The bailiff’s voice cut through the low murmur of the Atlanta courtroom like a blade. “All rise. Honorable Lauren Lake presiding. Division Twelve, Fulton County Courthouse. This is a case of Wilson versus Butler. Please be seated.”

Judge Lauren Lake settled behind the bench, her glasses already perched on her nose. She had been doing this long enough to know, within the first thirty seconds of looking at a pair of litigants, exactly how deep the dysfunction ran. Today, she didn’t even need thirty seconds.

“Hello, Your Honor,” the young woman said. Twenty-five years old. Brown skin, long braids, a nervous smile that kept flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb. She wore a cream-colored blouse and gold hoop earrings, and she kept twisting her fingers together under the podium.

“Hello,” Judge Lake replied, her tone neutral. “This is a case of Wilson versus Butler. Mr. Wilson, you’ve opened this case to prove you are not the biological father of Miss Butler’s two daughters: four-year-old Zariah and nineteen-month-old Nana. You claim Miss Butler had sexual encounters with other men around each pregnancy, and you are certain you did not father either child. Is that correct?”

“Correct.” The man standing at the opposite podium was forty-eight years old, wearing a dark polo shirt and jeans, with the weary expression of someone who had been fighting the same fight for nearly half a decade. His arms were crossed. His jaw was set.

Judge Lake turned to the young woman. “Miss Butler, you say you and Mr. Wilson have four children together, and you are livid that he denies these two. You want Mr. Wilson to take responsibility and step up for these girls as he’s done for the other children. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” Her voice was high, almost childlike. “These kids is definitely his.”

Judge Lake removed her glasses and set them down. She had a way of doing that when she was about to go somewhere uncomfortable. “Mr. Wilson, I’ll start with you. You say you are adamant that these two children are not yours. Explain.”

Mr. Wilson uncrossed his arms and leaned into the podium. “When we first got together, she had the baby. She was a liar. Cheating all the time. Had multiple guys running out of the house. All on the internet. Go to the apartment, everybody talking about who she messing with.”

“So you say these kids aren’t yours?”

“No, they’re not mine. Not at all.”

Judge Lake turned back to Miss Butler. “And you say he’s absolutely incorrect.”

“Yes. These kids is definitely his.”

Judge Lake picked up a file from her bench and tapped it against her palm. “So let me ask you this, because it’s right here in my court file. Let’s just be honest about it. There’s a significant age difference between you, Mr. Wilson, and Miss Butler. You are forty-eight. She is twenty-five.”

The courtroom shifted. A few people in the gallery exchanged glances.

“Are you sure,” Judge Lake continued, “this is not a situation where you may feel like Miss Butler is out there doing her thing when really she’s not, because of the age difference?”

Mr. Wilson shook his head firmly. “No, no, no, no. Age don’t make you a hoe.”

Judge Lake raised an eyebrow. “Jerome, write that down for me. We’re going to remember that. Note: age don’t make you a hoe.”

Miss Butler giggled. Just a small one, the kind that escaped when you didn’t mean it to. Judge Lake’s eyes flicked toward her, and the giggle died instantly.

“Okay,” Judge Lake said. “So I want to go back and understand your relationship. Since there are two children here and you question paternity relating to both of them, I want to start with one child, and then we’ll move on to the next. We’ll make sure the testimony is understandable. So let’s start with Zariah. Can you take me to the nature of your relationship around the time Zariah was conceived? Where were you in your relationship?”

Mr. Wilson exhaled. “She was living at home with her parents at the time. One time I go up to her job to see her at work, taking some lunch, and I seen her get out of another guy’s car. I got a cell phone, and I seen that she’d been in a whole another relationship with this other guy. A light-skinned guy.”

“It wasn’t a relationship,” Miss Butler interrupted.

“Okay, wait, wait, wait.” Judge Lake held up a hand. “So I want to understand this. At the time Zariah was conceived, you thought you all were committed?”

“I thought so,” Mr. Wilson said.

“But we wasn’t living together,” Miss Butler added quickly. “So it was kind of different, though.”

