The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Read online

  “Mish—”

  A groan from Mother cut me off. She pressed both hands to her left chest, closed her eyes, opened them and blinked rapidly. Her breath came in quick gasps.

  “Mother?” I said. “Mother!”

  I was up and leaning over her, pushing Michelle away. I clamped my fingers on Mother’s wrist and refused to let her shake off my hand. For a terrifying second I couldn’t feel a pulse, then it came, erratic, weak, beat on top of beat, a pause, a cascade of faint vibrations too rapid to count.

  “My God, she’s fibrillating. Mish, call 911.”

  Michelle stood motionless, open-mouthed, blank-faced.

  “Do it! Now!” I pushed her toward the wall phone.

  She fumbled with the receiver, got the 911 operator, babbled uselessly. Mother protested the fuss even as she gasped for breath. I crossed to Michelle, grabbed the phone and reeled off the information.

  When I hung up, Michelle had her arms around Mother. She glared at me over Mother’s head. “Just look what you’ve done. Are you satisfied now?”

  ***

  I drove behind the ambulance, Michelle flushed and trembling beside me. When I said I was sure Mother would be all right, she snapped, “What do you know? You’re nothing but a cat and dog doctor.”

  I bit back angry words and drove on in silence to Fairfax Hospital. She will be all right. She will be. I didn’t cause this. Dear God, did I cause this?

  As the medics had forced Mother to lie on the gurney, she’d reached for my hand and gripped it weakly in her cold, cold fingers. “You’re not adopted,” she’d said, the words breathy and urgent. “You’re not.”

  I’d tucked her arm against her side and murmured, “I know, Mother, I know.” At that moment I’d believed her.

  Nothing was resolved. I’d made my mother ill, and the answers I needed remained out of reach, waiting for some still unimagined question to be asked.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Michelle and I didn’t hear the doctor’s report. We heard Mother’s version of it, after she’d been moved into a room for overnight observation. We stood on either side of her bed, with a gray curtain separating us from the patient who shared the room. I could hear the unseen woman snoring softly.

  “Just minor irregularities,” Mother assured us. The head of her bed was raised part way so that she was almost in a sitting position. Her auburn hair fell loose on the pillow, catching the light from the single lamp above the headboard. “It’s probably nothing more than stress.”

  Michelle glowered at me.

  Ignoring my sister’s look, I said, “It didn’t seem minor. Did he find an underlying problem?”

  Mother smoothed the blue sheet over her legs. “Well, it’s not serious.”

  “I wish I could go on believing that,” Michelle said. “But I’m starting to think it’s worse than you ever let me know.”

  I glanced from her to Mother. “You mean this isn’t something new? Why didn’t you tell me you had a heart problem?”

  “Really, it’s nothing to worry about.” She waved a dismissive hand.

  “Tell me, Mother. Please. When did this start?”

  “Oh, a while back. I was feeling something a little—” Her long fingers fluttered over her chest. “—unusual, and I went to Dr. Beaumont. Of course he immediately sent me to a specialist.” She gave a little laugh: We know how doctors are, don’t we?

  Worry was full-blown in me. Every other concern melted away in the face of this reality. My mother was ill. Something was wrong with her heart. “What did the cardiologist say?”

  Her dark eyes met mine. “It’s hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—”

  “My God.” I groped for the chair behind me and dropped into it.

  “But it’s mild,” Mother said. “My medication takes care of it most of the time. I’m hardly aware of a problem.”

  I gripped the chair’s cold metal arms. “How long have you known?”

  She hesitated. “About eighteen months.”

  “Eighteen months!” I jumped up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I saw absolutely no reason to worry you. You were in Ithaca, you were very busy with your training, and you couldn’t have done anything anyway.”

  “I’ve been home since Christmas. You could’ve told me.”

  “Rachel.” The sheets rustled with her movement. Her fingers were cold on my hand. “You’re right. I should have.”

