Hush Little Baby Read Online Free PDF

probably spend the next hour searching for a way to stiffen my fruit punch. Sarcasm and humor are lost on her. “No thank you,” I answer instead.
    “I sure could use one,” the familiar baritone of Bronson Harris interrupts from behind us, “a double, dry, straight up.”
    He kisses my cheek as Tina and her furrowed brow scurry off with a “Yes, sir,” in search of a solution to her new crisis of making a double-dry-straight-up fruit punch for the big guy.
    “I hear congratulations are in order. You finally slayed the dragon.”
    “Actually, I think Sherman just got tired and ran out of fire.”
    “I’m still going to call you Dragon Slayer, at least for a week.”
    Tina reappears. “McGregor’s back,” she says.
    “Speak of the devil,” Harris says, looking concerned. “Want me to go with you?”
    I shake my head a little too emphatically. Harris and Sherman have locked horns too many times in the past.
    “Damn bastard, you’re right. Don’t know how you do it, Jillian. That man brings out the Irish in me.”
    “Sherman’s like my dad,” I answer, smiling. “I have forty years’ experience in how to negotiate a proud man into doing something he doesn’t want to do.”
    “Go get ’em, Dragon Slayer.”

9
    S herman sits in the same chair he occupied earlier, his thick body filling the armchair and his powerful anima filling the room.
    I take my seat across from him.
    “Hello again,” I say.
    “I need a favor.”
    I tilt my head.
    “I’ve changed my mind.”
    I don’t breathe. Like the Compton school, we need the McGregor deal.
    Without the two, I might as well start updating my resume. Harris Development is two jobs away from going belly-up like a thousand other developers that have been wiped out in the last three years. Already we’ve suffered layoffs, bonus cuts, and salary freezes. Compton Middle School and the Sherman merger will ensure our future for the next five years.
    The old man raises his hand. “Not about the deal.”
    I let go of my breath and wait for the rest.
    “About the sale,” he says, “the firm is yours, but I don’t want the sale made public.”
    I tilt my head.
    “For two months,” he continues, “for two months Harris needs to continue as you have for the last two years, as though we’re still negotiating, then you can announce the merger.”
    “Why?” But I know why and it makes me sad. How did it get to the point where it is? I wonder for a moment about my own marriage and if Gordon and my wounds will poison our children as well, if the future is looking at me.
    He shakes his liver-spotted head. “The money needs to be transferred, but the sale needs to be kept quiet for two months.”
    “That’s going to be difficult.”
    “Difficult is your specialty.”
    The deal we already made was difficult. Sherman fought to protect the people who work for him and that made things complicated. He negotiated that McGregor Architects remain sovereign for three years after the merger to guarantee, or at least hopefully guarantee, that his employees would have a chance to survive the merger and then either prove their worth to Harris or move of their own accord.
    “Sherman, difficult is one thing, but do you really want to do this? This morning, we were good to go.”
    “The future is not what it used to be.”
    “Now you’re quoting Valéry?”
    “Smart and beautiful. Where were you when I was younger?”
    “Studying Valéry.”
    His smile is sad. “They’re not getting any of it, and I don’t want them to know. I don’t want my last days to be a war with my children attempting to declare me incompetent.”
    “Sherman, they’re your family.”
    His head bends to his chest, causing two chins.
    In the two years we’ve been discussing the merger, histories have been revealed. Sherman knows about Addie and Drew and that Gordon is a police officer and that my dad recently suffered a stroke.
    And I know about Sherman’s three failed marriages, his older