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

They gazed at one another for a long moment. Josie could tell there was a silent flood of communication happening between them. It was couples’ shorthand. She and Noah had it as well. Finally, Celeste took his hand, lacing her fingers between his. Turning back to Josie and Noah, she said, “Fine. A few days. That’s it. We’re not prepared to have a child full-time. But only if all of this stays out of the press.” She spared Tom a glance. He didn’t look happy, but kept silent. Celeste continued, “Not to sound callous, but I don’t want any bad press to fall on Harper’s Peak. It’s one thing for us personally, but we employ hundreds of people here, and it’s my job to protect them and make sure they continue to have income.”

“We’ll do our best,” Noah assured her. “Right now, we’ll need to speak with the social worker. It will ultimately be up to her to approve Emily coming here temporarily. She may want to meet with you.”

“You can give her our cell phone numbers,” Adam said. “We’re always here.”

Noah’s cell phone chirped. Josie recognized it as his text notification. He took it out and glanced at the screen. “Hospital,” he said. “They’ve got those records we requested.”

“Let’s go,” Josie said. To Adam and Celeste, she added, “Marcie Riebe from Child Services will be in touch.”

Seventeen

They left Celeste and Adam’s residence and walked back to the parking lot adjacent to the main resort building. As they were about to get into the car, a white van flashed past, headed around the rear of the building. “Noah, look,” said Josie.

“That’s one of the vans from the market,” he said, and read the words off the side of it. “Bryan’s Farm Fresh Produce. Did you see who was driving?”

“No,” Josie said. “It went by too fast. You?”

Noah shook his head but started walking toward the rear of the building, following the asphalt drive. “There’s one way to find out.”

Josie followed. They rounded the back of the resort building to see a loading dock. The van was backed up to it, doors open. Reed stood on the dock with a resort staffer. As the two of them studied a clipboard, the staffer checking off items with a pen, Paxton unloaded boxes of produce from the van, setting them at his father’s feet. He lined them up in rows of four, taking time to make sure each box was lined up precisely beside the next with exactly one index finger’s width between them. Josie watched him put his finger in the gaps between the boxes once, twice, then a third time. One of the boxes was too close to the other. He adjusted it and started all over again, counting and measuring with his finger again.

“Dammit, Pax,” Reed yelled. “I told you to knock that shit off. Come on now, we don’t have all day.”

Pax jumped and quickly turned back to the van, grabbing more boxes. A resort staff member then helped Reed carry each one inside. Josie could see him surreptitiously adjusting the boxes when his father was inside the building. As she and Noah drew closer, Paxton looked up and spotted them. His brown eyes went wide with panic. He looked over at the dock, but his father was still inside. He put a finger to his lips. Shhh. Then he shook his head.

Josie kept walking. She would not be intimidated by Reed Bryan. She was only a few feet from the front of the van when she felt Noah’s hand on her forearm. “Look,” he said.

Pax had stopped unloading the van. His hands were jammed into his apron pockets, rooting for something. One hand emerged with a crumpled piece of paper. With a jerky motion, he tossed it to the side. It fell next to the van between the back and the driver’s side door but out of the line of view of where Reed had been standing on the loading dock. Pax met Josie’s eyes, making the hush motion again with his index finger. She nodded. As Reed came back out of the building, she and Noah crowded against the front of the van. From where Reed stood, he wouldn’t be able to see them.

“What the hell, Pax? Come on. We don’t got all day. We got more deliveries after this,” they heard Reed complain.

“Sorry, Dad.”

Noah peeked around the side of the van. “It’s right there,” he said. “I can get it.”

“This is ridiculous,” Josie said.

“Maybe, but when are we going to get to talk to this kid without his dad around? He’s obviously trying to tell us something. Hang on.”

Lightning fast, he crouched low and sprinted around the side of the van, scooping the crumpled paper and bringing it back. From behind them, they could hear Pax dropping boxes onto the surface of the loading dock, followed by grunts as Reed and the resort staff member hefted them into the building. Noah used the snub-nosed hood of the van to smooth out the paper. Most of the document was gone, burned away or blackened from fire. In many places, where Pax had crumpled it, pieces of it had flaked away. Only a few bits of text survived.

“This came from Lorelei’s house. The greenhouse, maybe,” Josie said softly.

Noah nodded. “This is handwritten. Hard to make out. Maybe a letter of some kind? ‘… don’t want to involve you. I never did. I thought I could do this on my own, but I was wrong. I won’t be able to…’ I can’t make out the rest of that sentence. Then: ‘… we made a deal but if you’d just give it a chance, you might feel…’ More of this is unreadable. Looks like, ‘… know the truth about you, and I don’t care…’ Can’t read the rest of this paragraph, but then down here it says, ‘… can’t just do the right thing? Why are