Chapter 1

1

“But I hate the park! Are you listening to me? I don’t want to go to the park.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked, mainly to let Morgan know I was listening to him. I wasn’t going to change our plans just so he could spend the entire day holed up in his room with his computer.

“I want to play games.”

“You can play games at the park.”

“But I don’t want to play stupid games at the park. I hate everybody there anyway. And they hate me.”

The tone of his voice pulled my attention away from the sizzling bacon on the stove. “Nobody hates you, Morgan. Don’t talk like that.”

“They do.They call me names.”

“Who calls you names?”

Morgan folded his arms and sank deeper into his chair, his mouth pulled into a tiny pout. He wouldn’t meet my eyes either. Morgan is very bright, but he seems to have problems making friends. He doesn’t play with anybody at recess.His mother had shrugged off Mrs. Johnson, claiming that Morgan came from a long line of introverts. Which was certainly true enough. Both of us had been outsiders in high school, drawn together out of a shared sense of loneliness more than anything else. But there was a difference between being shy and being bullied.

He still wasn’t speaking to me by the time I finished scrambling the eggs. He barely looked up when I set the plate in front of him, though his nostrils did flare at the tantalizing and irresistible scent of his favorite breakfast. I even added a bit of ketchup to the eggs for the reddish tint that delighted him so much. Why he found the thought of bloody eggs so appealing, I didn’t know. There was a growing list of things I didn’t know about the boy.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I hate it.”

“You don’t hate eggs and bacon. It’s your favorite breakfast. Would you like some toast with it?”

“No. Toast scratches my tongue.”

“Not if you put enough jam on it.”

Morgan picked up his fork and poked at the eggs without any real interest, his face still set in a sulk. The extended lower lip and silent treatment probably worked on Christina, but only because she didn’t have the patience for such theatrics. It was certainly quicker and easier just to give in to him. I’d been tempted more than once. I was tempted right that minute to toss the whole thing in the sink and tell him to go to his room. Morgan found a way to test my high ideals at least once an hour.

“Do kids bug you at school?”

“No.”

“Do they bug you when you go to the park?”

“No.”

I mentally sighed and made a show of digging into my eggs, sans ketchup. Morgan stared at his feet, ignoring all my attempts at demonstrating what a great meal he was missing out on. One of my ideals of parenting involved sticking to my guns and never negotiating with a hostile party. I was his father, I got to make the rules.

“If you eat your breakfast, you can have some extra time on the computer tonight.”

He looked up from beneath his bunny lashes, his green eyes thoughtful, almost calculating. Not unlike his mother’s. “How much?”

Maybe I should have been proud of him for not agreeing to anything without studying the fine print first. Now the negotiations were beginning in earnest. I took a swallow of my orange juice and pretended to contemplate the answer.

“Thirty minutes.”

“An hour.”

“No. You haven’t finished your homework.”

“What if I finish my homework?”

I decided to overlook that his homework should have been finished last night before bedtime. I also didn’t want him to figure out that the deal was more heavily weighted in my favor. Breakfast and homework were big victories.

“If you finish your breakfast and your homework, then yes, you can have an extra hour tonight.”

Morgan grinned widely and dug into his eggs with such sincere gusto that I had a feeling I’d been played. I didn’t interrupt him again, but made a mental note to ask about the name-calling later. After he finished, he carried his plate to his sink and washed his hands without being told, then tried to hurry by me. I caught him before he could make his escape and hauled him close, giving him a good squeeze and planting a kiss on his cheek before he squirmed away.

He rubbed his cheek with affront. “Da-ad.”

“What?” I wiggled my fingers at him. “Better go get your shoes on before I start tickling.”

Morgan huffed his I’m too old for these gameshuff before marching away. He probably was too old for those games. When he was four, nothing delighted him more than a quick hug and visit from the tickle monster. But now he was eight—going on nineas he so often reminded me—and tickling wasn’t quite as amusing as it used to be. I wasn’t even sure how he got to be so old. We didn’t spend as much time together as I’d like, but that didn’t explain how he’d sprouted two inches in the past six months, or why I needed to buy him a new pair of shoes every six weeks.