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“You’re sure?” She wasn’t convinced.
“Yeah. The officer wants to talk to you.”
“Wait, Stephen, should I come get you—”
“Mrs. Santini?” an older male voice inquired. “I’m Sergeant Pearson.”
Tiffany’s throat was dry, her heart a beating drum. “What’s going on? Is my son okay?”
“Aside from a shiner and a sore jaw, I think he’ll be fine.” The sergeant’s voice was kind but did little to soothe her jangled nerves.
“What happened?”
“He and another kid, Miles Dean, got into a scuffle down at the Mini Mart”
“A scuffle?” she repeated, anxious sweat causing the back of her blouse to cling to her skin. The older boy’s father, Ray Dean, had been in and out of jail, and it looked as though Miles was following in his old man’s footsteps. What in the world was Stephen doing with him this time?
“The boys got into a quarrel. One thing led to another, and a couple of punches were thrown. The clerk gave us a call, and we picked ’em up. All in all, your boy’s fine.”
Relief caused her shoulders to droop, but she rubbed at the headache pounding in her forehead. “And Miles?”
The officer hesitated, and Tiffany felt a niggle of dread. “Miles always manages to get himself out of trouble.”
Nervously she twisted the telephone cord in her fingers. “Are there any charges filed against Stephen?” she asked. Despite a breeze gently lifting the curtains as it slipped in through the open window over the sink, the temperature in the kitchen seemed to have elevated to over a hundred degrees.
Tiffany stretched the cord and looked outside to see that her daughter was still busily making mud pies in the dirt.
“None against your son.”
“And Miles?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Can I come and get him now?”
“Actually, an officer will bring him home. They should be there in about ten minutes.”
“I don’t have to sign anything?”
“No—but just a minute.” Pearson’s voice was muffled as he spoke to someone else. “Yeah, she’s waiting for him. Now listen, Steve, no more horsing around, right?”
“I won’t,” her son mumbled as if from a great distance.
“I mean it. The next time it could be real trouble. And I’m gonna have to report this to your juvenile counselor.”
There was another muffled response that Tiffany couldn’t discern. A second later Sergeant Pearson was on the phone again. “Okay, he’s on his way.”
“Good.” Or was it?
“Look, Mrs. Santini, this incident at the Mini Mart, well, it doesn’t amount to much more than a couple of kids getting into a difference of opinion and taking a swing or two on a hot afternoon. However, the way things are today, we tend to worry. If either of the boys had pulled a weapon—a gun or a knife—this could have turned out bad.”
Her thoughts exactly. A chill slid through her despite the heat. Guns. Knives. Weapons. She had moved to the small town of Bittersweet to get away from the gangs and violence of the city, but it seemed that no community was immune. Not even a little burg in southern Oregon. In this part of rural America, boys were given hunting knives and rifles routinely about the time they hit the age of ten or twelve, as if the owning of a weapon was a rite of passage from childhood to becoming a man. “I’ll talk to Stephen.”
“Do that,” Pearson advised. “I think a ride in the squad car and having to come down to the station probably gave him a scare.”
“Let’s hope so.”
She was ready to hang up, to wait for Stephen and see that he was okay, then read him the riot act if necessary, but Sergeant Pearson wasn’t finished.
