Chapter 1: Kennedy Meets Her Watcher

Her name was Kennedy, just that and nothing more. At eight she was relatively tall, but that still meant she was just a little kid to any adult in the vicinity. Her biological father had gone away; her mother hadn't supplied the reason and he wasn't around to explain for himself. Her mother was, though, a cynical woman who was tall, elegant, dark and pretty, and she had definitely set out to marry upscale the second time.

Kennedy had kept her father's last name and tossed out the one her mother had given her at birth. There was more, Kennedy was sure, than what she'd been told, but even when she asked, she was told she wouldn't understand. That frustrated her because there were a lot of things in her world she didn't understand. Kennedy was patient. Understanding would come in time, and in the meantime, even what knowledge she had was useful for all sorts of things.

Her stepfather was Peter Stuyvesant, the billionaire. He wasn't a bad person, not really, and her stepsister, Victoria, wasn't a bad person either. It was just that they just weren't Kennedy's sort of people. Her stepfather's family had been rich when the Mayflower hit land and they'd prospered as much as anyone in the New World. He was smug and confident, a mind that could best be described as adamantine solidity: nothing could touch it or penetrate it that wasn't already there.

Her stepsister was a chip off the old diamond; her nose firmly in the air, happy so long as things were just so, and of course, when she was getting her way. Everyone else lived at one end of the house in Scarsdale, while Kennedy lived at the other -- she'd been seven when she made up her mind about that.

Her real father had left Kennedy a number of pithy sayings, one of which she found useful in a surprising number of situations: "Nothing results in a quicker decision than an abrupt assertion of certitude." Kennedy didn't always get things she wanted, but at least there was no waffling and dragging things out.

And so it was that when she'd started second grade she came to a smashing crash against the powers that be. Mr. Sullivan, her second grade teacher, told them his name. He'd started describing the things they were going to learn in second grade and Kennedy had been considerably disappointed. She knew how to read, after all. She'd read The Hobbit four times, The Wizard of Oz twice, and most of the other Oz books at least once.

Math was another of her favorite subjects. She knew how to add, subtract, multiply and divide; not just with a calculator, but with a pencil and paper.

And that's where the problem arose. Mr. Sullivan started writing the multiplication table on the board, starting with one times one. She had sneered at the exercise they were supposed to do: copy down what he was writing. She'd memorized the table two years before. She could do the multiplication table up to twenty times twenty rattling off the answers faster than most people could write them down.

Thus it was, when Mr. Sullivan wrote down that eleven times ten was 100, that her hand went instantly in the air. But his back was to the class and the he wrote down eleven times eleven was 111 and eleven times twelve was 122.

"Mr. Sullivan! Mr. Sullivan!" Kennedy called, wanting to fix the error.

"What?" he said, turning to the class.

"Eleven times ten isn't a hundred it's..."

"It is too!" the man said. "Now please, we don't want to confuse the other students."

"If eleven times nine is ninety-nine," Kennedy asked him, "why would eleven times ten be only one more?" It sure sounded like a reasonable question to her.

"Young lady, you will speak when recognized in this class! Then and only then! You will sit there and be quiet!"

"You have the multiplication table wrong," Kennedy told him. "I'm not going to sit here quietly and let you teach us a lie."

Maybe "lie" hadn't been the best choice for a word to describe it, she privately admitted later. It did seem inconceivable that an adult could be that stupid. Finally her behavior resulted in a trip to the office. She'd explained patiently to the principal that no, eleven times ten wasn't a hundred and he'd agreed. Then he'd gone down to the classroom, seen the offending multiplication table and hauled Mr. Sullivan outside the classroom for a private conversation.

Kennedy wasn't sure what the principal had told Mr. Sullivan, but Mr. Sullivan came back in the room and wrote the right numbers on the board. Of course, Kennedy could see his lips moving as he had to figure things out. At least he didn't count on his fingers.

After that, Mr. Sullivan had it in for her. He'd lose her homework papers; he'd forget to put the grade in his grade book, or if she had a 98, he'd reverse the numbers and make it an 89. In two weeks she went from a girl who loved school and learning to someone who loathed school and wasn't sure what the point of learning was, if it was going to make her terribly unpopular with her peers and if her teacher was going to make it extra hard for her.

