“Ok, you about ready?” I asked Toby.
“I want Miss Norris to come, too,” Toby said.
I turned to Toby and put my hands on his shoulders. “Toby, Miss Norris isn’t able to come. But it’s very important that we don’t tell anyone that she is here. Do you understand that?”
“Why not?” Toby asked.
I sighed. I was worried that this was going to be a problem.
“You just have to trust me on this,” I said. “Miss Norris has to hide for right now. She is going to take a vacation and stay here with us.”
I looked over at Libby. She seemed mildly amused by how badly I was fumbling this. I actually hadn’t thought this through that well. My son was four years old, and he was very smart. But he was still four years old. To expect him to keep a secret like this was probably a gross miscalculation on my part.
“What do we do?” I asked Libby. “Any ideas?”
“Well, why not keep Toby here. I can continue his lessons,” Libby said.
“I thought about that, but you don’t think it will arouse suspicion from anyone that he is suddenly not there?”
“Tell them he is sick,” she replied. “That flu is going around. And I doubt that the Scarluccis will find out about him and put it together. They still don’t know anything about you and your involvement, right?”
I nodded. “Right.”
I turned back to Toby. “Ok, buddy. Change of plans. Looks like you are going to be staying here with Miss Norris instead of going to school.”
“Cool!” Toby said.
He jumped off the chair and gave Libby a hug.
“I guess, you made the right call,” I said.
Toby left the table and ran into the living room.
“You get a half hour of television,” Libby said. “School starts soon.”
She was really going to keep things to a strict schedule. That was good. I figured she would enjoy the routine and Toby would as well. Plus, it would let me get some work done while they were involved in that.
“Thanks,” I said. “You are amazing; you know that?”
Libby shrugged. “I do have those moments.”
I poured myself another cup of coffee and continued scarfing down my pancakes.
I was really starting to enjoy this feeling.
CHAPTER 16
Libby
I was bored.
After spending most of the morning teaching Toby one on one, we’d covered everything that we would have in a full day with a room full of thirty students. One on one teaching was always much faster. You didn’t have to answer a million questions, you could just get through things quicker, and Toby was such a bright kid that he picked up everything so easily it made me wonder how bored in my regular class he must have been. He had astounding levels of patience for a kid so young.
So, after our school session, I fixed Toby a snack and he then fell asleep in front of the television. Mason had been holed up in his home office all morning and I didn’t dare go in there to bother him. I already felt bad by inconveniencing him. I know he felt like he had to stay here just in case, but I was fairly certain no one was going to come looking for me in his home.
Still, it was nice that he cared enough to stay around.
After Toby fell asleep into his nap, I decided to just do some exploring of the home on my own. I had tried to take everything in the first time, but it was just too much to deal with then. I’d been nervous and frightened from everything that had happened and then the overwhelming magnitude of such a home had swallowed my mind up and spit it back out a bit frazzled.
I started first with the home theater. I couldn’t get over the fact that Mason had a genuine, professionally installed, home theater in his house. It was way nicer than a real, actual movie theater. The screen was an IMAX. The sound system was the best, pure state of the art. There were rows of reclining seats, but those were behind the main seats which were the most comfortable looking couches and leather recliners I’d ever seen. Plus, each one came equipped with its own television tray and a built in refrigerator on the side. In the corner of the room was a fully stocked bar as well. This was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I wondered how many parties Mason had hosted in there.
After sitting on a few seats in the theater and grabbing the remote to start up the beginnings of a few movies, I decided to move on to something else. But I was definitely coming back to this eventually.
The next room I checked out was down the hall from the theater. It was a six lane bowling alley. It was fully automated, there were strobe lights, a great sound machine, another fully stocked bar, and what appeared to be a large pizza oven in the back corner that smelled like delicious pizza.