The Search

The Search

Three months later . . .
Frannie Eicher didn’t sleep at night. Actually, she didn’t sleep that much during the day, either.
It was becoming something of a problem.
She didn’t try to stay awake on purpose; it was just that sometime over the last couple of weeks, it had become a habit. One night, she hadn’t been tired and read for hours. Once she’d realized it was past two in the morning, Frannie turned off her light and closed her eyes. Nothing happened. She didn’t relax, didn’t yawn. Didn’t feel that comforting blanket of sleep begin to descend. Instead, guilt would creep slowly into the forefront of her mind.
And then while the red numbers on her battery-operated digital clock flickered and changed, she’d start to remember her transgressions.
Until the sun began its morning climb up to the horizon.
The following evening, the same thing happened.
By the fourth night, she’d almost begun to accept insomnia as part of her life. Kind of like praying during the morning sunrise and doing wash on Tuesdays.
The good news was that she now had a very small to-be- read pile of books on her bedside table. The bad news, of course, was that she felt permanently tired. Her muscles ached, her head pounded. She’d begun to have small, silly accidents.
Her concentration would waver.
None of these things were welcome. She was a single woman running her own business. When her bed-and-breakfast was filled with guests, she needed to be at her best in order for everything to get done.
Everything was not getting done.
Every so often, her brain would listen to her body and she’d instantly fall asleep, wherever she might be. Sometimes it would be at her desk; she’d awaken with a crick in her neck and a drool spot on the papers she was reading—and a fresh wave of embarrassment, too. No one wanted to be seen passed out in public with one’s mouth open wide.
Other times Frannie would fall asleep on the couch when she was working on her mending. Right in plain sight of all her guests!
She’d wake up besieged by feelings of guilt warring with the delicious sensation of finally feeling refreshed.
All in all, her insomnia was becoming a difficult secret to keep.
Especially from her best friend, Beth.
“Frannie, maybe you should go to a chiropractor,” she said as they pressed dough into tiny pastry molds for the mini quiches that Frannie liked to serve with fruit and muffins at breakfast.
“A chiropractor?” Frannie turned to her in surprise. She’d never thought of her friend as one who would be needing a chiropractor. To one and all, Beth was always happy and healthy. A joy to be around. “My back is just fine.”
“I’ve heard chiropractors can do wonders with other parts of your body, too. And Dr. Collins is a gut doktah, for sure.”
As she smoothed more dough in her hands, she added, “You know, he helped Katie and Mary John with their stomach ailments. Cleansed their colons, it did.”
Frannie privately thought a better diet would have helped Katie and Mary’s stomach problems years ago. She almost blurted her thoughts, but held her tongue. Detective Reynolds’s criticisms about her tendency to stick her nose into places it didn’t belong still stung.
Beth seemed to take her silence as an invitation to talk some more. “If Dr. Collins can help Katie and Mary John, he could surely help you, too. Maybe even help your sleeping problems.” She knew what her problem was, and it wasn’t likely to be solved by a doctor’s visit. But of course, she couldn’t tell Beth that. So she kept the conversation easy.

From the book THE SEARCH: The Secrets of Crittenden County, Book Two by Shelley Shepard Gray. Copyright C 2012 by Shelley Shepard Gray. Reprinted by permission of Avon Inspire, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.