The courtroom door felt heavier than it should have. Not in any way I could measure, not in pounds or resistance, but in that full-body sense you get when you know that what waits on the other side of a threshold will change something permanent. I pressed my palm flat against the wood and gave it a steady push, stepping through before I could think too hard about it.
The room was lit the way all government buildings are lit, a flat, merciless fluorescence that makes everyone look slightly unwell. It turned the wooden benches a shade of amber that might have been warm in another context, but in this room, on this morning, felt more like a warning. I walked in slowly, letting my eyes adjust, letting the space register.
I had bought the suit three years earlier for a round of paralegal interviews that went nowhere. It was charcoal gray, structured at the shoulders, modest at the hem, and it still fit, though barely. I had lost weight since then, not in any planned way, just in the gradual hollowing out that happens when you work two part-time jobs and attend law school at night and survive mostly on crackers and ambition.
The fabric smelled faintly of dry-cleaning chemicals even now. I had taken it in the night before to a twenty-four-hour place on the edge of the city. I couldn’t afford it, but I needed to walk into that room looking like someone who had made a choice, not like someone who had been cornered.
I’d slept in it, too, after I brought it home. Not on purpose, exactly. I had sat down on the edge of my bed to go over my notes one more time and the next thing I knew, gray winter light was coming through the curtains and it was five in the morning.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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