She looked at me across that courtroom when the judge said it and she said, out loud, not shouting, “This is what you wanted.”

And the judge said, “Ma’am.”

And she sat down.

Part Twenty-Two: Curtis

He was charged in the January of 2023 with aggravated battery to a child, a Class X felony in Illinois, which carries six to thirty years.

In the August of 2024 — twenty-two months in — he pleaded guilty to aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2, and was sentenced to four years in the Department of Corrections.

With day-for-day credit and time served he did about nineteen months.