Courtroom Number Four of the Cook County Circuit Court smelled like furniture polish and old leather and something else — something that had no name but felt like the slow erasure of hope.
Ethan was nineteen. His brother Nate was seven. They sat side by side on a hard oak bench, and Ethan could feel the bony point of the kid’s shoulder trembling against his arm.
“Ethan.” Nate’s voice was barely above a breath. He smeared tears across his freckled face with the back of his wrist. “This is just a thing we have to sit through, right? Like school? And then we go home and watch cartoons?”
Ethan kept his eyes forward and said nothing. There was no home to go back to. Their mother had been gone six months — no call, no letter, just a stack of eviction notices and an empty refrigerator humming at nothing. Ethan had been running on two jobs since she left: nights at the Amazon warehouse loading dock, mornings behind the espresso bar at a coffee shop on Wacker. He’d kept the lights on. He’d kept Nate fed and in school. But the state didn’t grade on effort.
“Lack of stable guardian income.” “Underage head of household.” “Unfavorable environment.”
Three phrases. One sentence. That was all it took.
“All rise,” the bailiff said.
Judge Miller entered and took her seat. She had a face like aged parchment and wore her glasses low on her nose, so she had to tilt her chin up to read and tilt it down to look at people. She did both. She read first.