CHAPTER 8
The Ringo Effect
Welcome home baby girl!
CHAPTER 8
The snow has fallen steadily all day. It’s the kind of snow that can fool you. From inside it’s a beautiful blanket of white. But outside it’s cold, wet, and heavy. If caught out in it and unprepared it can be downright deadly.
Maya Ringo glides through O’Hare airport, sidestepping mobs of slow-moving travelers who stop in the middle of the walkway to gawk and take pictures of festive holiday decorations along the wide corridors. Flying in from Stanford with only a backpack, she zips along with familiarity, weaving in and out, making her way to the Blue Line elevated train station.
Maya loves the el. She always has. It’s home. To sit back in the perfect window seat and watch the scene change from neighborhood to neighborhood, suburban to urban, is like a never-ending montage that she never grows tired of.
A train is waiting on the tracks. Maya hops on and finds her favorite seat unoccupied. She plops down and inserts her earbuds just as the doors close and the train pulls out of the station.
As they speed along the tracks the scenery shifts from the Kennedy Expressway and the quaint little neighborhoods along Avondale Avenue to the elevated urban sprawl of the North and West Sides, the buildings so…
