She recoiled, making a face. “I can’t. I’ll faint! I’ll literally pass out on this street.”
Jo Ellen leaned out the driver’s side. “Officer, please. We’ve been on the road for eleven hours. We had fast food and bad coffee and she’s just tired.”
“Exactly,” Maggie said. “Fatigued. Not inebriated. There’s a difference.”
“Florida law doesn’t require drugs or alcohol for someone to be considered impaired. Exhibiting signs of extreme fatigue, impaired behavior, and reckless driving is also against the law.”
Oh, good heavens. Maybe theywouldhave to flirt their way out of this. She lifted her chin and attempted a smile.
“Herman. Do you really want to arrest a sweet old lady like me?”
Iceman didn’t even hint at a smile. “I don’t want you driving one more mile tonight, Mrs. Lawson.”
“Well, I’m in the middle of nowhere, so…I’m going to have to drive eventually, right. Right?”
“I’m sorry,” the officer said, clearlynotsorry. “But I’m going to have to ask you to place your hands behind your back.”
Maggie stood frozen for a full second. He couldnotbe serious!
“Oh, this is rich. This isfantastic.This is…oh, God, I’m glad my husband isn’t here to see this. He’s dead, you know. I’m a widow.”
He responded by twirling his finger in a circle, instructing her to turn. “With your hands behind you.”
Helpless, she turned, her hands behind her, and heard the soul-stealing sound of handcuffs clicking. Hard, cold…cuffs.
“What do we do about the car, Officer Herman?” Jo Ellen asked.
“Whatever you want but Mrs. Lawson will be at Crestview substation on East James Lee Boulevard. It’s about a fifteen-minute drive. This way, Mrs. Lawson.”
As she stumbled away, she looked over her shoulder. “Call Frank. Call Betty. Call the Pope. But don’t youdarecall my children and do not let those kidnappers know I’m in prison! We’ll never get to keep that baby!”
“Maggie, hush! You’re making it worse!”
How could it be?
The officer gently guided her toward the cruiser.
She slid into the back seat of the police car, her knees cracking, her pride shattering, and her entire sense of newfound freedom crumpling like an old-school map that Jo “We’ll Just Ask Oscar” Ellen refused to use.
The door slammed shut. Sirens chirped.
And Maggie started to cry.
There was,indeed, a toilet and sink in her jail cell. Just like the movies.
Although Deputy Herman had told her it was a holding room, not an actual cell, but he also told her, “This is for your own good,” and nothing about this moment of hell felt good.
In addition to the toilet and sink, wafting with the nose-itching stench of bleach, there was a metal table bolted to the ground. Did they think she was going to try and steal it? Maybe throw it? She was mad enough that she might try.
And tired enough that she almost sat on the chair, dropped her head on the table, and cried herself to sleep.
She stayed standing, though, under the most unflattering and unforgiving fluorescent light and directly in front of a large surveillance camera. Who was on the other side of that camera, she wondered, and what on Earth did they think of her?
She shut her eyes and tried to recite lines fromGone With the Wind, one of her favorite ways to calm down and pass time.
“‘And not even a regular jail, Rhett! A horse jail!’”
But she wasn’t Scarlett O’Hara in a dress Mammy had made from velvet curtains. She was Magnolia Fredericks Lawson, taken down to her last shred of humility.
