The Million-Dollar Heart by Rebecca Ryan

Percival's eyebrows arched in surprise.

Indeed! Floyd knew a lot, those symbols turned out to be his family's script.

"Wow, they belong to your family? Why would your family create such complicated scripts? It seems pretty hard to write, doesn't it tire you out?"

"We don't use them anymore, actually. They were used by our ancestors long ago. They thought of these as family secrets, so they developed a script only our family could decipher." "How come you know about it if it's that ancient?"

"Every child in our family learns it from a young age, along with English. Plus, my dad still has some of these books at home, so I picked it up over time."

Floyd looked towards Vivienne in the driver's seat, "But my dad always said this was unique to our family. Why do you have something with our family's script on it?"

His eyes were filled with a thirst for knowledge, driven by his father's stern warnings that these secrets must never be shared with anyone, under any circumstances!

Vivienne didn't turn back, "We found these and are still trying to decode them. They might be related to a case."

"So, you're detectives?"

Percival and Vivienne remained silent.

Taking their silence as confirmation, Floyd turned to Juliette, impressed, "No wonder you wouldn't tell me what was going on at lunch. It's because you're detectives, that's so cool!" Juliette chuckled awkwardly.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone!" Floyd promised, covering his mouth.

Vivienne glanced at him, saying nothing.

Soon, they arrived at the house, and Vivienne stepped out with the kids.

were gone, but Vivienne pulled out

Floyd gave Vivienne a sweet smile, "Thank

can understand. I'll help you with these," Vivienne said, dragging two chairs over, one big and one small, for them to sit on. Floyd seemed

his memory. For the symbols he couldn't write, he used phonetic spelling. Vivienne and Percival sat quietly beside him, not

next half hour, the whole family watched

his head sheepishly, "That's all I can remember for now. Can I tell you the rest after I get the dictionary from home?" Vivienne took the report and scrutinized

making the complex symbols easy to understand, and even noted several meanings for

time for dinner and called everyone down. Floyd was well-behaved, eating

Floyd to go home, Vivienne, not Percival, took it upon herself to

at least

with

rearview mirror at a red light, "There's something I've been curious about." "What's that?" Floyd looked

Aren't your family members going to

few seconds of silence before Floyd looked down again,

saw

this script. My dad wants to keep using it, but my mom disagrees, leading to endless arguments and a strained

that my dad is harming others by insisting on using the script. If telling you

sorrow, didn't escape Vivienne's

her gaze,

arrived, Vivienne opened the car door for Floyd and straightened his clothes, "You're

of something

if he

was red, his eyes darting towards the yard, not wanting Vivienne to witness such an