He had even prepared himself for the possibility that Judge Miller would reject him completely.
He had not prepared for that question.
Because Carter understood exactly what the child was really asking.
The boy wasn’t asking what happened when a child misbehaved.
He was asking whether staying together had conditions.
Whether one mistake could make a brother or sister disappear.
Whether an adult who promised to take all five would eventually decide that four were easier.
Whether love could be revoked one child at a time.
Carter looked at the boy’s hand holding his sister’s.
Years earlier, he had been the six-year-old gripping a younger sibling while adults decided where everyone would go.
Now he was standing on the other side of that memory.
He could not change what had happened to his own family.
He couldn’t gather those lost years back into one room.
But in front of him were five children who had not yet been placed into four separate cars.
The vehicles were still downstairs.
The order had not been carried out.
And for one moment, the question before the court was no longer simply whether a single twenty-nine-year-old man looked ready on paper.
It was whether these children would be given a chance to remain what they already were before the adults in charge decided that keeping them together was too difficult.
Carter turned fully toward the oldest boy.
The child waited, still holding his sister’s fingers, watching for an answer that would tell him whether this stranger understood the one thing he was most afraid of losing.
