The small office felt even smaller under the harsh fluorescent light. The caseworker sat across from the tired single mother, flipping through paperwork.
“Miss Carter, your housing situation is flagged as unstable. We may need to reassess your custody arrangement.”
The mother kept her hands folded, voice steady.
“I know how this works. I just don’t want my daughter to know what that feels like.”
The caseworker opened an older file. Her pen stopped mid-air. The dates, the names — it all matched.
The woman she was evaluating was the child she herself had adopted decades earlier. The system she now worked in had once saved her — and now she was on the other side of the desk, deciding the fate of her own adoptive daughter’s child.
The cycle stared back at both of them in silence.