Round Robin by Jennifer Chiaverini Page B

could do something about all those thieves and murderers and terrorists running loose, well, then I’d really be impressed.”
    â€œWe don’t get many murderers and terrorists around here, ma’am.”
    â€œHow much is the fine?” she snapped.
    â€œFifty dollars.”
    Diane counted out the bills, gritting her teeth to hold back the tirade she was aching to release. She’d save it for Michael. Oh, would he ever rue this day! “Here’s your ransom,” she said, sliding the bills across the desk. “May I have my son back, please?”
    A few minutes later, the officer brought out her son. As usual, his skinny frame was enveloped in oversized clothes, so large and baggy that they could have been his father’s, except Tim never wore black jeans and Aerosmith T-shirts. He carried his jacket wadded up in a ball under his arm, and his baseball cap was turned backward.
    â€œIs that my earring?” Diane gasped when she saw the flash of gold in his earlobe.
    He nodded.
    â€œWhere’s the other one?”
    â€œIn your jewelry box.” He paused. “You never said I couldn’t wear your earrings.”
    â€œI didn’t know I had to.” She hadn’t wanted him to get his ear piercedin the first place, but Tim had pointed out that they ought to reward him for asking permission, to encourage him to do so more often. Besides, it was only one ear he wanted, thank God, not his nose or his eyebrow or his tongue. “I also never said you couldn’t set the house on fire or run a counterfeiting ring out of the basement, but you knew you weren’t allowed, right?”
    â€œYeah,” he muttered. “I guess so.”
    â€œYou guess so?” Then Diane remembered the officers watching them. “Let’s go, Michael,” she said briskly, placing a hand on his shoulder and steering him toward the door.
    They drove in silence to Todd’s middle school. Michael sat in the back seat staring out the window. Diane was so angry and embarrassed that for the first time in her life she didn’t know how to begin the lecture.
    â€œDoes Dad know?” Michael finally asked as they sat at a long red light.
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œAre you gonna tell him?”
    â€œOf course I’m going to tell him. A father has a right to know when his eldest son, his heir, his pride and joy, has earned himself a criminal record.”
    In the rearview mirror, she saw him roll his eyes. “You don’t have to make such a big thing out of it.”
    The light changed, and Diane sped the car forward. “Mister, you have no idea how big this is already.”
    They drove on without speaking.
    When she pulled into the school’s circular driveway, Todd was waiting out front alone, banging his trumpet case against his knee and looking up at the sky. The sight of his woebegone face prompted a twinge of guilt.
    â€œYou’re late,” he said as he climbed into the back seat beside his brother, as mournful as if he had been waiting hours, days, long enough to be certain that she had abandoned him forever.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said as she drove on. “I would have been on time, except I had to swing by the slammer to bail out Michael here.”
    â€œYou were in jail?” Todd asked his brother, his tone at once shocked and admiring.
    â€œShut up.”
    â€œI don’t have to.”
    From the back seat came a dull thump of a fist against cloth and flesh. “Hey,” Diane snapped, glancing from the road to the rearview mirror and back, trying to figure out who had thrown the punch. “No hitting. You know better than that.” She heard Todd mutter something about one of them knowing better than to wind up behind bars, too, and then another dull thump. “I said, knock it off!”
    When they got home, she promptly sent them to their rooms. Michael went upstairs without a word, shoulders slumped, hands