Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

of guilt I watched tears fill her eyes. I had brought her to the brink of crying, forced her back into the midst of that agony. 
    “I had nightmares for years,” she said after a moment. “I imagined every horrible thing that could have happened.” She expelled a sharp breath. “It was like poison in my head, I couldn’t get rid of it for a minute. It didn’t get better till I had Caroline. I had to put all my energy into taking care of her.”
    So you shut us out of your mind and moved on.
    Even as I was thinking this, she said, “You don’t forget two children, though. You don’t ever stop thinking about them.”
    I waited through a moment of silence, then made myself ask, “Do you think they’re still alive?”
    “Oh, no. No, I don’t. They were probably murdered pretty soon after they were taken. I hope so, anyway. I mean I hope they didn’t suffer long. Steckling thinks their bodies’ll be found someday. Their skeletons. And the police might be able to tell how they died.”
    As I listened to her I almost believed it was possible, that our childhood bodies were in fact buried in some remote spot, waiting to be discovered.
    “I’ve accepted that they’re dead,” she went on, “but you know, every now and then I’ll see a pretty girl who’s about the right age, and I’ll think, That could be Stephanie , or That could be Cathy. ” With a fingertip she wiped a single tear from under her right eye. Then she gave a choked little laugh. “I even thought that when I saw you. My Cathy could’ve grown up to look a little like you.”
    Her eyes met mine for a moment before I averted my gaze. From the street I heard the shouts of children, free from school on a Saturday morning.
    Tell her. She has a right to know. Tell her now. I pushed myself to the verge of spilling it out, but pulled back when she spoke again.
    “I really hope their bodies aren’t ever found. I don’t want to know how they died. I want to remember them the way they were. Happy and laughing all the time. I just want to remember all the good times our little family had together.”
    She believed what she was saying. No, I wanted to protest. It wasn’t like that. We’d been sad and scared, we’d lived in a house of cutting words and anguished silences. I knew the truth. I remembered.
    I pushed the question out of my mouth. “Do you feel guilty about what happened?”
    “Guilty?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, plenty of people tried to make me feel like it was all my fault. And I did feel guilty for a while. It’s only natural. But the only person that’s guilty is the one that took my daughters.” Her expression hardened with hatred. “I’d like to find the monster that did it and make them suffer. There’s no punishment bad enough.”
    I saw Mother lying in her own blood on the bathroom floor, my hand over the gash in her throat, blood spurting through my fingers. Hadn’t that been punishment enough?
    A telephone rang in another room. Barbara started. “Oh. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
    I nodded, the image of Judith Goddard’s last moments still in my mind. Yes, her crime was monstrous, indefensible. Why then did I want to defend her, to deny that she was wholly to blame? Barbara Dawson and Michael Goddard’s infidelity had destroyed Judith’s world and John Dawson’s world. And it was Barbara, careless and selfish, who’d left my sister and me alone on that playground to be stolen and who now seemed unable to acknowledge any responsibility. 
    My gaze traveled along the row of photos on the mantel. What would happen to all of us if the whole wretched story came out? Once Barbara and her family knew, it couldn’t be kept secret. Sooner or later it would be big news, a morbidly fascinating human drama that would capture the imaginations of strangers. People Magazine and Vanity Fair reporters would show up at our doors. Someone would write a true crime book about us. Our lives, even Mark’s and Caroline’s, would be exposed and picked over.
    Judith would be painted as a madwoman, and if Michelle and I insisted that in many ways she had given us a good life, we’d be pitied as warped, brainwashed, too damaged by trauma to know what we were saying.
    And what would become of my sister? Michelle, Stephanie. She was only starting the journey that I’d begun months before. She would have no desire to see Barbara Olsson, I was sure of that, and she wasn’t strong enough yet to face the truth about