Judge Lake tilted her head. “Oh, you can’t be in a committed relationship unless you live together?”

“I mean, I did love him, though,” Miss Butler said. “I really did. But—”

“No, she didn’t,” Mr. Wilson cut in.

“I did love you, but I just—”

“I mean, if you love me, you wouldn’t have never—I mean, get called at work with another guy. And I read the text messages, calling him ‘Daddy’ and all that stuff.”

“Yes—”

“I mean, and the list went down.”

“Okay, hold on.” Judge Lake leaned forward. “Well, let’s start at the top of the list and let’s go ahead and go down. I want to understand what happened. So what’s the first thing, and then take me through each one.”

Mr. Wilson’s voice was tight. “Her family didn’t want us to be together because of the age difference. I understand that. But she sending naked pictures of other guys. The same picture she sent me.”

Judge Lake turned to Miss Butler. “So you went through her phone and you saw the same picture she’d send you. Sexy pictures. She sent them to somebody else.”

“Yes,” Mr. Wilson said. “Even when we living together, she was doing the same thing.”

Judge Lake looked at the young woman. “Were you double-dipping on the pictures, Miss Butler?”

Miss Butler shifted her weight. “Triple dipping. Quadruple tripping. Quadruple dipping. Most mess with multiple guys.”

“And the pictures were being sent out to multiple guys?”

“Yeah, I did,” Miss Butler said. “One time I did. I can’t remember. Yeah, I did do that.”

“So you sent some sexy pictures to your boyfriend, and you sent the same pictures to multiple guys.”

“It was about like one, so it wasn’t that many.”

Judge Lake nodded slowly. “Okay. So she admitted to that. What happened at work? You said something about you caught her at work.”

Mr. Wilson’s voice dropped. “I was going to take her lunch. She worked late, so I was going to take her lunch, being a good man. And nobody couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her at work. I looks up, she get out of the car with this other dude and bump right into me. She got her head down and bumped right into me. That’s when she dropped the phone. I picked up the phone and I just pushed her out the way and left. She screaming for her cell phone. I got in the car and left, and that’s when I read the phone. That’s when she calling the other dude ‘Daddy’ and all that.”

“Oh, so you went through all the messages?”

“Oh yes.”

Judge Lake’s voice was quiet. “And what did you see?”

Mr. Wilson hesitated. His voice cracked. “Boy hurt me. Calling the other guy, ‘Daddy, I miss you.’ And ‘I want to eat your candy cane.’”

The courtroom went very still.

“What?” Judge Lake said. “He going to—no, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I remember everything, ma’am.”

“Oh, a candy cane.”

“Candy cane.”

Miss Butler shook her head. “I don’t remember all that.”

“Well, there’s so many guys,” Judge Lake said dryly. “You cannot remember.”

“I don’t remember all that.”

“Well, were you with someone else? Do you remember talking about their candy cane?”

Miss Butler sighed. “I know the guy he talking about. I mean, I did see him, and we did try to have sex a couple times, but we—”

Judge Lake interrupted. “How can you try to have sex? I think that’s possible. So you say you tried to have sex. What happened?”

“I mean, we tried to use the little condom, but we stopped, and it just—we didn’t—it didn’t happen. Like, he never—”

“Let’s say there was actual sexual contact, but he didn’t finish the act.”

“Yeah, because I ended up stopping. So we never really finished.”

Mr. Wilson laughed. It was not a happy sound. “So, Mr. Wilson, how did you even find out Miss Butler was pregnant with Zariah? Because she’s admitting to everything you’re saying.”

“Yeah. Well, we were still in close contact. I gave her another chance, and she talking about she wasn’t going to do it no more, doing the lying like she always would do. She a habitual liar. I thought we was being back together. So after we had the baby, I thought we was going to start all over brand new, and then she still did the same thing.”

“So tell me when you find out she was pregnant. Take me to that day. How did she tell you?”

“She was just talking about she missed a period. So I kept on telling her, ‘Go get the pregnancy test. Go get the pregnancy test.’ So she finally got it and found out she was pregnant. So I always in my back of my mind knew the baby wasn’t mine. I thought it was so many different men.”