Her stepfather had been slow to take her seriously, which didn't help. When he finally realized that Kennedy wasn't making things up, he started making photocopies of her homework papers and making sure Kennedy turned in a copy to the office before she went to class.

Mr. Sullivan had gone from awful to beyond awful. Finally, one day it happened.

He told her to be quiet when she was sitting quietly at her desk. She'd looked up at him, her eyes burning with contempt and hate. He'd ordered her to the office, and when she refused, tried to drag her to the door. He'd pushed her and she'd staggered. Without thinking, she applied some of that certitude her father had recommended: she punched him in his ample stomach.

Two days later her stepfather knocked on her bedroom door and asked her to come to the library. She'd gotten up and followed him docilely out her door and down the hall. Being suspended from school was turning out to be a lot of fun; she was getting to read a ton of new books.

The man standing in the library was tall and lean. Kennedy had seen a lot of men who looked tan and fit like the stranger was: they were tennis and golf instructors at the Country Club, where her mother and stepsister were members.

"Kennedy, this is Mr. Geoffrey Glastonbury. Starting at once, he will be your tutor. Mr. Glastonbury, this is my stepdaughter, Kennedy."

"Good afternoon, Miss," the man said, holding out his hand for Kennedy to shake.

She'd shaken it -- and had been surprised at how firm his grip was. Most people didn't shake eight-year-old girl's hands, and most didn't squeeze. He did. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to prove that he was a lot stronger than she was.

"It's just Kennedy," she'd told him. "I'm not a Miss."

Mr. Glastonbury had smiled at her. "It is either Miss or Ms. I'm not very fond of the latter; it sounds rude. Miss Kennedy, our names no more go naked into the world than we do."

He had a British accent, like the butler of Family Affair, she thought. That was kind of cool!

Mr. Glastonbury turned to her stepfather. "Thank you, Mr. Stuyvesant, I'll manage from here."

Kennedy watched her stepfather leave and then turned to Mr. Glastonbury, waiting expectantly for him to say something.

"Tell me, Miss Kennedy, is there something you'd rather be doing at the moment?"

"Not standing around talking to a teacher."

He grinned. "Please, Miss Kennedy. I will be polite to you, so you should be polite to me. I'm Mr. Glastonbury. Or, if you weary of anything that long, 'sir' will suffice."

She contemplated life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She'd had her fill of teachers with Mr. Sullivan. She smiled at him. "I was dreaming last night about finding a way to touch the sky. I'd like to learn how to do that."

He smiled at her. "Odd, I have those dreams now and then, myself. Come along, Miss Kennedy."

She followed him, curious just how this was going to work. She balked when he ushered her into a car door. The car was a rather plebian Toyota Camry, and he held the door open for her.

"I've been told to never get in a car with strange men."

"Well, I'll admit to being a bit far from the center of the bell curve. Console yourself, Miss Kennedy, with the fact that I am a very singular man, however strange I might be."

She kicked herself. He'd turned her words around on her! "I think my stepfather was including singular men in particular."

"Humor me if you want to learn to touch the sky, Miss Kennedy."

Well, it was worth it, she thought. So she got in. She watched carefully how he drove; she was rather surprised when he went further north, not south, toward the City.

"White Plains, New York," he told her as they approached the town. "For now, I live there. Your stepfather tells me that I can have a room at the estate if I pass muster."

"Pinching pennies?" Kennedy asked him.

He shook his head. "Half my ancestors were Scotsmen. Their natural thriftiness has been passed down to me. Miss Kennedy, if you don't address me more formally, I will simply ignore anything you say."

Kennedy contemplated that for a second. "Yes, sir," she told him. It was hard not to giggle, because she was sure what he was going to say, then she'd do her thing and it would be so funny!

"See, Miss Kennedy, not so hard after all!"

"You're right, Mr. Throckmorton."

He ignored the mangling of his name. "Glastonbury is on what used to be an island, called the Isle of Avalon. The monastery at Glastonbury is one of the oldest in England. It was founded by that very particular Saint Patrick. Saint Bridget was a visitor. King Arthur is reputed to have died there; he and Guinevere were buried there."