‘Here you go,’ I said, pressing a doll with dark skin and rosy lips into the arms of a slender woman who’d made her way to the front of the line. ‘Welcome to NewLife!’ The people in the group appeared to range from early twenties through late thirties; I pegged this one around twenty-eight or twenty-nine.
‘She’s beautiful,’ the woman whispered, misty-eyed, as though she were looking at a living, breathing baby.
‘Andrea, I’m India,’ another – a redhead – gushed, reaching for my hand instead of accepting her doll. ‘It is such an honor.’
‘Oh, I’m not Andrea,’ I explained, removing my hand awkwardly as the group looked on with curiosity, clustered on the front porch like a bunch of hens around a prize chicken. ‘I’m her cousin, Maeve.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said, flustered.
‘Happens al
