Invitation by Frank Peretti

Author:Frank Peretti [Peretti, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042060;FIC042020;FIC031070
ISBN: 9781441231451
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

An hour later I was clean, perfumed, and sitting at the head of Safta’s dinner table. She had ordered several Chinese dishes, which waited on a lazy Susan along with a selection of chopsticks and a note saying “Welcome to the Beach House.”

“In a place this fancy, I know we’re supposed to use good manners,” Brenda said, glancing around, “so I’ll be good and not smoke in the house. But I’m starving, so if you’ll pass your plates, I’ll slap on some rice. Daniel, you want brown rice or white?”

Daniel shifted his gaze from the sliding glass door to look at her, but didn’t respond.

Brenda nodded. “Okay, white rice it is. Cowboy, what do you want? A bowlful of everything?”

While Brenda served, I leaned back and studied her and Daniel. Something had happened between them since we were last together—the tenuous bond they established in Port Avalon was far stronger now. I could see it in the way her body curved toward him and in the way his eyes followed her as she served everyone else. Maybe he’d been afraid to fly this morning and she comforted him. Maybe he’d begun to see her as a surrogate mother. One thing I knew for sure—if the kid had managed to get inside her heart, he was the only one of us who had.

And Daniel—in Port Avalon, he had been accompanied by an invisible friend . . . a rather large friend who didn’t care for the name Harvey. If Daniel’s imperceptible protector had come along on this trip, apparently he hadn’t joined us for dinner.

Brenda was watching Tank inhale a plate of Kung Pao chicken when I caught her attention. “By the way, how’d you get Daniel out of the hospital?”

She smirked. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Give us a try.”

Brenda glanced around the table, then snorted. “Okay. So last time when I took Daniel back to the hospital, I had to explain why he was with me, right? So I told them that I was his aunt, and I was steamin’ mad that they’d let that other couple sign him out without providing any kind of identification. I showed them a newspaper article about the murders in Port Avalon, and I told ’em Daniel had been in the middle of all that. Well.” She smiled. “They were so terrified by my threats of a lawsuit that they never asked to see anything from me. I had them put me down as Daniel’s aunt, and I told them that if they ever released him to anybody but me, I’d sue the lab coats right off their pimply backsides. You should have seen ’em scampering to take care of the boy after that.”

“That hardly seems logical.” The professor smiled, but his eyes softened when he looked at the boy. “Surely his parents are listed in his file. I’m sure there are certain custody orders, medical releases—”

“That’s the thing, Doc.” Brenda leaned toward us and lowered her voice to a rough whisper. “That hospital is like the end of the earth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.