Judge Lake turned to Miss Butler. “And so what did you say? Do you remember that day?”

“Yes. I said the baby is definitely his. Like I already knew it. Like the baby is his.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because we would always have sex like all the time without no condom. In that time, I really wasn’t really messing with anybody.”

Judge Lake’s voice was flat. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you even with him?”

“For real.”

“Because I do like love him,” Miss Butler said. “I just don’t know why. I don’t know. But I do really did love him, though. I actually did love.”

“All right. So you find out you’re pregnant with Zariah. You tell him you’re pregnant. He immediately says he has doubts. You say you don’t have doubts. You know that Zariah is his child because you just know.”

“Yeah, because I just know, because we would always have sex like all the time.”

“No, we didn’t,” Mr. Wilson said.

“Yes, we did.”

“All right. Now take me to her birth. What was going on?”

Miss Butler looked at the floor. “I didn’t have my phone at the hospital, so I would have definitely called him.”

“Oh, he wasn’t even there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Because my phone—I didn’t have my phone around that time.”

Judge Lake’s eyes narrowed. “They got phones at the hospital. They got ways to get in contact.”

“She had called me three hours later after the baby was born,” Mr. Wilson said.

“Wait a minute. You went to the hospital. You’re in a relationship, and you went to the hospital and had the baby without even letting him know?”

“Didn’t let me know,” Mr. Wilson said. “The other guy must been there.”

“Like I said, I didn’t have my phone.”

Judge Lake’s voice rose slightly. “What are you talking about? You didn’t have your phone? There was no one there with you with a phone? No one came to the hospital with you at all?”

“No, really. I was really the only one up there.”

“And so you couldn’t tell a nurse or anybody to call him?”

Miss Butler shrugged. “I mean, it wasn’t on my mind.”

“Because I wasn’t a dad,” Mr. Wilson muttered.

“So who’s on the birth certificate?”

Miss Butler’s story shifted. “That was a situation. I gave the nurse came in and asked me what the baby’s name going to be. So she gave the baby’s first name. Now, I at the time I thought it could be my baby. So I told her the last name would be Wilson, my last name. So the next day I go to the hospital because they took the baby to another hospital, come back here, go back there. The lady gave us the paperwork. It’s back Butler. So I asked, ‘How’s the baby?’”

Judge Lake looked genuinely confused. “Because you’ve been denying the baby. That’s why. So why would her name be your last name?”

“Because you say he’s her father,” Judge Lake said.

“I know, though, but he’s been denying her.”

“So Zariah is four now. What type of relationship do you have with her?”

Mr. Wilson’s voice softened. “I love the baby, man. I raised her from the time we was living together until I just couldn’t take it no more. I had to leave. The baby Zariah called me Daddy and everything. And it hurts me so bad because I know in my heart I’m not the father.”

He pointed at his own face. “When I seen the baby in the hospital, I looked at the baby eyebrows. I’m like, come on now. None of my kids got no eyebrows. They real thin like mine. Look at them eyebrows.”

Judge Lake glanced at the gallery. “They beautiful.”

“They thick,” Mr. Wilson said. “Look at that nose. Look at that. Come on. That’s not my baby.”

Miss Butler was squinting at him from across the room. Judge Lake noticed. “Miss Butler, you over there squinting, trying to figure out if it is or if it isn’t.”

“I’m positive,” Miss Butler said. “I’m like, I’m a hundred percent sure the kids is actually his. Like I’m very positive. So it’s no doubt in my mind.”

“Look at my nose,” Mr. Wilson shot back. “Look at that baby nose. Look at the eyebrow.”

Judge Lake held up her hand. “Miss Butler, you’ve been laughing. You’ve giggled. You’ve admitted some really difficult things. I will give you that. So what does it really feel like? You have two other children, and then you have these two children, and Mr. Wilson is saying, ‘I just don’t believe they’re mine.’”

Miss Butler’s face flickered. “It hurts. It’s sad because I tell him all the time. He keeps saying the same thing. It does hurt, though.”

