The hallway outside the courtroom smelled like wet coats, stale coffee, and the disinfectant janitors use when they want a building to feel cleaner than it really is. Families gathered in quiet clusters near the wooden benches, speaking in low voices that carried only fragments of sentences—things like “poor child,” or “I heard they found more evidence,” or “this one’s going to get ugly.”
A young reporter leaned against the wall near the bulletin board, tapping on his phone like he was hoping tragedy would hurry up so he could file a story before lunch.
I ignored all of them.
Inside that courtroom sat the reason I had driven four hours through rain to be there.
Her name was Maya Collins, and she was nine years old.
She sat in the second row beside her aunt, a thin little girl wearing a purple sweater that hung past her wrists. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor when she sat upright, so they swung slightly above the tile as if her body hadn’t decided whether to stay or run. She held a stuffed rabbit with one ear torn halfway down the seam.
