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.
I got up, splashed water on my face, and decided not to change. There was something about it that felt right. I had already lived through the night in that suit.
I could live through the morning in it. They were already seated when I pushed through the door. My mother had chosen a cashmere blazer the color of pale champagne.
It looked expensive in the way that requires no effort, the way that money worn long enough starts to look like skin. Her hair was blown out in careful waves, not a strand loose. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her posture that of a woman attending a function, not a legal proceeding.
My father sat beside her in a suit that had clearly been custom-fitted, a deep navy with a subtle sheen that caught the light when he moved. He sat the way men sit when they believe outcomes are predetermined, one arm stretched along the back of the bench, legs relaxed, phone in hand, scrolling. My brother occupied the space between them like punctuation.
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