“It hurts in what way?”

“Because like, he should know.”

Judge Lake turned to Mr. Wilson. “How should I know?”

“Because we always have sex like all the time,” Miss Butler insisted.

“You always have sex with other multiple men,” Mr. Wilson countered. “How should I know?”

“I’m a hundred ten percent, ma’am,” Mr. Wilson said. “They’re not my babies.”

Judge Lake looked at Miss Butler. “When he says, ‘But you have sex with other people too,’ you don’t deny that. You just say, ‘I have sex with you, we have sex all the time.’ You understand that it really just takes one time? It’s not about the quantity. You could have sex with him five thousand times and have sex with another man one time, and that one man be the father.”

“No, but we always end up stopping, or we either use the condom,” Miss Butler said. “So I know for sure.”

“So if Mr. Wilson is not Zariah’s biological father, do you know who is?”

“No. But the kids is his, though. I’m not thinking that. The kids is his.”

“So there’s no other possible father?”

“No. The kids is his.”

Judge Lake turned to Mr. Wilson. “If Zariah is not your biological daughter, how will you feel?”

Mr. Wilson’s voice was heavy. “I’m going to be sad because that’s a wonderful little child, and she shouldn’t be put through what she going through with her mother. I’m going to be real sad.”

“All right.” Judge Lake reached for the envelope Jerome was holding. “I’m ready for the results. I’m trying to be patient with you, Miss Butler, but you on my last nerve right now.”

“I—”

“This is all too messy, and you seem to be too comfortable with it.”

“It is messy, though,” Miss Butler said. “And I did say I want to do better. It’s not cute. It’s really not.”

“You’re still doing it today,” Mr. Wilson said. “Multiple men coming out of the house right now as we speak.”

“No, it’s not.”

“That’s why I took my kids from over there.”

Judge Lake opened the envelope. “These results were prepared by DNA Diagnostics and they read as follows. In the case of Wilson versus Butler, when it comes to four-year-old Zariah Butler, it has been determined by this court—Mr. Wilson, you are not the father.”

Mr. Wilson’s hand shot into the air. “Told you! I’m not the daddy!”

Miss Butler’s mouth fell open. “Oh my gosh. That’s crazy.”

“That’s not crazy,” Judge Lake said. “That’s Zariah.”

“Yeah, she’s not my baby.”

“You better go make some phone calls.”

“I’ve been telling you for four years,” Mr. Wilson said. “He is not Zariah’s biological father.”

Miss Butler stared at nothing. “That’s crazy.”

Judge Lake leaned forward. “Let it hit you. Come on out, because you’ve been in this fog for far too long. Yes, it’s sad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a young woman stand in a courtroom and be so cavalier about sleeping with everybody. And you supposed to be running around here taking care of this baby, and she’s four years old. She’s supposed to be learning her nursery rhymes, and all you can sing is eeny-meeny-miny-moe, who’s the daddy you don’t know.”

She let that land. Then she added, quietly, “Play with fire, you going to get burnt. That’s what we learned when we were kids. You’ve been playing with fire.”

Miss Butler shook her head. “I’m still shocked. I’m still shocked.”

“There is still a second child,” Judge Lake said. “And Mr. Wilson says he doesn’t believe he’s Nana’s biological father either.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Before we go through all the trouble of hearing a ton of testimony,” Judge Lake said, “why don’t you just be honest, Miss Butler, and let us know whether you really believe Mr. Wilson is Nana’s biological father?”

Miss Butler straightened up. “I really feel like she’s his. I do.”

“So is that to say that if you had to doubt one of the children, you really didn’t know if Zariah was his, but Nana you’re pretty confident about?”

“Yes. Nana is definitely yours.”

Judge Lake raised an eyebrow. “You said it about the other one. We just heard that same testimony, didn’t we?”

“But I did think both of the kids was yours,” Miss Butler said. “Like, we always had sex without no condom. So that’s why I don’t understand. But Nana is definitely yours, though.”

“It’s a lottery, ma’am.”

“No, Nana is definitely yours.”