  She held out her arms and I leaned into them gratefully, embracing the slender body that now seemed so frail. “I’m sorry I upset you,” I mumbled against her shoulder.

  She patted my back. “Let’s not think about it anymore.”

  I drew back and wiped tears from my cheeks. Mother’s hand glided over my hair and brushed my cheek.

  “Mother.” Michelle’s voice was too loud in the hushed room. “Did the doctor give you any special orders for when you go home?”

  “Oh, the usual. Take it easy, avoid stress.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to do,” Michelle said. “You should cut back on your practice—”

  “No, no, no. That’s absolutely not necessary. As long as I keep down the stress level in other areas.”

  Michelle threw me a barbed glance. I was one of those other areas.

  The door swung inward with a whoosh and a stocky young blond woman in blue scrubs appeared. “I’m going to have to ask y’all to leave now,” she said. “It’s way past visiting hours, and your mother and her roommate both need their rest.”

  She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows to emphasize the order before departing.

  “Yes, you two go home now,” Mother said. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”

  Michelle and I didn’t speak during the drive, and once inside the house she went directly to her bedroom. I unloaded the dishwasher and loaded the machine with the rest of the dirty dishes before climbing the stairs too.

  ***

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean her condition’s worsening,” Luke said when I called him. “The arrhythmia could be entirely psychogenic.”

  “You mean it is a reaction to stress.” I sat cross-legged on my bed, forehead in palm. “I did bring it on.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Stop blaming yourself. That’s probably what she wants you to do. Don’t fall into the trap.”

  “Oh, Luke. You make her sound so diabolical.”

  “Hey, remember you’re the one who said she used hypnosis to control you.”

  “Maybe I’m imagining things. I mean, I was all wound up when Theo was trying to hypnotize me—”

  “Rachel, for God’s sake! You’re finally getting at the truth. Don’t start doubting yourself now.”

  I rubbed the aching muscles at the back of my neck. “I just wish I felt sure I didn’t contribute to this heart problem.”

  “You know better than that, Dr. Goddard. Heart disease doesn’t develop overnight in people any more than it does in animals. If you can’t trust your own medical knowledge, then trust mine.”

  He was right. But that didn’t take away the guilt.

  ***

  Sleep was a foreign thing, distant and unattainable. The day’s events churned through my mind, Mother’s wildly skipping heartbeat pulsed against my fingertips. I rose and paced the room. I opened a window and breathed in the heavy humid air, listened to the screech and buzz of nocturnal insects. I flopped on the bed again and kicked the twisted top sheet away.

  Despite my anxiety over Mother’s illness, my thoughts kept sliding in one direction: her keys were in her purse, and her purse was in her room, unguarded. The file cabinet keys had to be in her purse.

  I shifted, turned onto my side. No, I couldn’t do it.

  Deep silence enveloped the house. Was Michelle asleep?

  I slipped out of bed, crept to the door, opened it a crack. Across the hall, no light showed under Michelle’s door.

  The hallway was so dark that I had to feel my way to Mother’s room. Inside, I c
losed the door quietly, then groped across the room toward the dresser. My searching hand struck the lamp shade. I grabbed and fumbled to keep the lamp from tipping over. After giving my suddenly racing heart a minute to slow down, I switched on the light.

  Mother’s purse lay on the dresser, a navy blue leather shoulderbag with a gold clasp. I eased the clasp open, slid a hand inside, gripped the keys tightly so they wouldn’t jangle when I removed them. Even so, I glanced at the door, afraid I’d somehow given myself away.

  My throat was so tight that I was conscious of every dragging breath. I sorted through the dozen keys, able to identify most of them. One looked like the key I’d had made for the box in Mother’s study. The two smallest keys, I hoped, would open the file cabinets.

  I moved slowly down the stairs, feeling for each step in the dark, and tiptoed along the hall to Mother’s study. Behind the closed door, I switched on the ceiling light and was momentarily stunned by the full illumination of my actions. I almost stopped then, but a minute later I was riffling through the manila file folders in one of the cabinet drawers.

