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.

day before were gone, but

gave Vivienne

then they headed upstairs. The study looked the same as the day before, except the items from the floor were now on the desk. "Let's sort through everything you can understand. I'll help you

down the meanings of the symbols Vivienne had drawn, according to his memory. For the symbols he couldn't write, he used phonetic spelling. Vivienne and Percival sat quietly beside him,

the next half hour, the whole family watched Floyd

I can remember for now. Can I tell you the rest after I

written neatly, making the complex symbols easy to understand, and even noted several

for dinner and called everyone down. Floyd was well-behaved, eating everything without complaint, adhering to

it neared time for Floyd to go home, Vivienne, not Percival, took

be with Vivienne, at least she

buzzing with excitement

at a red light, "There's something I've been curious

family members going to be

few seconds of silence before Floyd looked down again,

you saw

wants to keep using it, but my mom disagrees, leading

my dad is harming others by insisting on using the script. If telling you about it can somehow prevent a tragedy,

with sorrow, didn't escape

softened her gaze, her

they arrived, Vivienne opened the car door for Floyd and

then, the sound of something crashing came from inside

as if he was

I can go in by myself." Floyd's face was red, his eyes darting towards the yard, not wanting Vivienne to witness such an embarrassing scene. The doorbell attracted the housekeeper, who appeared with