Round Robin (7 page)

The next morning their guests' spirits seemed to have brightened with the sunrise. As Sylvia and Sarah had promised, they gathered on the cornerstone patio for their last meal together. Sarah and Sylvia covered the table with a bright yellow cloth and loaded it with trays of pastries, breads, fruit, pots of coffee, and pitchers of juice. After breakfast, they took their places around the circle once again, this time for Show and Tell. Each quilter took a turn showing off something she had made that week and telling her new friends what favorite memory she would take with her when she left Elm Creek Manor.

Everyone proudly showed their new creations, from the AIDS quilt segment Renée had begun to the simplest pieced blocks the beginning quilters had stitched. The Candlelight on their first evening together was remembered fondly, as were the late-night chats in their cozy suites and the private moments spent strolling through the beautiful grounds.

Then it was Carol's turn.

She held up her first pieced block, a Sawtooth Star, and said that she'd like to start a baby quilt, if her daughter would cooperate by providing the baby.

Everyone chuckled, except for Sylvia, who let out a quiet sigh only Sarah heard, and Sarah herself, who clenched her jaw to hold back a blistering retort that the decision to have children was hers alone—hers and Matt's.

“As for my favorite memory, I'm not sure yet.” Carol looked around the circle, everywhere but at Sarah. “My favorite memory might still be ahead of me. I've decided to stay on a while longer.”

The other guests let out exclamations of surprise and delight, but Sarah hardly heard them over the roaring in her ears. “But—but—what about work?” she managed to say.

“I called the hospital. I told them it was a family emergency, and they agreed to let me have four months' leave.”

Four months. Sarah nodded, numb. A family emergency. It wasn't exactly a lie.

The woman beside her patted Sarah on the back and congratulated her for the good news. She managed a weak smile in return. Four months. Time enough to patch things up, or to rend them beyond repair forever.

Sarah cut an eighteen-inch square from a piece of cream fabric. She chose green for the stately elms lining the back road to Elm Creek Manor, her home, which felt less like home with her mother in it. She picked lighter greens for the sweeping front lawn, and darker shades for the leaves on the rosebushes Matt nurtured with such care in the north gardens. She added clear blue for the skies over Waterford, though she felt they should be gray with gathering storms. Last of all she found a richer, darker blue for Elm Creek, which danced along as it always had, murmuring and rushing regardless of the joy or tragedy unfolding on its banks.

Using the same cream for her background fabric, Sarah created a border of blue and green squares set on point, touching tip to tip. Squares for the solidity and balance of the manor, for the dividing walls she and Carol had built over the years, for the blocks they had stumbled over on their journey toward each other, for the way Carol's news had left her feeling imprisoned and boxed in, forced to face the inevitable confrontation that somehow she had always known was coming.

D
iane received the quilt top from Sarah after class Monday afternoon. “You must have worked on this all weekend,” she remarked, unfolding the quilt top and holding it up for inspection.

“How'd you find the time? I thought your mother was still here.”

“She is.”

An odd note in Sarah's voice pulled Diane's attention away from the quilt. Sarah had shadows under her eyes and she kept glancing warily over her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Diane asked. Usually, Sarah was calm and self-assured, but she had been snappish and edgy all day.

“I'm fine.” Sarah snatched the quilt top and began folding it. “I just don't want Sylvia to see this. It's supposed to be a surprise, remember? Keep it out of sight.”

“Okay, okay. Relax. She's in the kitchen. She can't see through walls.” Diane took back the folded quilt top and tucked it into her bag. Honestly. More and more Sarah reminded Diane of her eldest son, Michael, but he was a teenager and such behavior was expected. What was Sarah's excuse?

Diane waved good-bye to Gwen, who had led that afternoon's workshop, and left the classroom. It had been a ballroom once. The dance floor remained, but quilters now practiced on the orchestra dais, where work tables had replaced risers and music stands. She had never seen an orchestra there, but Sylvia and Agnes had, and their stories were so vivid
that Diane sometimes felt as if she had witnessed the manor's grand parties herself.

On her way to the back door, she stopped by the kitchen to bid Sylvia good-bye. Sarah's mother was helping Sylvia prepare supper, and they were laughing and chatting like old friends. Maybe that explained Sarah's moodiness. Maybe she wanted Sylvia all to herself and thought Carol was getting in the way.

Diane drove home to the neighborhood a few blocks south of the Waterford College campus where professors, administrators, and their families lived. Sarah had once told her that the gray stone houses with their carefully landscaped front yards reminded her of Elm Creek Manor, but Diane didn't see the similarity. The houses on that oak tree–lined street were large, but not nearly as grand as Elm Creek Manor, or as old—or as secluded, to her regret. Diane willingly would have parted with a neighbor or two—namely, Mary Beth from next door, who had perfect hair and perfect children and had been president of the Waterford Quilting Guild for nearly a decade.

