When the gavel came down and the judge ordered Maya returned to the orphanage, the sound echoed like something final.
Two guards stepped forward.
Tank released her hand slowly, careful not to cause a scene.
That was when everything changed.
Maya stood up on her chair.
“Wait!” she called out, her small voice cutting through the tension.
The room fell silent.
She reached into the pocket of her pink dress and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. It was wrinkled, smudged, folded too many times. She walked past security, straight to the judge’s bench, and held it up.
Judge Harrison looked irritated at first. Then he unfolded it.
What he saw drained the color from his face.
His hands trembled. His breath shortened. The paper shook between his fingers.
It was a child’s drawing.
A crooked cabin. A leaning oak tree with one heavy branch bending toward the ground. A tire swing. A narrow creek. Beneath it, in uneven letters, she had written: “MY BAD HOUSE.”
But it wasn’t the house that unsettled him.
It was the tree.
Continued on the next page
