Love Inspired Suspense April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Laura Scott (free e reader .TXT) 📕

I couldn’t reach the back. Danny and Brett called out that Rosemary was trapped and the emergency door wouldn’t open. They told me to save the others and get help. They’d all work together to get her out. Pope was blocking the front exit. He was really out of it, couldn’t seem to make his arms and legs work. I remember wondering if he was sick. I had to get him out before I could rescue any of the others. I got him and some of the other kids to the surface, thinking I could get to Marie if they weren’t in the way.”

He choked over the words, cleared his throat and continued, “I went back for her, only by that time the bus had shifted, filling the back end with water. I can still see the look on her face. She knew she was going to die and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I remember Brett and Danny trying to push the girls forward, to get them out, but it was too late. Eventually, divers went back for the bodies.” His shrug was eloquent with pain. “Those that made it out were all taken to the hospital, the rest...you know.”

She knew all too well. The bodies had been taken to the morgue. As much as she’d tried to put that memory away, it was all too vivid in her mind.

Two police officers had made notification visits. She remembered the tortured grief in her parents’ eyes upon learning of Brett’s death. Her mother had given an anguished scream, her father shaking his head in denial.

They’d had to go to the morgue to make the identification. Up until then, her parents had clung to a desperate hope that Brett wasn’t among the dead. The reality had sent them into a chasm of grief that had swallowed them in darkness. Uncontrollable sobbing on her mother’s part and tight-lipped silence on her father’s.

In the end it had been her grandmother and Paige who had seen to the funeral arrangements, making the necessary decisions, from choosing the coffin and the flower spray to be laid on top of it to the suit Brett would be laid out in.

She’d done her best, had supported her parents in every way she knew how, but it hadn’t been enough. Nothing had been enough. Still, the grief was almost better than the vacant expressions both wore as life without Brett set in. They’d moved through the house like shadows. Her mother’s skin had been so translucent that Paige imagined she could pass her hand through it.

All the while, she’d tucked away her own grief, burying it deep inside her heart where no one could see. When her parents had praised her strength, she’d basked in the rarely given compliment.

She’d taken over the running of the household, had made certain that her parents had meals and dutifully sat through every news show about the accident that they insisted upon watching since Brett’s funeral.

So adept had she become at hiding her own feelings that she hadn’t even known she was headed for a breakdown. When she’d passed out in school with no memory of what had happened, her parents finally took action. She’d been hospitalized for a week and returned home only when the psychiatrist assigned to her case had been satisfied that she would be given the proper care.

It had been then that her grandmother had stepped in and brought Paige to live with her for the summer. From that time on, Paige had done everything she could to bury the day Brett had died. She read no accounts of the accident, watched no more news reports rehashing it and, when the anniversary of it occurred, studiously avoided all media. Though her brother lived on in her heart, she had effectively blocked out the day he’d died.

Aware that she’d remained locked in the past for too long, she looked up to find Liam watching her, eyes dark with concern. “You’re remembering, too, aren’t you?” He stroked her jawline with his thumb, the gesture tender.

She didn’t have words and could only nod. With an act of will, she dragged herself back to the present and focused on Liam. He was still hurting after Mrs. Hawkins’s attack, and who could blame him? He’d saved the woman’s husband and all she could do was berate him.

“You did the best you could. More than anyone could expect.” Paige winced at the banality of the words. They sounded lame even to her own ears.

Liam slammed down his knife with enough force to have other diners turn and stare. “It wasn’t enough.”

A waiter looked up and started in Liam’s direction until he waved him away. “Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“Is there anything else on the trip home that stands out?” she asked. “Anything at all?”

Paige wasn’t going to be able to talk him out of his guilt, so he was grateful that she turned the subject back to what had happened on the bus ride itself. Something was there, if they could only identify it. His gut churned as he reviewed the bus ride in his mind.

A beat passed, then another, as he gathered his thoughts.

“Just the normal ragging on each other. We were a bunch of kids, high on life, on winning the last game of the season. You know how kids are. We thought we were invincible, that nothing bad could touch us.” He snorted out a laugh at the irony of it. “We couldn’t have been more wrong.”

“What about the trip to the game? Did anything out of the ordinary happen then? Something that when you looked back it gave you pause?”

“I wish I could say there was. The cheerleaders led us in some cheers. I remember Marie telling me that she’d have a special cheer just for me at the game. And she did.” The memory had a smile slipping onto his lips. “She was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, standing at the top of the pyramid, her blond hair