I feel safe when Lucy and Jimmy are there at the garage, and I think I could feel safe at Gregory's house." She hesitated. "I don't want to go back to the place where they took my drawings and told me not to talk about my brother. I know people there might have other memories of what happened. I just need somebody to listen to mine, too."
Judge Ward leaned forward slightly. "I have seen references to your sketchbook," she said. "Would you be willing to show it to me?" Sky turned to Martha, who nodded.
She handed the notebook to the court officer, and for several minutes the only noise in the room was the soft movement of paper. The pages contained precise motorcycle studies, portraits of people Sky had seen on buses, landscapes remembered from different placements, and an entire section devoted to the emblem Luther had drawn. Near the back was the little girl on an unstarted motorcycle, one foot planted firmly on the ground.
The judge stopped at that page. "What's this one?" she asked. Sky looked down at her shoes. "It's somebody waiting until she knows where she's going."
Judge Ward examined the caption beneath the drawing. "Not running, just waiting," she read. Sky nodded. The words felt smaller spoken in public, but they also felt true.
The judge asked one final question. "If the court approves a temporary arrangement with Gregory, what do you hope will be different six months from now?" Sky stared at the notebook for a while. She had expected a question about the garage, the group home, or Luther.
Instead she imagined a calendar in which the next month did not need to be survived one day at a time. "I'd like to know where I'm sleeping before I go to school," she said. "I'd like to finish my mural. And I'd like people to stop deciding what my brother meant to me without asking."
Martha rested a hand on the back of her own chair. Gregory looked straight ahead because he was afraid his expression would make the moment harder for the girl. Terry stared at the floor. Lucy had heard versions of that wish in fragments across weeks, but never so clearly. It was not a request for a grand rescue or a life built around motorcycles. It was a request for ordinary security, and that made it more difficult to dismiss.
Judge Ward took a recess to review the documents. Outside the hearing room Sky sat between Denise and Lucy, drinking water from a paper cup. She asked whether she had said too much. "You said what you believed," Lucy answered.
"That's the part that matters." Gregory stood near the end of the hallway, watching a clerk carry folders between offices. He was struck by how many families must pass through rooms like this every day, each carrying stories too complicated for a single hearing to settle.