Judge Lake sat back. “Let me compose myself, because I want to get the information on Nana. I do want her to know who her biological father is. And I’m disappointed, Miss Butler. I really am. You’re a mother.”

“No, she’s not,” Mr. Wilson muttered.

“No, she’s not at all. Don’t have a clue what being a mother is.”

“I do love my kids,” Miss Butler said. “I do want to do better. I actually do.”

Judge Lake’s voice was ice. “I will repeat: whether you are performing the duties of a mother, doing the best you can, or whether you are just simply wallowing in dysfunction that prevents you from being the mother you know you should be—you are the children’s mother if they came out your body. And I’m really disappointed at what I’m seeing from you. I know you’re not that old, but you’re old enough to know that this is not funny. No, it’s not cute, and it is unacceptable. If your children could sit here and truly understand the lack of respect and the lack of maturity their mother is showing as it relates to their paternity, their lives, they would be disappointed too. It’s not fair.”

She picked up her pen. “So let’s go on to Nana. Can you take me to the nature of your relationship during the window of time when Nana was conceived? Mr. Wilson, what was the relationship then?”

Mr. Wilson exhaled. “She was living in an apartment. I would come over periodically, check on the kids. We might have sex sometimes. But everybody in the apartment talking about everybody running out the house. I caught a guy over there one time. I knocked on the door. She trying to hide a dude in the bathroom. Multiple occasions.”

“It was not no multiple,” Miss Butler said. “You only seen one thing.”

“I only seen it one time. But everybody tell me. Everybody in all the apartments tell me.”

“I’m always in the house. What you talking about?”

“Well, that’s where you do all your nasty stuff at, in the house.”

Judge Lake held up a hand. “So. This is all during when Nana was conceived? You got all that going on? Hide men in the bathroom, men being over there stealing money, and every time you go over there, you’re still having sex with her?”

Mr. Wilson had the decency to look uncomfortable. “I know it. Well, I still love her.”

Judge Lake’s voice sharpened. “I mean, really. You’ve had so much to say about her, and I’m trying to figure out where you’re coming from.”

“I’m wrong.”

“Almost fifty years old, running around here with this little girl that don’t know whether she coming or going. In a hurry, going nowhere fast. And you steady having sex with her with no protection and potentially making babies.”

Mr. Wilson nodded. “Yeah. I thought about that, and I was wrong. I thought we could get back together because she always tell me we going to get back together. And I wanted a family. We already got my two kids.”

“So this is all going on when Nana was conceived. Yes. So we can pretty much say that there’s paternity doubt here too, if that was going on. Miss Butler, who were you dating other than Mr. Wilson? Because he even says you weren’t living together, so he was kind of coming and going, and you were also dating other people. Do you know definitively who you were dating at that time?”

Miss Butler hesitated. “I mean, I wasn’t dating, but I did see the guy like a couple times.”

“And you know who the guy is?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t have—”

“There’s multiple guys, ma’am.”

“No, it was like one guy that I can remember.”

“Multiple guys, ma’am.”

“We did try to have sex, but we used a condom, and like he didn’t even finish. Like he never—”

“That’s the story from Zariah, and that one didn’t pan out.”

“Yeah.”

“Multiple guys. So you just having sex with a whole bunch of guys that can’t finish.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Wilson said. “I’m the only one can handle my business.”

Judge Lake ignored him. “We’re trying to figure out if Miss Butler is going to handle hers. Who else? Who is it? With Nana. We’re at Nana now. We want to understand the facts surrounding her conception. Were you just with Mr. Wilson, or were you also with one or more men as well?”

Miss Butler’s voice was small. “I mean, I did see like—”

“Tell the truth.”

“One guy that he seen. That was him.”

“Well, I caught her with—”

“That was it, though.”

“Tell the truth.”

“So how did you catch her, Mr. Wilson?”

Mr. Wilson’s voice was hard. “I come knock on the door. She like, ‘Who is it?’ She didn’t know it was me. I look through the window. I seen the dude. When she find out it was me, I seen the dude trying to run to the bathroom. So I punched through the window. I got my kids in there. I got my son sitting on the couch looking crazy, looking all nervous, while she in the back room entertaining company.”

