Moody’s nose hurt.
And, she was scared.
For the past seven years, psychologist Mary “Moody” Sinclair had been used to the moist cool air of the coastal town of Winnington Bay, Washington. The dry desert air of Rubicon Ranch sucked the moisture out and left her feeling like she was breathing in tiny sand particles. The scratchiness in her nose added to all the other hurts she had suffered over the past year.
One error in judgment had cost Moody her license to practice. When conventional ADHD treatments had not helped eight-year old Chad Monroe, in a moment of self-doubt and slight panic Moody had opted for a new-age radical binding technique.
All had been going well for Moody and Chad’s parents until Chad started to convulse. Epilepsy had not shown up in any of the boy’s medical tests. Everyone, including the coroner, was left with the question: did the tight binding treatment create the epilepsy or was the epilepsy dormant until the binding triggered it?
The humiliation of the trial and its resultant three-month prison sentence added to the hurts Moody had already suffered for her part in killing Chad Monroe. It wasn’t entirely her fault, though. When the boy began to convulse, too many hands had tried to loosen the thick rope wrapped around his small body like a cocoon.
After three months in Fendleton’s Women’s Prison, Moody had been given court permission to return to her father’s home in Rubicon Ranch. When the judge realized who Moody’s father was and where Rubicon Ranch was located, he sarcastically told Moody she might wish to stay at Fendleton rather than move to another type of prison.
Click here to read the rest of the chapter: http://rubiconranch.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/chapter-5-mary-“moody”-sinclair-by-jj-dare
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Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the fictional desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by authors of Second Wind Publishing.
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