Diane parked in the driveway and walked up the red-brick herringbone path to the front porch, to the door with its brass knocker and beveled glass. The house was quiet, but she couldn't enjoy the peace and solitude, not when she was due to pick up Todd from band practice in fifteen minutes. Diane dropped her bag on the floor of the foyer, draped her coat over it, and yanked off her ankle boots. They used to call her a stay-at-home mom before she began working for Elm Creek Quilts, but a stay-in-car mom was more like it.

She padded to the kitchen in her stocking feet to check the answering machine. There was one message—Tim, she supposed, as she waited for the tape to rewind. He usually called her in the afternoons from his office in the chemistry building on campus to let her know what time he'd be home from work.

But the voice on the tape, though much like her husband's, was years younger.

“Mom?” Michael said. “Uh, don't be mad.”

An ominous beginning. Diane closed her eyes and sighed.

“Um, I kinda need you to come pick me up.” He hesitated. “They won't let me go until you pay the fine.”

“Pick you up from where?” she asked the machine—an instant before his words sank in. Pay a fine?

“I'm at the police station. Don't tell Dad, okay?” Without a word of explanation, he hung up.

Diane shrieked. She ran to the foyer, threw on her coat, and stuffed her feet into her boots. She dashed outside to her car and raced downtown, her heart pounding. What had he done? What on earth had he gotten himself into this time? After the vandalism at the junior high last fall, she and Tim had put such a scare into him that he vowed never to get into trouble again. Their family counselor had warned them to expect ups and downs, but this—She felt faint just thinking about the possibilities. He must have done something horrible, just horrible, for the police to lock up a fifteen-year-old until his parents came to bail him out.

Sarah was wise to avoid having children, Diane thought grimly as she pulled into the parking lot behind the police headquarters.

Diane hurried inside, her heart pounding. Michael could be injured, ignored by the busy police officers as he slowly and quietly bled to death in a lonely cell. She gave the first officer she saw Michael's name. “Is he all right?” she asked, breathless. “Is he hurt?”

“He's just fine, ma'am.” The officer looked sympathetic. Maybe he was a parent, too. “He's just in a little bit of trouble.”

“Can I see him? What kind of trouble? How little? How long has he been here?” She took a deep breath to stem the flow of questions. She had gone to Elm Creek Manor at noon; Michael could have left the message any time after that. He could have been locked up for hours with violent offenders. The last thing Michael needed was that kind of influence.

The officer raised his hands to calm her. “He's been here less than an hour. He's waiting in an interrogation room.”

“What exactly did he do?”

“He was skateboarding in a marked zone. We wouldn't have held him except he didn't have the money for the fine.”

Diane gaped at him. “Skateboarding?” Her voice grew shrill. “You locked up my child for skateboarding?”

The officer squirmed. “In a marked zone, yes.”

“Why didn't you call me at Elm Creek Manor? Why didn't you call my husband?”

“Your son insisted. He wanted you to get the news rather than his father, and he didn't want to interrupt your class.”

Diane smothered a groan. Of all the times for Michael to get considerate. “I can't believe this.” She rooted around in her purse for her wallet. “Well, it certainly does my heart good to know that the citizens of Waterford are being protected so heroically from skateboarders. Now, if only you could do something about all those thieves and murderers and terrorists running loose, well, then I'd really be impressed.”

“We don't get many murderers and terrorists around here, ma'am.”

“How much is the fine?” she snapped.

“Fifty 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.

“Is that my earring?” Diane gasped when she saw the flash of gold in his earlobe.

He nodded.

“Where's the other one?”

“In your jewelry box.” He paused. “You never said I couldn't wear your earrings.”

“I didn't know I had to.” She hadn't wanted him to get his ear pierced
in 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?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I guess so.”

“You 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.

“Does Dad know?” Michael finally asked as they sat at a long red light.

“Not yet.”

“Are you gonna tell him?”

“Of 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.

“You'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.

“I'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.”

“You were in jail?” Todd asked his brother, his tone at once shocked and admiring.

“Shut up.”

“I 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 thrust into the pockets of his enormous jeans, but Todd's mouth fell open in astonishment. “Why do I have to?” he protested. “I didn't do anything.”

Because your mother needs a few minutes to herself or she'll go completely berserk, Diane wanted to say, but instead she folded her arms and looked her youngest son squarely in the eye. “Your room is not a gulag. You've got homework, books, TV, and about half a million computer games. Just until supper, so I can have some peace and quiet, so I can figure out what I'm going to tell your father, okay?”

“I don't see why I get punished when he screws up,” Todd muttered, his mouth tugging into a sullen frown.

An unexpected wave of sympathy came over her, sympathy for Michael. Todd had always been the good kid, and he couldn't understand why his older brother did the things he did. None of them understood, not really, but it saddened her that Todd seemed to feel so little empathy for Michael, so little solidarity. Sometimes she wished Todd would side with Michael, forming the typical united front of kids versus adults. More than anyone else Diane knew, Michael needed an ally.