills and green lawns. All she could see here were flat concrete boulevards and a jagged collection of steel and glass buildings.
    â€œYou’re—in high school?”
    â€œYes. I’m in the tenth grade.”
    â€œThe tenth grade. I see. So you are only fifteen?”
    Luna didn’t know what to make of the word “only,” so she stuck with the facts. “I turned fifteen in July.”
    â€œAnd did you have a quinceañera?”
    She shook her head, no. How could she think of asking Papi for a big fancy party in the middle of all they were going through?
    â€œI had a cake. My family put up streamers and sang ‘Las Mañanitas.’ ” Papi loved to wake them up on their birthdays singing the traditional Mexican birthday song.
    â€œHow nice,” said Señor Gonzalez. “I’ll bet you’re a smart girl. You look very smart. Very—mature.” He put a palm on Luna’s back and directed her closer to the window. She could feel the sweaty heat of his touch right through her dress—right along her bra