Judge Lake turned to Miss Butler. “The kids are out in the front room, and you’re back in the room with men.”

“Yes. Hold up.”

“It been she been with multiple—that’s the only time I caught her physically,” Mr. Wilson said. “I mean, everybody in the apartment told me she been with multiple men.”

“That’s a lie right there,” Miss Butler said. “You making that up.”

“All right. So you go and you punch through the window because the guy is running out through the bathroom, and you believe she was having sex with this guy during the window of time when Nana was conceived.”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Just been my past. Then the guys in the apartment telling me—”

“Nobody in the apartment,” Miss Butler interrupted.

“He just been thinking and guessing.”

“I ain’t been guessing.”

“People don’t know me like that. They wouldn’t lie to me. Man, your baby mama, man, she going to had this, do that dude. Everybody told me.”

“So, Mr. Wilson, what happened when you found out she was pregnant with Nana?”

“I told her it wasn’t my baby.”

“So you said, ‘Nana is not my child.’”

“Yes.”

Miss Butler shook her head. “I said Nana is his. I said Nana is his.”

“And when I seen the baby, I knew the baby wasn’t mine.”

Judge Lake looked at Mr. Wilson. “I mean, she kind of do look like you.”

“No.”

“So take me to the pregnancy. Did you participate in the pregnancy at all?”

“Not really. Not really. I didn’t.”

“You was actually there, though,” Miss Butler said.

“I’m really there. Um—”

“When I was pushing out Nana, I think he was there.”

“No, I wasn’t there. I was not there. I was not there when she had the baby. I was there when my two children was born.”

“So did you put Mr. Wilson’s name on the birth certificate as father on Nana’s birth certificate?”

“No.”

She knew the baby ain’t mine,” Mr. Wilson said. “Did you give the baby his last name?”

“No.”

“She knew the baby wasn’t mine.”

Judge Lake frowned. “So why did the other two get his last name? The other two, you gave the children his last name. Zariah and Nana, you didn’t. Why?”

Miss Butler shrugged. “With them two, he know that them was his. So I—you know, and he was actually there.”

“You say you just didn’t do it.”

“I just didn’t do it.”

“So Nana is nineteen months old. What kind of relationship does she have with Mr. Wilson?”

“None at all,” Miss Butler said. “He don’t really come by to see her. Nothing really.”

Mr. Wilson crossed his arms. “Can’t come by. Too many men running in and out.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“Can’t come by. I’m scared to go over there.”

“So how do you see the other kids? The two?”

“They live with me,” Mr. Wilson said. “I took them from her house and moved them in with me. I didn’t want them kids to be around that mess.”

“So you have the two kids with your last name. But the other two, they’re at Miss Butler’s.”

“I can’t take them. They ain’t mine.”

“Have you spent any time with Nana? Have you gotten to know her at all?”

Mr. Wilson’s voice was flat. “No bond with her at all. No fatherly bond or nothing. Nothing of the sort. I might have seen her five times in nineteen months.”

“And how does that make you feel, Miss Butler? You’re saying you really do believe he’s Nana’s biological father, but he doesn’t do anything or spend any time with her.”

“Well, ma’am, I do a lot for all the kids because I’m that kind of person,” Mr. Wilson said. “Her first birthday, I bought a birthday cake, bought her presents.”

Judge Lake shook her head. “It’s not about the presence. It’s about the presence of the parent.”

“Exactly,” Miss Butler said. “That’s what she talking about.”

“And I’m concerned that the babies didn’t get any presents from you, and you aren’t present for them. Not at all.”

“I was present.”

“So here we are. Nana is nineteen months. She doesn’t have anybody to say ‘Dada.’ She don’t even say that, because she doesn’t have anybody, right? Or who is it?”

Miss Butler’s voice was barely audible. “Nothing really.”

“Multiple guys,” Mr. Wilson said. “She don’t know. She got that baby confused.”

“Does she call anybody Daddy or Dad? Does she call anybody that?”

