As she unlocked the back door, she heard a muffled flush from the exterior bathroom she shared with her clientele. The doorknob rattled and an overweight woman with long dark hair hanging from the fringes of a dirty white cowboy hat let herself out with a red-faced frown, hurrying around the corner to regain her place in the line.

Casey gave her Mercedes a fleeting look. Hubcaps and hood ornament had been stolen in her first week on Maple Avenue, and without the protection of a garage, the Texas sun had overcome German engineering, blistering the midnight-blue paint in several places, giving the car a leprous quality. Inside the filling station she bolted the door behind her and flicked on the AC unit in the boarded window. The burst of rank air that ran until the unit got going made her seek refuge in the outer room. There she breathed deep the smell of fresh-made coffee, then poured a cup.

Casey had known from the little red Fiesta out back that her two associates, Sharon Birnbaum and Donna Juarez, had beaten her to the clinic, but the coffee was proof positive. Casey sighed and surveyed the little storefront room where people had once purchased unhealthy snacks and paid for their fuel. It now served as the reception area for the Marcia Sales Legal Clinic for Women. The old single-bay garage, partitioned into three offices and a conference room by a friend from Habitat for Humanity, was where the women sat, as would a third associate if they could ever find another lawyer willing to work so hard for so little.

Casey's lawyers sat waiting at the plastic picnic table in what they called the conference room, poring over some documents, each with a laptop in front of her and each clutching her steaming coffee with two hands.