Cold Deception Read Online Free PDF Page B

Xanax! For God’s sake, Blossom! What were you thinking?!” Eleanor pulled her away from Julia and pushed her onto a kitchen chair. “We’ll have to call an ambulance anyway. She smells like she’s had a lot to drink as well.”
    Julia nodded and made a grab for Blossom as she started a slow slide off the chair. Eleanor snatched up the wall phone and started dialing.
    “Let’s get her into the lounge room,” Julia said to Dee.
    Dee took one arm and Julia the other. They half-carried, half-dragged her to the couch in the lounge room and laid her on her side, careful to make sure she was breathing properly.
    “This is the worst she’s ever been,” Dee said. “I can’t believe how bad she’s gotten in six months.” She stood ringing her hands, a look of devastation on her face. “I tried everything, Jules. Talking to her, shouting at her. I called her every day to make sure she’s okay but she stopped taking my calls. Then I found out Rez threw away her phone. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
    Julia put her arms around her. “We have to get her into detox then rehab. But if she won’t go there’s not much you can do. This isn’t your fault, Dee.”
    She hugged her as they waited for the ambulance. Eleanor joined them while Julia shook Blossom when she thought she was losing consciousness. “Stay with us Bloss, stay with us.”
    Blossom muttered while her eyes rolled. The sound of sirens filled the air. Finally, Julia heard Eleanor open the front door, letting in the paramedics.
    “What did she take?” one asked.
    Julia filled them in as they loaded her onto the trolley.
    The older one, a bloke, grunted. “We’ll get her up to the hospital quick smart.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Eleanor said.
    Julia and Dee followed them out to the roadside and watched as Blossom was loaded into the back of the ambulance. Eleanor climbed in after her.
    Dee sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “What a disaster.”
    “I meant what I said back there. This is not your fault or Ma’s.” They stared after the ambulance. Julia finally stirred and turned back to the house. “I’ll get some things together for Blossom. We should follow them up to the hospital.”
    Dee nodded, a look of devastation on her face. Julia put an arm around her shoulders.
    “I never told you how grateful I was that you visited me every week. I know I told you I didn’t want you to, but you wouldn’t listen and then I got to rely on you.”
    Dee leaned her head on Julia’s shoulder. “I couldn’t leave you in that place alone, Jules. Ellie’s not strong, not really. She could only manage a few times.” She lifted her head and looked into Julia’s eyes. “Do you resent her for that, Julia?”
    Julia stroked the older woman’s back. “Yes and no. She wrote to me almost every day. Did you know that?”
    Dee shook her head, sudden tears appearing in her eyes.
    “They were wonderful, a gift. Full of love and longing. All the intricate details of your lives together. Every week for ten years, I waited for those letters, craved them. They were my drugs.”
    Eleanor’s letters were her lifeline to the real world, to a place Julia dreamed of every night, glimpsed through the terrifying bars of her nightmares. All the gossip, changes, and silliness of the upper mountains community allowed Julia to live vicariously through the power of her mother’s words. As the seasons changed, she could see the garden and the bush, the light on Mount Solitary, the greedy parrots on the plum tree, just as her mother described them.
    Part of her believed they were her mother’s usual strategy of pulling her back toward her, only to push her away later on, but still, Julia treasured them, re-reading them and dreaming of freedom.
    Freedom was here.
    She stared after the ambulance.
    Freedom might have to wait a while.

Chapter 3
    The hospital arranged for Blossom to stay in overnight then go into detox for a week, down on the plains at the bigger