“No. I don’t think she can even say ‘Dad’ yet.”

“Because she confused, baby,” Mr. Wilson said. “Confused. She don’t even know. Baby don’t even know, ma’am. I’m telling you. Multiple guys running in and out, she ain’t no way she could know.”

Judge Lake looked at Mr. Wilson. “So if you are her biological father, what then?”

“She coming with me.”

“No—”

“I can’t have them babies like that. Them little girls. You can’t have no little girls around somebody like this.”

“But the only problem is you’re not on the birth certificate yet.”

“Then we can change that.”

“No, because it’s laws. Them kids, man, they don’t deserve no mother like that.”

“I said I want to do better,” Miss Butler said.

“So be quiet.”

“You’ve been saying that for five years, and she ain’t changed a bit.”

“I do know. You don’t even live with—”

“So, Miss Butler, what if Mr. Wilson is not?”

Miss Butler’s voice was desperate. “That just can’t happen. That just can’t be.”

“You said that the first time.”

“But I know for a fact she is yours. So that can’t be.”

“Have you thought about what if he’s not?”

“No. I know for a fact she’s definitely his.”

“You said that about Zariah. You did.”

“I know. But she is yours.”

Judge Lake reached for the second envelope. “Okay. We’ll find out in just a moment. We’re going to find out right now, because I’m about sick of y’all. Give me a result. I really am. This is just so raggedy.”

She opened the seal. The courtroom held its breath.

“These results were prepared by DNA Diagnostics, and they read as follows. In the case of Wilson versus Butler, when it comes to nineteen-month-old Nana Butler, it has been determined by this court—Mr. Wilson, you are the father.”

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Mr. Wilson’s face crumpled. Not into sadness—into something closer to recognition. The thing he had been running from for nineteen months had finally caught him.

“My little baby,” he whispered.

“Yeah, Mr. Righteous,” Judge Lake said. “You done missed nineteen months of that little baby’s life.”

He nodded slowly. “Well, I can make up for it.”

“Yeah. You better start making up for it now. Both of you all better start making up for some stuff. All this blessings both of you all got—I didn’t get to have my son till I was forty-one. And boy, I thank the Lord. I was so grateful just to get one. I know you struggling. And what I’ve learned now is, sometimes you can get so lost. If I shine the light for you, you wouldn’t even see it.”

She turned to Miss Butler. “You got to get some help, baby. Look at me. You got to get some help. Because when I look at you, you can barely look me in the eye. So I know what I’m saying is true. And I know even though you may play stupid, you’re not back here. You understand what I’m saying?”

Miss Butler nodded, her eyes wet.

“Let’s stop this game, because you’re losing, and so are the kids. Go talk to Dr. Jeff. Tell the truth. He don’t have no time for you to sit up in there and make up lies. And he don’t want to see you in there playing with your hair and doing your little stick that you do. Play it out. Go in there and tell the truth. Do it for your children. Do it for Zariah. And let’s see if we can help you and we can get this resolved.”

She picked up her gavel. “And do not put yourself in position to have another baby. I’m not having it. Do not put yourself in position until you learn how to mother and care for and support these. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I wish you the very best. Court is adjourned.”

The gavel fell. Mr. Wilson walked to the other side of the courtroom and stood in front of Miss Butler. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then he reached out and took her hand. She looked up at him, and for the first time all day, she wasn’t smiling.

“I’m gonna do right by that baby,” he said.

She nodded.

“Both of them,” he added.

The courtroom emptied slowly. Jerome collected the files. Judge Lake stayed seated for a moment longer than usual, looking at the empty podiums where two people had just learned something about themselves that neither of them had wanted to know. She had seen this before. She would see it again. But it never got easier.

She stood up, straightened her robes, and walked back toward her chambers. Behind her, through the heavy doors, she could hear Mr. Wilson’s voice fading down the hallway.

“I’m gonna need to see her. Nana. Today. Can I see her today?”

And Miss Butler’s voice, smaller now: “Yeah. Today.”

The door closed. The courtroom went dark.