Kathleen Creighton - One Summer’s Knight

“Hey,” said Riley, and waited.

The boy’s eyes slid to the other side of the room. “Mom said to ask you if want some breakfast. She’s makin’ blueberry waffles.”

“Waffles, huh?” In spite of himself, Riley’s mouth began to water. “Uh… sure Tell your mother yes, thank you. That sounds good.”

The boy’s head disappeared, and a split second later came a bellowed “Mom, he said yes!” Riley picked up his newspaper.

Alerted by subtle changes in air currents, or a sixth sense, perhaps, he lowered it again to find that, instead of leaving and closing the door behind him, David had entered the room and was wandering silently, gazing around him in apparent awe. Riley watched him over the tops of his glasses, saying nothing.

Presently David sighed, craning his neck to take in the bookcases that filled the entire wall behind Riley’s desk from floor to ceiling, and said, “You sure have a lot of books”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Riley.

“Did you read all these books?”

“Most of them, yes”

David’s head swiveled and his jaw dropped. Then, lifting one shoulder in a belated attempt to look unimpressed, he sniffed and said, “I like to read books.” His gaze slid wistfully back to the shelves. “Maybe… you could let me read some of yours sometime.”

Riley coughed and harrumphed. “Oh, well, I don’t know about that These are probably too grown-up for you. I don’t think they’d be very interesting…” Then, to his astonishment, he heard himself say, “Now…I might have some books upstairs you’d like.” He rubbed at his unshaven chin and regarded the boy’s solemn but hopeful face. Damn, the kid did look like his mother… He cleared his throat. “How old are you?”

“I’m nine-almost ten.”

“Think you’re old enough for Tom Sawyer? ”

Instead of answering, David heaved another sigh. “Mom reads us stories. She read us James and the Giant Peach , and she was reading Black Stallion -that’s about this horse that gets washed overboard in a shipwreck, you know, and this boy tames him? But anyway, I guess she can’t now because it got burned up in the fire.”

Once again, Riley found himself with nothing to say. After a moment David shrugged and went on with his artfully aimless exploration, head tilted to one side like a potential buyer in a not-very-interesting art gallery. When he’d made a complete circuit of the room, he put a hand on one hip, gave Riley a sideways look and inquired with a poor attempt at nonchalance, “Don’t you have a computer?”

“I do,” Riley responded with a nod. “I keep it at my office.”

“Oh.” David’s eyes shifted as he tried hard to hide his disappointment. “How come?”

“I keep it there because my secretary is mostly the one who uses it.”

“Oh.” The boy’s shoulders sagged, then hitched upward in another of those brave little shrugs. “I used to have a computer when we lived in California. My dad used to play with me all the time.” He turned suddenly, his face alight with an enthusiasm overpowering enough to carry him right to the edge of Riley’s desk. “You can do really cool things on a computer, did you know that? There’s all kinds of stuff, especially if you have a CD-ROM drive. Like, I had this encyclopedia, you know? And-oh, yeah, there’s Puzzle Wizard-I really like that one, there’s all kind of neat puzzles you can solve. And there’s games, too. My dad gave me a whole bunch of games one Christmas-Battle Beast, Mech Warrios-only Mom wouldn’t let me play with most of ’em. She said they were violent and gross, and she made my dad take ’em back. She was pretty mad at him.”

“Hmm,” said Riley, who was only half paying attention. He was watching, out of the corner of his eye, the evil-looking creature that had just slunk around the edge of the door-which David, naturally, had neglected to close. The boy’s monologue faded to a background hum; the focus of Riley’s attention had narrowed to the cat’s silent progress toward him across the Persian rug. The last thing he saw before it disappeared behind his desk was the moth-eaten tail held aloft like a plume waving over the head of a rather seedy potentate.

Riley felt himself tensing up. Where in the hell was the beast now? More important, what was it doing? A moment later, he had his answer. There came a horrid scratching sound and what felt like about a dozen needles pricking him in the legs. Something heavy landed squarely in the middle of his lap. Riley gripped the arms of his chair and pressed himself backward as the cat, her expression disdainful, casually sniffed his chest and then turned herself around, managing to trod heavily on some sensitive parts of his anatomy in the process. A loud wheezing, grinding noise began to emanate from her as she slowly stretched herself out and placed her front paws on the desktop. After carefully sniffing out the area, she swiped Riley several times in the face with her tail, then hauled her hind half stiffly up and onto his newspaper. There she crouched, staring intently at the door.

Riley had heard David’s mother calling but was holding his breath to avoid inhaling cat hair and couldn’t answer. While he sat frozen, not breathing, her advance guard, the dog Beatle, came dashing headlong through the narrow gap in the door, caught sight of the cat on top of the desk and skittered to a halt The cat lazily arched her back. The dog gave a yelp and scampered back the way she’d come, while the cat placidly arranged herself like a mildewed stole across Riley’s newspaper.

An instant later, Summer stuck her head through the door. The smile on her lips vanished like the sunlight when a cloud gets in the way, and she closed her eyes and softly breathed, “Oh, Peggy Sue…” She pushed the door wide and started forward.

Riley let his breath out and held up a hand like a traffic cop, stopping her there. He rose, one eye on the drift of cat hair that scuttled across his desk, blown by the breeze she’d made, and said briskly, “Never mind-I was done with it, anyway. David mentioned waffles?”

She stepped quickly back, giving him a lot more room than he needed. Oh, yeah, she was avoiding him, all right-why was that beginning to annoy him?

Her smile returned, though, as she gestured toward the kitchen. “I left some for you. But I was coming to ask you-where do you keep your lawn mower?”

“Lawn mower?” He had to stop and think for a moment. “Lord, I don’t know. In the gardener’s shed, I imagine-that’s the door down at the far end of the garage-but I couldn’t tell you what kind of shape it’s in. My gardener generally uses his own, I believe. Why on earth do you want to know?”

“Because,” she began in the same patient tone he’d heard her use with her children, “I noticed your lawn needs mowing. And since I figured your gardener was probably on paid vacation, too, I thought I’d mow it for you. If that’s okay.” And all the while she was saying that, a rosy flush was creeping across her cheekbones.

Riley halted opposite her in his study doorway. Undiagnosed tensions crowded his chest. “You don’t need to do that.”

She raked a hand back through her hair, which, since most of it was caught up in her haphazard ponytail, left the short parts around her face wildly-and rather endearingly-askew. She was wearing a new pair of shorts, he noticed. But with it she wore one of his cast-off shirts with the sleeves rolled above her elbows and the tails knotted around her waist and the top buttons open to show a deep slash of cream-colored throat. For some reason, she seemed to prefer his old clothes to the new ones he’d bought for her.

“Yes, I do,” she said in a low voice, while her eyes begged him to understand.