Deadly Start by Clark Nefri (summer beach reads .txt) 📕

As she typed, a new email arrived, and she stopped to read it. For a moment she simply looked at the sender. Maggie from Lakeview Care. Subject: Angelica Dean. What was wrong now?

She dropped her hands from the laptop, awash with a familiar coldness. As her own therapist, she recognised the response to seeing her mother’s name. The coldness wouldn’t go until she dealt with whatever this was.

Charlotte opened the email.

Dear Dr Dean,

I’ve left a message on your phone this evening but thought it best to follow up with an email. Your mother has recently begun asking to see you again. She’s experienced a few episodes that lasted longer than in the past, requiring additional medication to manage her outbursts.

She reached for her phone. The battery was depleted, so she plugged it in and let it recharge. For a moment she stood at the sink filling a glass with water. It overflowed. Once she’d dried her hand, she forced herself back to the email.

Her illness is taking a toll on her. Some days she sleeps despite our best attempts to keep a normal routine, and then she wakens disoriented and the paranoid episodes begin.

Mrs Dean’s deterioration since you last visited is dramatic. I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you by phone to discuss several matters. Although I understand you are no longer in Queensland, please consider coming to see your mother while she still recognises you.

Charlotte closed the laptop with a click. Dementia on top of paranoid schizophrenia and other diseases was why Angelica was in residential care. A lifetime of refusing treatment drove everyone away. Every friend. Any family, including the man who’d bravely married a woman who turned on everyone, sooner or later.

Including me.

If she was treating a patient, Charlotte would know what to do. How to create a management plan and adjust medications and therapy to provide the most comfortable level of living possible.

But she’s not a patient. Not my patient. Not now.

Charlotte was barely aware of grabbing her house keys and slipping her feet back into shoes. She was down the back steps in seconds and running. Running as fast as her legs would let her.

Chapter Fifteen

Charlotte veered left from the bookshop, away from the shopping precinct and roundabout with its empty space where a pretty tree once stood.

Away from the broken glass in front of Esther’s shop, the glass Sid saw not as a clue to catching the thief, but a nuisance needing cleaning up.

Away from the book club ladies who were not ladies but rude and conniving women with nothing better to do than question her right to be there.

And away from the apartment on the bookshop with its email from the place she’d sent her own mother to live.

Without slowing, she crossed streets for block after block until a narrow track took her away from the main road. In darkness she ran, not caring if low-lying branches of bushes stung her bare legs as she got too close to them, nor where she was going to end up. Her heart pounded in her ears until she knew she’d pass out if she didn’t slow.

She staggered to a walk, then stopped, hands on her knees as she gasped in air. This was stupid. A stupid, primal response. Running away didn’t outrun the demons.

Breathe.

Bit by bit, she slowed her racing pulse, sliding the bracelet round and around her wrist. She straightened and closed her eyes, reaching out with her senses to the peace around her.

One breath. Two.

She dug deep into her body with the calming mantra she’d perfected long ago.

One breath. Two. You have control.

Her fingers stretched out.

One breath. Good. Two. You are in control.

Her ears still rang. Except, it wasn’t her ears, but a sound in the distance. Perhaps running water. A creek?

Eyes open again, Charlotte followed the sound, taking in her surrounds as she walked. The path beneath her feet might be narrow but was solid and smooth. On either side, trees and bush enclosed her. She glanced up and saw stars through a canopy of branches.

A small clearing appeared with a couple of timber benches and an information board. This was lit by a single solar light. It was a map of the area.

Kingfisher Falls Reserve.

Several trails forked out, one leading to the actual falls. “I didn’t know there were real falls.” She took a path that initially climbed, zigzagging around old tree stumps, and some ancient trees. Then there were steps leading down, with a sign warning they were steep. With only moonlight to guide her, Charlotte appreciated the rail on one side and was careful of her footing. Partway down was a sign to Kingfisher Falls Lookout, which now seemed a more sensible choice than going all the way down in the dark.

Charlotte gasped aloud as she stepped onto the lookout.

Around her, the trees gave way to a gully where a waterfall cascaded down sheer rocks to a pool below. Moonlight reflected in the pool. Charlotte sank to the ground, sliding her legs through the railing to dangle over the edge. Head on her arms on a rail, she soaked in the majesty of the falls.

As reluctant as Charlotte was to leave the lookout, the night air had cooled, and exhaustion racked her body. Her mind, though, was refreshed, and the anxiety and guilt were relegated back to their normally locked boxes in her brain.

There’d been no alternative to institutionalising her mother. Not after years trying to help her and failing every time. Charlotte had the skills to reduce the symptoms, but Angelica possessed neither the will nor interest to do what was needed. It was time to stop blaming herself for her mother’s choices.

She wandered back along the path she’d earlier run along. On her next free day, she’d come here in daylight, bring a picnic and her phone to take photos. This might turn into her go-to place when the world got a bit too much.