When the heavy doors opened, every head turned at once. Lily stepped in holding her foster mother’s hand so tightly her knuckles went white, dressed in pale blue with little dots and a ribbon slipping loose in her hair, a torn eared bunny tucked in her other hand like a life line. Behind her came Shadow, a large German Shepherd wearing a police therapy vest, claws clicking softly on the floor in the silence. The dog stopped near the witness chair and sat perfectly still, calm and watchful, and Lily froze as if the room’s size might swallow her whole. Then she saw Shadow’s face, and something in her shifted toward him like a tide finally finding shore. She let go of her foster mother, shuffled over, and pressed her face into his fur, the kind of desperate comfort that makes adults forget to blink.
