Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

talk rehearsed.”
    I stopped and faced him. “Really? Why’d you think you had to do that?”
    He shrugged. “I’m not great at socializing to begin with, and a psychologist—I’m sure your mother’s a very nice woman, but I’d probably feel like everything I did was being analyzed.”
    Oh, I thought, you have no idea.
    He was so close I could feel his heat. I took a step back and said lightly, “Then it’s just as well she’s not here. How’d you know she’s a psychologist?”
    “I asked around. Grilled a couple of the other vets.”
    This made me laugh, but at the same time it stirred a faint apprehension. “They must wonder why you’re so interested in my family.”
    “Well, they didn’t tell me much.” He grinned. “Am I being too pushy?”
    “I can’t decide whether you’re pushy or cute.”
    “Whatever I am, it got me this far.”
    “Just watch your step,” I said.
    “I’ll consider myself warned.”
    A half-smile on his lips, he followed a downy woodpecker’s jerky ascent of a maple on the far side of the stream. A cardinal’s rich throaty song rose above the happy racket of other birds. “I really like this,” he said. “Have you lived here all your life?”
    “Not quite. We moved here when I was five, from Minneapolis.” Was that true? I wondered suddenly. It was what I’d always believed, but my memory couldn’t provide any proof.
    “My family’s farm has a creek and a patch of woods like this,” Luke said.
    I pulled myself back to the conversation. “Oh, right, a country boy, you said. Where is this farm?”
    “Pennsylvania. And I’ve never milked a cow, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a horse farm. Palominos and Shetlands. I’m the only one in the family who’s not part of the operation.”
    He told me about his mother, who was financial manager for the business, his younger sisters, Janet, Emily, and Margaret, all married with kids and all expert horse trainers, and his father, who loved a good joke as much as a fine Palomino.
    I could picture them: tall, lanky, sandy-haired, wholesome as wheat. Easy-going people who were exactly what they seemed. I imagined Luke laughing at the dinner table with his family.
    “Rachel?”
    Neither of us had spoken for a couple of minutes.
    His fingers brushed my shoulder, trailed down my arm. His hand closed around mine.
    A tremor went through me, delicious and alarming. I disengaged my hand from his, smiling so the action wouldn’t seem abrupt. “Ready for lunch?”
    He stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Whoa,” he said. “I think I could fit my whole apartment in here.”
    I glanced around, trying to see it as he did: walls lined with pale oak cabinets, center island, breakfast table in one corner. Bigger than many kitchens, I supposed. The spotless uncluttered surfaces, the white tile floor and white walls made it seem even more spacious.
    “Can I have the ten-cent tour of the house?” he asked.
    Leading him through the downstairs rooms, I had the acute sensation that Mother was somehow looking on as this stranger invaded her sanctuary.
    “It’s perfect,” he said in the living room. “I’d be afraid to touch anything.”
    Just as well, I thought.
    When he stepped into the den, a cozy space with plump blue-striped chairs and sofa, Luke exclaimed, “A proud mother wall!”
    “A what?”
    He waved a hand at a collection of framed photos. “My mom’s got a wall just like this in the den back home. All the high points in her kids’ lives. I call it her proud mother wall. She’s got one of these hanging up too.” He tapped a framed letter: my acceptance at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Luke had attended Cornell ten years before me.
    “Our mother lets no milestone go unrecorded,” I said.
    Here we were, smiling through the years: me with my prize-winning science fair exhibits, Michelle in a filmy costume for a small role with the Washington Ballet, me in cap and gown between Mother and Michelle, Mish in cap and gown between Mother and me. Birthdays, Christmases, beginnings, endings. But no photos of our father, no pictures at all from our early childhoods.
    “Your sister?” Luke studied a shot of Michelle blowing out candles on her twenty-first birthday. “Older, younger?”
    “Three years younger. She’s a graduate student at GW, getting a doctorate in psychology.”
    “Ah. Any special interest?”
    “Autistic children.”
    “Whew. She must like a