Chapter 3-1
798 Words
Chapter 3
Breakfast was amazing. There were plates of little sausages and bacon and little round meat patties. There were also trays of freshly cut fruit and individual containers of yogurt. Pancakes, too, with three kinds of syrup.
Brendan was chomping down a bowl of sugary chocolate cereal. He looked up at her with a smile, mouth full of food. He was already changed out of his pajamas. His shirt had a green dinosaur riding a bicycle on it; it made Mallory smile.
Garnett was nowhere to be found.
“Good morning,” she said to Brendan. “Wow, is this what breakfast is like around here all the time?”
He took a few seconds to chew and swallow his oversized bite. “Yup. Lots of food and lots of quiet, too. Dad usually wakes up real early. Him and me have breakfast on Saturday morning. Every other day we don’t see each other.”
How awful, she thought. She kept it to herself.
Sitting down, she took a plate, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. Pancakes and some melon. She turned her nose up at the sausages and bacon. “Your dad likes meat, I take it?”
“Yeah. I like bacon, I guess, but those sausages gross me out.”
She laughed. “Me too. So. What do you want to do today?”
“Ugh. I got lessons with my tutor starting at nine. They go all day.”
“All day?”
“Well, until three o’clock.”
The question hung in the air, and she almost didn’t ask it, but it was just too big to ignore. She pushed her pancakes around with her fork, cutting a small piece off but then leaving it where it was. “Brendan, why don’t you go to school with other kids?”
He shrugged, shoveling more cereal in his mouth that he talked around. “Dad doesn’t want me to.”
“Why?”
His little hazel eyes looked up from his bowl. “I don’t know. He just always says it’s best for me to stay at home.”
“Do you have friends? You must have friends.”
His eyes looked down again, and he didn’t answer.
Poor kid, she thought to herself. She wasn’t helping things with her questions but what else could she do? Why in the world would Garnett keep his son isolated like this? Maybe he was sick and Garnett just didn’t want to tell him. On the other hand, she knew that some uber rich types liked to keep their children away from other kids simply because they didn’t want to mix with “regular” people. Didn’t Michael Jackson do that with his kids, along with hanging them upside down out of windows? Could Garnett be that shallow?
“Dad doesn’t tell me why,” Brendan said to her, correctly guessing what the look on her face meant. “I hate it. He won’t even take me to play in a park.”
“Wait, you’ve never been to Central Park?” She couldn’t believe it. People came from all over the world to visit Central Park. Everybody who lived in the City had been to Central Park at least once. It was one of the best things about New York, for crying out loud. “I tell you what. How about after your lessons today you and I go for a walk.”
His whole face lit up. “In Central Park?”
“Sure. I can’t show you the whole park, not in one day at least. It’s even bigger than your dad’s front lawn.”
He gave her a look that said she might as well have called water wet. “I’m not dumb, you know. I don’t go out but I read and watch television and I know stuff. I might even be smarter than you.”
“Oh, you think so?” She finally felt like eating and took a few bites of the pancakes. They were really good. “Then who’s the king of Canada?”
“Canada doesn’t have a king,” he said with all the knowledge a ten-year-old boy could muster. “Canada has a Prime Minister.”
“I’ll bet you don’t know how many fingers an ostrich has.”
He laughed, enjoying their game. “Ostriches don’t have hands.”
“Well, I know you can’t say your alphabet backwards.”
“What? No one can do that.”
From Z to A, Mallory rattled off the whole thing without missing a beat. When she was done, Brendan sat with his mouth hanging open and his spoon paused in midair. “Wow,” he said. “How did you learn that?”
“I got really bored in science class one day. It just takes practice.”
“Can you teach me?”
“Sure I could. You and me, after your regular lessons today. Okay?”
He nodded then shifted in his seat. “Are you really going to take me to Central Park?”
Mallory had a few nieces and nephews. She might not know as much about raising children as someone who had kids of their own but she knew a few things. For one, you never made promises to kids unless you intended to keep them. If you said you were going to take them somewhere, then you had better take them, unless the world ended in a fiery inferno.
“Yes,” she promised. “I’m really going to take you to Central Park.”
He came around the table in a rush to throw his arms around her neck. “Thank you. Know what? I think we’re going to be best friends.”
Before Mallory could say anything, he was gone, running out of the room.
***
- Writer
