The officer leaned close enough for me to smell coffee on his breath.
“In this town,” he whispered, tightening his grip around my arm, “I am the law.”
Then he twisted my right wrist behind my back.
The first cuff closed with a metallic snap.
The sound was small.
Yet standing twenty feet from my mother’s coffin, it seemed louder than the bells of Grace Memorial Chapel.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Black umbrellas stood motionless along the stone walkway. White flowers surrounded the open doors of the chapel. Friends my mother had known for forty years stared from beneath the trees.
Some of them had been crying a minute earlier.
Now they simply looked stunned.
I was sixty-three years old.
For more than three decades, I had served in positions where losing control of my voice could have consequences far greater than embarrassment. I had sat across tables from people who wanted me angry. I had negotiated through crises where impatience could destroy months of work.
So when the officer pulled my other arm behind me, I did not fight him.
I inhaled.
Held it.
Exhaled slowly.
The second cuff closed.
He leaned toward my ear again.
“Not so important now, are you?”
I turned my head just enough to see him in the reflection of his cruiser window.
Short brown hair.
Square jaw.
Black patrol uniform.
The faint smile of a man enjoying an audience.
My own reflection appeared beside his.
Silver hair pulled into a low bun.
Deep-navy dress uniform.
Rows of ribbons above my left pocket.
Three polished silver stars on each shoulder.
My mother used to straighten those stars whenever she attended one of my ceremonies.
Even when I was fifty-seven.
Even when I outranked nearly everyone in the room.
She would stand in front of me, narrow her eyes, and adjust something that was already perfectly straight.
“You represent more than yourself when you wear this,” she would say.
I used to laugh.
That afternoon, my mother was lying inside a coffin less than twenty feet away.
And a local police officer was pushing my face toward the side of his cruiser.
“Officer,” I said, keeping my voice level, “I am asking you one final time to verify my identification before transporting me anywhere.”
He tightened his grip.
“You can explain yourself downtown.”
“My identification is inside my handbag beside the chapel entrance.”