Queen Never Cry novel · Chapter 18 of 32
Chapter 18: Seventy-Two Hours
They took my shoelaces first.
The deputy at the Cook County intake window did it with the bored tenderness of a man peeling a banana.
Then my belt, then my watch, then the small silver ring Hester had pressed into my hand at the gate.
"Arms out."
I held them out.
I had done this every week for twenty-six months, and my body remembered how to be furniture.
They put me in a holding cell with a bench, a steel toilet, and a woman asleep under a coat.
The clock over the guard's desk was visible through the bars.
It said ten past one.
At two o'clock a little girl in a yellow coat would sit down at a tiny table on Halsted Street and wait for me.
I watched the second hand take her there.
I did not pace, and I did not sit with my head down.
I sat straight on the bench with my hands on my knees.
A woman in the next cell was watching, deciding whether I could be pushed.
At ten after two the public defender in the rumpled tie came down the corridor with his tie loose, running.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Queen Never Cry are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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