Sound of Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

fact."
    "Can you tell me about it?" Cara asked and watched curiosity bloom in the other woman's eyes. She was clearly puzzled as to why a stranger to town would ask about an incident that was long past. Especially, Cara thought wryly as she caught her reflection in a mirror behind the registration desk, one who looked as disheveled as she did.
    Her brown hair was still caught at the nape of her neck with a barrette, but much of it had come loose. Her cotton shirt and shorts were hopelessly wrinkled, and the minimal amount of makeup she had put on that morning had long since dissipated. Her face was white, as though she had seen a ghost.
    Cara wouldn't blame the clerk if she refused to answer, but nobody else was in the lobby and the clerk apparently liked to talk.
    "There's not much I can tell you, really. All I know for sure is that the little Rhett boy ran out on the street in front of a car and died."
    "He died," Cara repeated.
    Sam Peckenbush had stopped talking after telling her about the long-ago accident, so she hadn’t known the boy’s fate until that moment. If he had been involved in the collision she saw, however, there was no way he could have lived. Cara blinked back sudden, hot tears.
    "Yes, he died," the clerk repeated. "It was a tragedy, it was. Especially with him being Reginald Rhett's son."
    "Reginald Rhett?"
    "That was the little boy's name, but it also belongs to the publisher of the Secret Sound Sun. That's the newspaper in town, and we're lucky to have it. It's a fine paper for so small a town. You should pick one up and judge for yourself."
    Cara was so focused on what the woman had revealed that she barely heard her prattle about the newspaper. "Was there anything," she stopped and searched for a word, " odd about the incident?"
    "Funny you should ask," the clerk said, furrowing her brow, "because I remember this quite clearly. There was a rumor after little Reginald died that he was all alone. Not a grown-up in sight."
    Alone. The word reached out to Cara with creepy fingers that encircled her neck and made it difficult to breathe.
    "But like I said, I don't remember too much about it." The clerk's voice intruded into her thoughts. With difficulty, Cara again focused on the middle-aged woman and heard the clinking crystals of the chandelier. They seemed to be mocking her for considering, even for an instant, that only hours before she had witnessed an event that had taken place a quarter of a century ago. "Now, can I ask you a question?"
    Cara nodded, realizing what was coming. The clerk narrowed her eyes. "Why are you asking all these questions?"
    "Curiosity," Cara said quickly, knowing her answer was inadequate. "Somebody mentioned the accident when I was at Sam Peckenbush's gas station earlier today, and I wondered what had happened."
    "Why didn't you ask him then?"
    "Him?"
    "Sam Peckenbush. Nobody knows what happened better than he does. He was driving the car that hit the child."

CHAPTER FOUR

    Just because Cara was waiting outside the doors of the aged brick structure that housed the county library when it opened the next morning didn’t mean she was going to let her curiosity stamp out her common sense.
    She just had a few hours to kill before her car would be ready for her to drive it out of town, that was all.
    If she wanted to spend the time sitting in front of a microfiche scrolling through thirty-year-old back issues of the Secret Sound Sun, who could blame her? The official account of the little Rhett boy’s death might give her insight into why she had seen him die again the day before.
    Cara smoothed the hair back from her forehead with a trembling hand, telling herself she was shaky because she’d plied herself with caffeine to counteract the effects of a restless night. It didn’t work.
    Her mother had suffered from Alzheimer's during the last fifteen years of her life. Cara wondered now whether her strange experiences in Secret Sound were an indicator that her brain cells were