  Like everything Mother did, the filing system was impeccably organized. Dividers identified cases according to the patients’ afflictions: ACROPHOBIA, AGORAPHOBIA, CLAUSTROPHOBIA, and so on. I skimmed the names on the individual folders, glanced inside some, feeling like a peeping tom at the windows of strangers’ lives. I began to doubt that I would find a case record about myself among these files, but I kept going out of a compulsion to be thorough.

  At very back of the last drawer, I saw a folder with no name on it. I yanked it out.

  The folder contained a single sheet of blue note paper with a few lines in a handwriting I didn’t recognize. A small memo square, paper-clipped to the sheet, bore Mother’s familiar script. I took the folder to the desk and sat down to read. Mother’s note said, “Explore the motivations of a woman who is capable of such a thing.”

  The slightly uneven top and bottom of the note paper made me believe the names of both recipient and sender had been scissored off, and perhaps part of the message too. What remained was:

  I want you to know that I have no regrets. I could lie and say I’m sorry it happened because it turned my life upside down, but I’m not sorry. It was wonderful, and it gave me the one beautiful thing I’ve got left.

  “What on earth?” I murmured. I read the letter again, then Mother’s one-sentence memo. If the letter had been written to her, why had she attached the note and put both away in a folder as if this were a possible topic for a paper? I had no idea how to interpret any of it, but the words were charged with meaning, weighted with a dark emotion I couldn’t name. They chilled me.

  Overhead I heard movement, then footsteps in the upstairs hall. Michelle walked like a lumberjack when she was groggy.

  The file was back in the cabinet and I was out the door when she called, “Rachel? Where are you?”

  “Right here.” I moved into the light that now spilled down the stairs.

  Michelle stood halfway up the steps, barefoot in a short pink nightgown, hair tangled around her face. “What are you doing in the dark?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Have you been awake too?”

  She rubbed at her eyes. “I went to sleep and kept dreaming about Mother. I’m so worried. Do you really think she’ll be all right?”

  She was my little sister again, a scared child coming to me for reassurance. I climbed the steps to meet her, hoping she wouldn’t spot Mother’s keys in my hand.

  “I’m sure she’ll be okay,” I said. “Go on back to bed.”

  I took her arm and nudged her up the stairs. We paused at the top.

  “Promise me you’ll be careful not to upset Mother when she comes home,” Michelle said. “She can’t take any more stress.”

  “Oh, God, Mish, let’s not stand here and argue in the middle of the night.”

  My insecure baby sister had vanished. Michelle gave me that level, superior look I hated, her almost-a-therapist expression.

  “Rachel, I don’t know what’s going on in your head. You’re starting to scare me.” Then she softened, shifting gears again. “I’m willing to listen if you want to talk about it. You know, we used to be able to talk about anything.”

  I shook my head. “There have always been things we couldn’t say.”

  We held each other’s gaze for a long moment. I wondered how well I really knew her. She didn’t know me at all. “What do you think about the things she said tonight? About her parents.”

  Averting her eyes, she said, “If Mother doesn’t want to talk about all that, she has a right—”

  “But they were our grandparents. And they sound like lunatics. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  She tilted her chin obstinately. The door to her mind had clanged shut. “It has nothing to do with us.”

  She would believe that no matter what I said. She was turning away, toward her room. “Mish, what’s your first memory of me?” I said. “Of us as a family?”

  “Oh, Rachel!” She flapped her arms, then faced me again. “Where did this obsession come from? I can’t believe you asked Mother if you were adopted! She gave birth to you, she’s loved you all your life. How could you ask her something like that?”

  I could take her downstairs, use the key in my hand, make her look at the pictures hidden in Mother’s study, the pictures that didn’t include me. “You don’t understand—”

  Her face was hard and cold. “I understand this: you’re endangering Mother’s health. I want you to stop it. Now. Don’t you dare say another word to her about any of it.”

