The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [141]
Now it was perfect, she deemed, unloading her supplies. Beautiful, safe, and comfortable—perfect.
She settled back in the chair, feet up on the stool, with her notebook and pencil in hand. She drew a line down the middle of the page and divided it into eight rectangles. Rough-draft storyboards were her basic outline for the story she wanted to write and the even more coarse sketches to go with it . . . when they presented themselves. Which they weren’t, at the moment.
She inhaled the fresh air, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes to concentrate. She heard the water beat against the granite wall . . . and woke up shortly before sunset.
THREE
“ A psychotic break? Seriously?” She put her mother on speaker so she could look up the term on her BlackBerry. “You came up with that one pretty quickly. It isn’t from one of your TV shows, is it? There was no screaming or blood involved. I fell asleep and when I woke up, my storyboard was finished—all five pages of storyboard. Patty Ann Pettigrew Meets a Ghost. That’s the title someone gave it. A ghost, for Pete’s sake . . . and there isn’t even a Halloween theme to it.” She read, An acute psychotic episode lasts longer than one day but less than one month—her nap had lasted about four hours. “It says here the patient will have at least one of the following: delusions, hallucinations, markedly disorganized speech, or markedly disorganized or catatonic behavior. There’s nothing about working in your sleep, Mom.”
“Have you hit your head lately? Maybe you just forgot you finished the storyboard and then . . . you were unconscious, not sleeping.”
“Like amnesia?”
“Yes!”
“Umm . . . no. I think I’d remember having had amnesia, wouldn’t I? Besides, I haven’t hit my head on anything. Not that I haven’t wanted to,” she added under her breath.
“Hitting your head isn’t the only way to have amnesia. Stress can—”
“I’m not that stressed.” Or, she hadn’t been until now. “I swear.”
“Ivy, honey, would you like me to drive up? I can bring you some fresh rosemary. We’ll fill the house with the scent of it, put it in our food. Oh! And I’ll bring this marvelous new tea I’ve been working with . . . and with a dash of tincture of ginkgo biloba and a few drops of concentrated Ashwagandha root and a little ginseng you’ll . . . well, if we’re not careful with the Ashwagandha root, you’ll be jumping every man in the vicinity,” she laughed at the thought. “But at least you’ll remember doing it.” She laughed again despite being entirely serious about her herbs.
And while the child in Ivy was sure she’d feel better with her mother nearby, the greater part of her was already gagging on the tea and suffocating from the constant fussing that was her mother’s . . . specialty, to put it lovingly.
“You’re the best mom I’ve ever had, you know that?”
“I’m the only mom you’ve ever had. So I’m guessing that’s a no.”
“It’s a no, thank you, and I appreciate the offer, but I’ll figure it out. In fact, I wonder . . . If I fell asleep with a copy of The South Beach Diet, would I wake up with Cameron Diaz’s body?”
“There you go, my upside-to-everything girl.” She tried to sound cheerful but her voice was still thick with concern. “If that works, you won’t be able to keep me away.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“I want to be the first to know everything, understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
They ended the call—and there and then Ivy resolved to stop relating her worries and woes to her mother. She was anxious enough by nature—her coronary two years ago was proof of that—and aside from her teas and tinctures, there wasn’t a lot she could do to help.
Leafing through the pages of the finished storyboard, it became more and more confusing. Not only was it not the sort of story she generally wrote, it wasn’t a good story. It was the ghost trying to tell Patty Ann Pettigrew, in several different ways, not to be afraid of him. Clearly inspired by the gazebo, it was in a very similar structure