She talks about mortgage deeds and percentages, numbers that swim in my head. “I know you’re worried about your son. I’m sure your sister will keep an eye on him.”

A sob swells like a song in my throat. I think about my sister’s home, where her boys talk back to their dad when he tells them to take out the trash. Where dinner is not a conversation but take-out Chinese with the television blaring. I think about Edison texting me at work, things like Reading Lolita 4 AP Eng. Nabokov = srsly messed up dude.

“So I stay here?” I ask.

“You’ll be taken to the prison.”

“Prison?” A chill runs down my spine. “But I thought I got bail?”

“You did. But the wheels of justice move exceedingly slow, and you have to stay until the bail is processed.”

Suddenly a guard I haven’t seen before appears at the door of the cell. “Coffee klatch is over, ladies,” he says.

Kennedy looks at me, her words fast and fierce like bullets. “Don’t talk about your charges. People are going to try to work a deal by prying information out of you. Don’t trust anyone.”

Including you? I wonder.

The guard opens the door of the cell and tells me to hold out my arms. There are those shackles and chains again. “Is that really necessary?” Kennedy asks.

“I don’t make the rules,” the guard says.

I am led down another hallway to a loading dock, where a van is waiting. Inside is another woman in chains. She’s wearing a tight dress and glitter eyeliner and has a weave that reaches halfway down her back. “You like what you see?” she asks, and I immediately avert my eyes.

The sheriff climbs into the front seat of the van and starts the engine.

“Officer,” the woman calls. “I’m a girl who loves her jewelry, but these bracelets are cramping my style.”

When he doesn’t respond, she rolls her eyes. “I’m Liza,” she says. “Liza Lott.”

I can’t help it; I laugh. “That’s really your name?”

“It better be, since I picked it. I like it so much better than…Bruce.” She purses her lips, staring at me, waiting for my reaction. My eyes move from her large manicured hands to her stunning face. If she’s expecting me to be shocked, she has another thing coming. I’m a nurse. I have literally seen it all, including a trans man who became pregnant when his wife was infertile, and a woman with two vaginas.

I meet her gaze, refusing to be intimidated. “I’m Ruth.”

“You get your Subway sandwich, Ruth?”

“What?”

“The food, sugar. It’s so much better at court than in jail, am I right?”

I shake my head. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Me, I should have a punch card. You know, the kind where you get a free coffee or a tiny tube of mascara at your tenth visit.” She grins. “What are you in for?”

“I wish I knew,” I say, before I can remember not to.

“What the fuck, girl? You were in the courtroom, you were arraigned,” Liza replies. “You didn’t hear what you were charged with?”

I turn away, focusing on the scenery out the window. “My lawyer told me I shouldn’t talk to anyone about that.”

“Well.” She sniffs. “Pardon me, Your Majesty.”

In the rearview mirror, the sheriff’s eyes appear, sharp and blue. “She’s in for murder,” he says, and none of us speak for the rest of the ride.

—

WHEN I APPLIED to Yale Nursing School, Mama asked her pastor to say an extra prayer for me, in the hope that God could sway the admissions committee if my transcript from college could not. I remember being mortified as I sat in church beside her, as the congregation lifted their spirits and their voices heavenward on my behalf. There were people dying of cancer, infertile couples hoping for a baby, war in third world countries—in other words, so many more important things the Lord had to do with His time. But Mama said I was equally important, at least to our congregation. I was their success story, the college graduate who was going on to Make a Difference.

On the day before classes were supposed to start, Mama took me out to dinner. “You’re destined to do small great things,” she told me. “Just like Dr. King said.” She was referring to one of her favorite quotes: If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. “But,” she continued, “don’t forget where you came from.” I didn’t really understand what she meant. I was one of a dozen kids from our neighborhood who had gone to college, and only a handful of those were destined for graduate school. I knew she was proud of me; I knew she felt like her hard work to set me on a different path had paid off. Given that she’d been pushing me out of the nest since I was little, why would she want me to carry around the twigs that had built it? Couldn’t I fly further without them?