Chapter 2

Thirty-one hours is a long time to look at a concrete wall.

They took her badge and her lanyard at booking, along with her plastic watch and the hair tie off her wrist. The magistrate saw her Wednesday just after noon - thirty-one hours after the stop - and set bond at $7,500. Sadie had $212 in her account. Aunt Deb had less.

"Seven thousand five hundred," Deb said through the glass Thursday morning. "For pills. Honey, they're saying you had enough to sell."

"I didn't have anything."

Deb's mouth went flat. She was sixty-one, she had raised two sons and buried one, and she had a way of not arguing that was worse than arguing.

She went to the bank and then to a bondsman in Marlow who took the title to her own car. Sadie walked out of the Bramlett County jail at 3:10 Thursday afternoon into a wet parking lot with a manila folder and no ride.

The folder held her charge sheet. Possession with intent to distribute, Schedule II. Two to ten years. She read it twice and couldn't make the words mean anything.

Friday morning the letter came.

Cedar Ridge Nursing Home, Office of Administration, Marcia Kell, Administrator: pending resolution of the above matter, you are suspended without pay, effective immediately. Do not report to the unit. Do not contact residents or their families.

She read that one standing in Deb's kitchen, still in the clothes she'd been arrested in.

Tommy was already at Deb's. He had been there since Tuesday, and he'd stacked his things in the spare room in a neat pile the way he did when he was pretending everything was fine. He was eleven. He asked her twice if she was going to jail. She said no both times, and both times she said it too fast.

The Bramlett Ledger came out Friday afternoon, and her name was in it, in the arrest report, alphabetized between a man caught with a stolen riding mower and a woman who had missed a court date.

QUINN, SADIE R., 24, Marlow. Possession with intent to distribute, Schedule II.

That was the whole county's breakfast.

She walked to the clerk's window on the square and bought the public arrest log for a dollar. Three pages, stapled, and attached to her entry was the property photo.

Sadie sat in Deb's car with the engine off and looked at it for a long time.

There was the bag, lying on a white paper towel under the evidence room's light. Fourteen pale oblong tablets.

And there was the tape.

A strip of white tape folded over the corner seam of the bag, with handwriting on it. A number. And a date.

The date was three years old.