Since when do you speak Arabic, Allegra wondered. And then she looked at Bill and thought she might know the answer to that.

The Syrian girl broke into a smile that transformed her face from plain to beautiful.

“Shukran,” Amira said.

“That means “thank you,’” Sina said.

“Thank you,” Bill echoed. “Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure,” Allegra said, wondering just where Sina had run into a pair of Syrians with mad design skills. To get everyone out of her office, she asked Sina if she’d done her year-end paperwork yet.

“I’ll have that for you this afternoon,” she said and quickly hustled the siblings away as if they were lost sheep and she was a border collie.

The minute they we...

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