Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

couldn’t face her own grief for a husband dead more than twenty years. She’d told me we would talk about my father, and I believed she meant it when she said it. But would we ever have that talk, would she ever be able to answer the questions that roiled in my mind?
    After dinner I went to my room expecting to spend the evening with my feet up on my little sofa, reading a veterinary medicine journal. The journal lay unopened on my lap when Mother’s knock interrupted my thoughts.
    The instant she walked in I realized what I’d done. In her hand she held the silver-framed photo. I’d left it in the middle of her bed.
    With a sigh, I swung my feet to the floor. Why couldn’t I have waited for a time when I wouldn’t be rushed?
    After she closed the door she stood over me, clasping the picture frame with both hands.
    “Rachel?” she said, not sharply, not angrily, but in a gentle inquiring tone. “Were you in my room earlier?”
    Guilt and shame robbed me of any defense. I rolled the journal into a tight tube between my hands. Peripherally I saw her sit on my bed with the photo in her lap. “Mother—”
    “If you wanted to look at this picture, why didn’t you just tell me? I wish you hadn’t gone into my room when I wasn’t here. I thought we respected each other’s privacy as adults.”
    Just the slightest stress on the words, mixing surprise and disappointment, enough to open a wide hollow space inside me. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling ten years old.
    “Thank you.” She held out the picture. “Here. Why don’t you keep it for a while? Look at it all you want to.” 
    I dropped the journal onto the couch beside me but I didn’t reach for the photo. “It’s the other ones I’d like to see. Pictures of me with him, all of us together. They might help me remember him.”
    She withdrew the photo and laid it in her lap again, then began massaging her left temple. I wondered if I’d given her a headache.
    “I suppose we’ll have to talk about it,” she murmured.
    I squelched the automatic instinct to back off from anything that distressed her. “It’s only natural I’d want to remember him.” It sounded like an apology.
    The look she gave me was odd, impersonal and assessing. “Why has this become so important to you? Now, at your age? Is this Kevin’s doing?”
    “Kevin? No. I’ve always wondered about my father.”
    “Always?” A dark eyebrow lifted. “You didn’t come to me with your questions.”
    How could I have gone to her? The subject of our father was forbidden territory. Michelle and I saw the glint of pain in her eyes, her withdrawal into cool formality, when other people blundered onto the topic. We were afraid she’d withdraw from us as well if we asked about him.
    But now I took the small opening she offered, although I expected the door to close quietly in my face at any second. “Maybe I’m just ready, I’ve reached a stage where I need to remember,” I said. “I do want you to tell me things, but what I really want is to remember.”
    “And Michelle? Have the two of you have been discussing this?”
    I shook my head. “Not lately. But maybe all three of us could talk about it together.”
    She rose from the bed and came to sit beside me on the couch. The photo was face-down in her lap. “You know, you were very young when your father died. Your lack of memories isn’t unusual. I don’t remember much about my early childhood either. Not with any guarantee of accuracy.”
    Her voice was soothing and reasonable, a therapist’s voice, and I could imagine her speaking to a patient in that tone. I shifted slightly away from her.
    “Maybe if we talk about him and I see some other pictures, I might get back a few memories, at least. You must have more pictures. That one can’t be the only one ever taken.”
    I saw the resistance in her eyes, the tension in her jaw, and wanted to back down. But hadn’t she invited this? Hadn’t she just said I suppose we’ll have to talk about it?
    Twisting toward me, she grasped both my hands in her warm, strong fingers. “Rachel, I wish you’d just let it be. Please. Believe me when I tell you it’s for the best.”
    I tried to wriggle my fingers free of hers but she wouldn’t let go. “How could forgetting my father be a good thing?”
    For a long moment she sat motionless, then she withdrew her hands from mine. Her gaze had turned inward, she was in the grip of some thought or emotion that washed ripples of