Read Marshmallows for Breakfast for Free Online

smart, stylish kitchen before leaving them to it.
    I hadn't seen Kyle again. He'd clearly abandoned them at breakfast. Had he abandoned them today as well? I hadn't heard anything from them or from the house after I left… More scenarios danced across my mind.
    I stood up, marched across my flat to the top of the stairs, ready to run down, throw open the door and march across the courtyard to the house to double-check that things were as they should be. That the children had eaten, had been bathed, had been communicated with. It was my duty as a neighbor, as a human being. You heard it all the time after a tragedy—people saying they had a feeling that things didn't seem right but had ignored the feeling, and things had ended in a hospitalization or worse.
    I paused at the top of the stairs. They're not your children, I reminded myself. It's nothing to do with you. You. Are. The lodger.
    Besides, Kyle didn't seem the type to hurt his children. Whatever the “type” was. He seemed to care about them. He'd been nice to me. The look of horror at frightening me crossed my mind. He doesn't seem the type. And there was a huge gulf between abusive neglect and neglecting a child because you're struggling to cope. They may well be two differentpoints along the same continuum, but it was a continuum I hadn't ever struggled along so how could I know how easy it would be to ignore your children when it was all too much? Maybe Saturday was just a bad day. Maybe they were sleeping today. Maybe you should mind your own business.
    With that final thought, I forced my body to go back to the sofa, pick up the remote and turn up the sound on the television to drown out the deadening silence.
    My worry about the Gadsboroughs was probably fueled by procrastination, if I was honest. I had something I had to do and I didn't want to do it. I had a letter to write. I should have written it a month or so ago, but in the panic of leaving Sydney, finishing up at work and training my replacement, there hadn't been time.
    Now I had time on my hands and I had to do it. And I couldn't. The paper, which sat on the coffee table in front of me, seemed vast and wide. Appropriate since I had an immense amount to say. Yet, so far I'd managed a small blue dot on the top right-hand corner of the page. That was where I'd pressed the nib of the pen when I started to write the date, then decided against it in case I didn't finish the letter for a while. I'd taken the pen away, and stared at the sheet knowing I couldn't write my address because he might track me down. That was the sort of thing he would do. Find out where I was, try to tell me he didn't blame me or— worse—that he loved me. That no matter what, he loved me. I couldn't face that. I felt guilty enough without knowing he didn't hold me responsible for ruining his life.
    So, no date and no address later, I'd hit another stumbling block. I wasn't sure if I should go for “dear,” which felt too formal, or “hi,” which felt too casual. And then I'd thought of just writing his name and I'd frozen. I couldn't do it. I'd been petrified by the thought of committing topaper the fact I had a relationship with him so close I could use his first name in any context. It was something most of us took for granted, using someone's first name. But it was an implied intimacy, a closeness that at moments like this said so much. At that point I'd tossed aside the notepaper and pen and went back to worrying about the family across the courtyard.
    And now, I didn't know what to do with myself.
    In frustration, I stood up. I stretched my five-foot four-inch body, enjoying the pull in the muscles of my back, stomach, arms and legs. My shoulder-length hair swung loose as I threw my head back. I was momentarily free. As though I was stretched beyond the confines of my physical body. All that existed of me were molecules that could reach up and touch the sky, that could push down into the center of the earth.
    I picked