In the end, it wasn’t the verdict that broke me. It was realizing how close I’d come to losing the only person who had ever been fully mine. For five years, I’d been climbing those stairs like a penitent, feeding an altar that didn’t even bother to look me in the eye. The door’s three-inch opening had felt like a boundary I deserved, a punishment for loving Marcus more than I’d loved my own good sense. Miss Hattie’s hand on my wrist, her whisper about the camera, had cracked something open I’d been too afraid to touch. When I saw the truth pixel by pixel, guilt peeled away and left something harder, cleaner, almost metallic in my chest. I hadn’t been paying for forgiveness. I’d been funding a performance. A whole family had stood just out of sight and decided my boy’s loneliness was a price they were willing to col… Continues…
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