My father smirked across the courtroom and said, “You don’t even have the money to hire a lawyer,” loud enough for strangers to laugh

So instead, sometime after midnight, I opened the old footlocker at the end of my bed.

Inside, everything was exactly where I had left it. Dress uniform folded in tissue paper. Medals wrapped. Service records sealed in order. A worn leather case. A brass compass in a velvet pouch. Documents I never imagined I’d one day need in a civilian courtroom in the county I used to dream about escaping.

I ran my fingers over the uniform. People always imagine uniforms feel heavy. They don’t. Not in your hands. Only when you live inside what they mean.

I closed the locker and understood, without saying it aloud, that if this happened, it was going to happen on truth alone.

The drive to the courthouse took forty-five minutes. Long enough for doubt to do what doubt always does.

You should have hired someone.

You’re not ready.

He’s going to win.

But training teaches you not to fight every thought. You name it. You let it pass. You keep moving.

The sky that morning was flat and gray, the kind of sky that makes roads and rooftops look pressed into the same dull material. I parked, sat for one breath with my hands on the wheel, then went inside.