In part two of this episodic psychological thriller, Nicole Jeffords. convinced that healer, Victor Goodlove, who disappeared ten years earlier is buried under her studio, continues her search for him, contacting old patients all over Austin and dis...
I dropped Roberta off at the main entrance to St. David's. Nice would have been to go upstairs with her but she was a smart lady, sharp as a tack, and didn't need any help from me. I was done. I was going home. Much as I worried about Cecily Rose, my presence wasn't required at her bedside — or, more realistically, in the ICU waiting room along with a lot of stressed out, sleep-deprived people clutching cell phones and styrofoam coffee. I'd learn the conclusion of the poison story in due time.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
What a relief to be back in my own surroundings! I felt as if I'd been gone for a year, as if my own life were slightly unfamiliar to me. In my studio, the black painting I'd created the day I went to see Alicia glared at me. Ugly! I took it down, turned it to the wall. I had more important work to do. In two weeks I'd be leaving for Romania and still had a commission to complete — this thing:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Mme X, Earling Drawing (Nicole Jeffords, 2017)
But, of course, I was unable to work. How do you go from a kidnapped little girl, a girl who might die any minute of some unknown poison eating away at her system, to choosing colors for the portrait of a high society lady? I couldn't do it. I sat down on my studio couch and stared at my phone. There were a zillion messages, many from Janet who was in big need of comfort. The girl was a mess — understandably — but I just couldn't deal with more trouble right now. As I looked, another message from her flashed across the screen: Could I accompany her to Roy's funeral in Dallas on August thirteenth? Shit! That was in three days. Of course I could. I was leaving on my trip to Romania a few days after that, but no worries, I'd manage.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The next morning I had two messages from Alicia. The first said doctors couldn't detect any poison in Cecily Rose's system — the whole thing may have been a hoax, though she was being administered antidotes in case. The second, an hour later, said that when the police searched the tiny house where Cecily Rose had been sequestered, they crawled beneath the structure and found a hidden grave. Right now, "as we speak" (her words) equipment was being brought in to move the house and dig up the ground where it had stood
