Ethan froze. The cocky grin was nowhere to be found. His voice cracked as he answered quietly, “Yeah… I am.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then spoke words that would follow him for nights afterward: “I hope you really understand what people like you do to people like me.”
A New Understanding
When his sentence was complete, Ethan returned to court. In his hands was a stack of handwritten reflections from the accountability sessions. Judge Harmon flipped through them until she found his final entry.
In shaky handwriting, it read:
“I used to think stealing was just me getting what I wanted. I never thought about the people I hurt. But now I do. I don’t ever want to be the reason someone else suffers. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
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