The courtroom carried that sterile blend of floor wax and aging files, the scent of a place where stories are dissected under humming fluorescent lights. It was a gray winter morning, sunlight filtering weakly through tall panes, stretching pale rectangles across the polished floor. From the outside, it looked like any other ordinary Tuesday.Inside, everything was one breath away from fracture.I stood near the back, gripping my daughter Ava’s small hand. She was three years old. Three. She still struggled with the word “spaghetti” and insisted her stuffed elephant, Benny, slept tucked under her chin every night. She wore a soft yellow dress dotted with embroidered bees, her curls tied into uneven pigtails I’d rushed through that morning because my fingers wouldn’t stop trembling.

“Mommy,” she whispered, tugging at my coat sleeve, “is the bad man here?”Yes,” I answered quietly. “But you’re safe.”I didn’t know if I was comforting her or trying to convince myself.At the defense table sat Marcus Hale. Thirty-eight. Property investor. Political donor. A man photographed shaking hands with officials and smiling at charity galas. Three months earlier, at 1:47 a.m., he had been inside my house.There had been no cameras capturing his face. No pristine fingerprints. Only fragments — a land dispute with my late husband, veiled threats, a shattered window, heavy boot impressions across our hallway. And my daughter, who had stopped speaking for days afterward.The gallery was crowded. Neighbors. Reporters. Curious strangers who enjoyed watching lives unravel.When Prosecutor Daniel Cross announced that the State would call “a limited child witness for identification,” several people chuckled — not maliciously, but skeptically.