Josephine groaned.
“You remembered?”
“Security director.”
“We remember everything.”
“That is becoming creepy.”
They walked toward the elevator.
The private judicial elevator was functioning.
Josephine stopped before entering.
Then looked toward the public lobby.
Leah noticed.
“You taking the scenic route?”
“Maybe.”
Together they crossed the lobby.
People moved around them.
No one knew the date.
No cameras waited.
A young mother argued quietly with a clerk.
Two defense attorneys carried coffee.
A nervous defendant stared at the floor.
An officer helped an elderly man through security.
Ordinary courthouse life.
Josephine preferred it.
On the fourth floor, they passed the place where the old bench once stood.
Renovation had changed the corridor completely.
Different carpet.
Different paint.
A wider security desk.
No trace of the scene.
Josephine stopped.
Leah asked:
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She looked down the hallway.
Ten years earlier, people remembered two words.
Your Honor.
They called those words the twist.
The reversal.
The moment everything changed.
Josephine knew better now.
The real story was everything that happened before those words.
A woman entered a public building.
She gave her name.
She asked a legal question.
She told an officer not to touch her.
She was grabbed.
She pulled away.
She was called resistant.
She was struck.
None of that became wrong when Walter recognized her.
It had been wrong already.
The title only made everybody finally look.
Josephine turned toward Leah.
“Ready?”
“For what?”
“Court.”
Leah smiled.
“Always.”
Josephine entered her courtroom.
People rose.
“All rise.”
She took the bench.
The room quieted.
For years she had thought power lived in moments like this.
The elevated chair.
The seal.
The robe.
Everybody standing.
Age had taught her something else.
Power revealed itself most clearly when nobody knew who you were.
When no audience guaranteed consequences.
When the person in front of you had no title that frightened you.
When you could choose restraint without being forced.
When you could hear a question without treating it as rebellion.
When you could look at an ordinary stranger and decide their dignity required no proof.
Josephine glanced over the morning docket.
Then toward the people waiting before her.
Some wealthy.
Some poor.
Some accused.
Some wronged.
Some telling the truth.
Some perhaps not.
None of them needed to be a judge before the law owed them fairness.
She lifted her eyes.
“Good morning.”
And court began.