swallowed, but he said nothing.
“Well?” she demanded, suppressing an urge to bawl like a baby rather than act the reasonable parent
.
She didn’t want to deal with this on top of worrying about money, mortgage payments and keeping the store profits up in face of each downward turn in the economy. She didn’t need the constant reminder of her youth and its romantic, idealistic dreams, as personified by Nick Dorelli, invading her peace of mind. Life could be cruel….
“What have you got to say for yourself?” she asked her son.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’re caught shoplifting and you have nothing to say?” The silence stretched between them. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna keep it It was…well, like I just wanted to watch it, then I’d have brought it back.”
“You could have rented it. You got your allowance this morning. Why didn’t you do that?”
He squinched his face up as if thinking about it was really hard. She noticed the smoothness of his skin, how tan he was already this year, except for a scar running from the edge of his chin down under the line of jawbone. He’d fallen and split his chin open on a skateboard last year.
When he’d walked in the door of the shop, blood running down the front of his T-shirt like a river, her heart had stopped. She’d taken him to the emergency clinic where they’d put eight stitches in to close the cut. Had anyone ever remarked on the difficulties of raising a child alone?
The sardonic humor helped keep the despair at bay. She had a million things to do to get the store ready for the Summer Madness sale coming up next week. Time was a pit bull, always snapping at her heels.
“Doogie?”
“There was a line. It was too much hassle.” He shrugged, defiant as only an adolescent can be.
“Hassle,” she repeated. She tried to be calm, to speak without accusation in her voice. They had to get to the bottom of this. “Shoplifting isn’t a minor infraction or a fight with a friend. It’s stealing.”
“I wasn’t stealing. I’d have brought it back tomorrow.”
“Taking something without permission is wrong, no matter what your intentions might be.” Nausea gripped her as she tried to speak reasonably and appeal to his finer qualities. “Think how you would feel if Clyde took your baseball mitt without asking you first. You’d think someone had stolen it.”
“Clyde’s a dork.”
She remembered the two boys were no longer friends. “But think how you’d feel,” she persisted. She had to get through to him somehow. “You’d be hurt. And angry. That’s how I feel.”
He kept his gaze fixed on the floor at his feet, looking very much like his father when she’d tried to talk to him about the problems in their marriage. Men. They never wanted to hear the bad stuff, only the good.
“Think about how you would have felt if it had been your father who had answered the call and found his son was accused of shoplifting. Think about how he would have felt.”
Two circles of shame formed in the boy’s cheeks. Good. Maybe her words were getting through to him. His father had been one of the best deputies in the county. He’d died a hero, leaping in front of a bullet which would have hit a woman holding a child. His bullet-proof vest deflected the first shot, but not the second that went in his neck. He’d bled to death before the paramedics arrived.
Doogie didn’t stir from his sullen position. She felt an upsurge of fear and helplessness. “Well?” she demanded. “What have you got to say for yourself?”
He stared at the floor.
“You will return to Mrs. Withers tomorrow,” she decided.
He blinked at that. “I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“A person who can’t be trusted out on his own does.” She caught sight of her face in the decorative mirror on a highboy beside the door. She saw desperation in her eyes and willed it away with an effort. “This was a trial period, remember? You said you wouldn’t be bored here at the office.”
“I’m not bored.” His mouth pulled down at the corners while his bottom lip puckered stubbornly.
She took a breath and spoke firmly. “What happened this morning tells me I was wrong to listen to your arguments.”
“It was just a dumb video. It didn’t mean anything. I’ll never do it again.” His voice, deeper of late, segued into a treble. He gestured with his hand, a quick, angry flick as if to throw out her statement.
His hands were large, more those of a man than a child. He was growing up. Twelve years old and he was only three inches shorter than she was. In another couple of years, he’d be as tall…and much stronger.
If she couldn’t use words and reasoning to control him now, what would she do then?
“You’ll go back to Mrs. Withers for the rest of the month. And you’re grounded for that time.”
His mouth opened in protest.
She continued. “You’ll also apologize to the store owner—”
“I already did. Nick…Deputy Dorelli…made me before he brought me over here.”
Stephanie frowned at this news. She wished Nick hadn’t been the one to answer the call on her son. It was embarrassing. However, she could handle it and anything else that came up. Being married to a policeman, she’d had to.
Her husband had loved his job. He’d loved the uniform and the camaraderie with his deputy buddies. He’d worked a lot of overtime so they could save up enough money for repairs, then he’d used every spare minute to fix up the small ranch she’d inherited. Those early years had been the best part of their marriage. She tried not to think of the later years.
“Can I go now?”
“No. You’ll stay here until the store closes at six. You should have brought something to read.” She hesitated. “Trust is a funny thing. It’s given automatically to those we love, but when it’s breached, you have to earn it. Your father would have been very disappointed—”
“I don’t care,” he muttered. He stood, shoving the chair back with his legs. “I don’t care what he would have thought. He wasn’t…he wasn’t…I don’t care.”
The pop of her hand against his cheek reverberated through the silent office for long seconds after the act.
Stephanie, leaning across her desk, stared as the red imprint formed on her son’s face. Tears welled in his shocked, disbelieving eyes. He’d never been struck in his life, other than his fight with Clyde. She couldn’t believe it herself. She’d never hit another person.
Doogie leapt to his feet and turned from her, his hands balled into fists. He made a loop of his arms against the wall and hid his face inside
