Hush Little Girl by Lisa Regan (first e reader .txt) 📗

old are you, Mr. Bryan?” asked Noah. If he was a minor, they wouldn’t be able to speak to him without his father present.

“Eighteen,” said Pax. “You can call me Pax.”

Josie and Noah looked at one another. He gave her the nod to continue. “Pax,” Josie said. “We had some questions about friends of yours: Lorelei Mitchell and her daughters, Holly and Emily. Can you tell me—”

“Hey,” Reed said, cutting her off. “You’re not asking questions here. You said you wanted him to confirm I was here and at home yesterday morning. That’s what you’ll do.”

Quietly, Pax said, “My dad was home with me yesterday. We woke up at five. Then at six thirty we drove here to the market. I was with him the whole time.”

“Thank you, Pax. When was the last time you saw Lorelei, Holly, or Emily Mitchell?”

Reed stepped in front of his son, fists clenched. “What the hell do you think you’re pulling here? I didn’t say you could ask my son questions.”

Josie stood her ground, hands on her hips, chin thrust outward. “Emily Mitchell said that he was a friend. You said you had been to the Mitchell house on more than one occasion to retrieve your son. I’m trying to figure out who killed Lorelei and Holly. Your son might have information we need.”

Pax’s voice was still quiet as he spoke from behind his father. “No,” he said. “I have no information. We weren’t friends. I wasn’t friends with them.”

Noah said, “Then why were you at their house—more than once?”

Reed took a deep breath. On the exhale, he said, “This is on me, okay? Pax is right. They are not friends. I didn’t want him being friends with the Mitchell family.”

Josie said, “Why not?”

“Pax,” Reed said. “Go on inside and put out the rest of the lettuce.”

Reed stepped aside so that Paxton could get past him. Paxton scurried toward the doors to the market, stopping briefly to look back at them. Once he had disappeared, Reed turned back to Josie and Noah. “My son ain’t right, okay? You couldn’t tell from talking to him?”

“He seems perfectly normal,” Josie said. Terrified of you, though, she added in her head.

“Well, he ain’t, okay?” Reed said. “He’s always been a little off. His mama used to see to him right up till she passed on. She had him to a bunch of different doctors over the years, couldn’t nobody fix what’s wrong with him.”

“Did you get a formal diagnosis?” Josie asked.

He waved a hand in the air. “I don’t know. It don’t matter, though, does it?”

Noah said, “Maybe it does. There might be treatment for whatever he’s dealing with.”

Reed lifted an index finger and pointed it at Noah’s chest. “Ain’t no one gettin’ in my boy’s head. You got that? No talking doctors, no social workers, no teachers. Nobody. I take care of him now. That’s all he needs. I don’t need nobody messin’ with him, especially nosy bitches like Lorelei Mitchell.”

Both Josie and Noah remained calm. Josie said, “Lorelei thought she could help him?”

“Yeah, she did, but she couldn’t. No one can help him.”

“Is he violent?” asked Noah.

Reed’s eyes narrowed. The finger came back up, this time inches from Noah’s nose. “Don’t you try putting whatever happened to that bitch on my kid. He would never kill anyone. Sometimes he gets upset. Has little meltdowns, but he’s only ever tried to hurt himself. Banging his head against the wall sometimes. That’s all. If I keep things just the way he likes them, he’s fine. That’s what Lorelei didn’t understand.”

Noah didn’t step back. Slowly, Reed lowered his arm.

Thinking of Emily and her OCD, Josie asked, “How does he like things?”

“That’s none of your damn business, now is it?”

“Maybe Lorelei just wanted to offer him friendship,” Josie suggested. “Emily said Pax used to come to the house, bring fruit, and play games with her.”

“I put a stop to that soon as I found out. It ain’t right for a young man of his age to be playing around with young girls.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t dangerous,” Noah said.

“He’s not. It ain’t him I’m worried about. It’s other people. Like you. You don’t understand him. You don’t know him. I can tell what you’re thinking—that because he’s got problems in here—” Reed tapped his finger against his temple. “That he would hurt people. You just assume that’s what would happen. I knew if he hung out at Lorelei’s house, not only would she be gettin’ into his brain, someone would get the wrong idea about him being around a little girl.”

Josie had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know Pax at all, but what would lead Reed to believe that his son might be accused of inappropriate behavior with Lorelei’s girls? Had Pax done something to put that into Reed’s head, or was Reed projecting his own sick thoughts onto his son?

“Is he still in school?” Noah asked.

“He dropped out after his mama died. Couldn’t do it without her.”

Josie’s heart broke a little for Paxton—losing his mother and now being raised by a man who felt he wasn’t “right” in the head. Lorelei and her girls must have seemed like a breath of fresh air to the boy. Josie wondered if there was any truth to Reed’s assertion that Pax struggled with some sort of mental illness. Or did he just have a disorder of some kind? Perhaps Pax had no illness, disorder or condition that needed managing. Maybe he was merely different; and required more care, work, and effort than Reed was willing or able to give the boy. What had Lorelei seen in him? If there was something affecting Pax, then surely she’d come to a conclusion or made a diagnosis even if it was only in her own mind. Josie bet his school had done some kind of evaluation, perhaps even made a diagnosis back when his mother was still alive. But it wasn’t Josie’s job to interfere with Paxton