  She marched to her open bedroom door, stepped into the room and turned to throw me a harsh glance, a further warning. She didn’t slam the door, but closed it silently, the way Mother would.

  I returned the keys to Mother’s purse. Back in my room, I sank into the chair at the dresser. My mirrored image confronted me: messy hair, rumpled gown, eyes hollow and mournful.

  My questions had made my mother ill tonight, sent her to the hospital. My probing had touched her very heart, the core of her life. I was an ungrateful child, an unloving daughter.

  But I did love her. I loved her and yearned for her approval and embraces and proud looks. I thought of that other box in her study, filled with school records, report cards, my A’s preserved along with Michelle’s. No one who saw that cache of memories could have said, She didn’t love you, she only loved your sister.

  She wanted me to stop examining my own life, our life as a family. How could I persist after what had happened that night? Mother was the one person who knew all the answers, but now I didn’t dare push her to tell me. I didn’t want to hurt her, couldn’t bear knowing that I’d done something to endanger her.

  ***

  Mother came home Saturday morning wearing a heart monitor.

  “I have to put up with this thing for forty-eight hours,” she said, and her exasperation might have made anyone think the monitor was a fifty-pound weight.

  The device hanging on a strap around her neck resembled an ordinary cassette recorder-player and was only fractionally larger. A tape connected to five electrodes on her chest recorded her every heartbeat. After she’d worn the monitor for forty-eight hours, the tape would go to a lab for analysis.

  I didn’t want to leave her, but Mother brushed aside any suggestion of my staying away from work. “Michelle will be here,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Don’t fuss.”

  But Michelle fussed, and when I came home I saw that Mother had settled happily into being cared for by my sister. I stood on the sidelines, watching Michelle hold Mother’s arm as if she were an invalid and walk her into the dining room for dinner. When Mother wanted something from the kitchen, Michelle leapt to her feet to fetch it.

  After dinner they went to Mother’s bedroom. From the hallway I heard them murmuring beyond the open door. I stood out of sight and listened for a long time to the soft rhythm of their voices, catching only a few clear words now and then.


  What am I doing?

  Suddenly aware of how ridiculous it was to be eavesdropping on my mother and sister, I strode purposefully past the door, headed for my room. When I glanced at them in passing, I saw Mother on the bed with her legs stretched out and Michelle in a chair drawn close, one of Mother’s hands caught in both of hers.

  “Rachel?”

  Mother’s voice stopped me. I turned back to her doorway.

  Smiling, she patted the bed beside her. “Come sit with me.”

  When I sat down Mother’s right hand slid into mine. Her skin was so cold it made me worry that her heart wasn’t circulating blood efficiently. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

  She nodded, looking exhausted but happy. “I feel wonderful, just having the two of you here with me.”

  ***

  Fuzzy-headed and bone-weary with the need for sleep that wouldn’t come, I padded down to the kitchen at 2 a.m. In the glow of the small fluorescent light over the sink, I poured a glass of milk, then forgot to drink it as I stood at the patio doors looking into the night. There was no moon, and beyond the circle of the patio floodlight I saw only flat blackness without a hint of shadows or shapes.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  I jumped. Mother had come into the kitchen silently.

  “What are you doing up?” I said.

  “Oh, I can’t get comfortable with these electrodes stuck to me.” The recorder strap crossed her shoulder and chest, and the machine dangled below her left arm. Its lead wire disappeared between the front folds of her white cotton robe. Mother’s hair was a mass of tangles, as if she’d been twisting restlessly in bed.

  Beside me, she peered into the yard. “Oh, look.”

  Two young foxes ventured into the light for a second, then trotted back into the dark.

  “They’re growing up,” Mother said. “Going around without their parents.”

  With both hands she shoved her hair away from her face.

  “Remember that bad winter,” she said, “when you were thirteen or fourteen, you started putting out the cats’ dry food for the foxes?” She laughed. “I couldn’t understand why Kate and Sarah were using so much food. I was about to have Dr. McCutcheon run tests on them to see if they both had a metabolic disorder.”