“Step out of the vehicle, ma’am.”
“Of course.”
“Stand at the rear of your car where I can see you.”
I leaned across the seat. “Is that really necessary? She’s seventy-one. It’s ninety degrees out here.”
He bent down and looked at me through her open door. I could see myself, small and stupid, in both of his lenses.
“Sir, you are going to stay in that seat with your hands where I can see them, or you and I are going to have a very different kind of afternoon.”
“Sit still, Jeffrey,” my mother said.
I knew that voice. Everyone in my family knew that voice. It was low and level and it left no room for anything else, and I had spent a good part of my childhood hating it.
So I sat still.
She walked to the back of the Buick in her flowered Sunday dress and her good white sandals, and she stood there on the gravel. He walked back to his patrol truck, climbed in, and shut the door. The engine was running. The windows were up. I could see the little shimmer of cold air fogging the bottom of his windshield.
