Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

boxes, taped shut and labeled and stacked, boxes everywhere, looming, higher than my head, a prison of boxes. 
    A flood of panic nearly knocked me off my feet. I spun around, stumbled a few steps, and leaned on the windowsill to steady myself. One thought drummed in my head: I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to.
    I forced myself to focus on what was in front of me, what was real. Down on Leesburg Pike traffic had thinned to a few widely spaced cars; the nearby office towers had emptied, the sprawling shopping centers a few intersections to the west had closed.
    Luke gripped my shoulder. “Rachel! Are you all right?”
    “It’s late.” I sidestepped away from him. “Please take me home.”
    ***
    The front door swung open before I got my key into the lock. “I was beginning to worry about you,” Mother said.
    I brushed past her into the foyer. “I called you.”
    “But I didn’t think you were going to be this late.”
    “You could’ve called my cell phone number if you were worried.”
    “I don’t like to bother you.”
    I wanted to get upstairs and take a shower. Luke’s delicious odor clung to me, I could smell it, and I was certain she could too. I started up the steps.
    “That wasn’t Damian who brought you home,” she said.
    I stopped on the third stair. “No, it wasn’t.”
    Michelle appeared, coming up the hall from the kitchen, a half-eaten yellow apple in one hand. “So where’d you lose Damian?”
    Sighing, I turned to face them. “Damian took the hawk home with him. Luke Campbell was at the clinic, and he operated the x-ray machine for us. We went out for coffee afterward, then Luke gave me a ride home.”
    Michelle crunched into her apple, eyes sliding toward Mother.
    “Coffee?” Mother said. “All evening?”
    “Coffee and conversation,” I said. “Why the inquisition?”
    “Inquisition?” Mother exclaimed. “Can’t I take an interest in my own daughter?” Without waiting for a response, she added, “You went out with Dr. Campbell?”
    Oh God, there’d be no stopping her now. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” I said.
    “What’s he like?” Michelle asked.
    “He’s okay. Look, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
    I ran up the stairs and raced along the hall to my room.
    I couldn’t turn off my churning thoughts. Lying in the dark, I listened to showers running, watched the hallway light blink out under my door. My stomach rumbled. Maybe a glass of milk would help.
    When the house was silent, I crept out and down the stairs.
    Moonlight lay in silver bands across the living room and Mother’s study. I was in the kitchen before I realized what I’d just seen. I turned back. The door to the study stood open.
    I stepped across the threshold, a little breathless with the thrill of it. This was the third time in my life that I’d been inside this room. When Michelle and I were little girls, Mother had brought us to the door and given us instructions: never come in here without permission, never go near Mother’s private papers. 
    The empty expanse of the desktop gleamed amid the shadows. Three oak filing cabinets lined up, tall dark rectangles, along the wall to my right. Close enough to touch. I trailed a hand down the smooth cool face of a drawer, looped my fingers over a handle, tried to persuade myself the motion was casual and meaningless.
    I tugged. Locked.
    Privileged information inside, the case files of former patients.
    Did she keep a file about me, about my “case”? Had Mother been professional and methodical in recording her own daughter’s emotional trauma? I’d bet on it. Maybe that file had been here, but she’d removed it in the last few days, taken it to her office, and now felt safe in leaving the door unlocked again.
    Or maybe she was using reverse psychology, leaving the door open again to make me think the room contained nothing I’d want to see.
    But no, my mother wouldn’t go to such lengths to hide things from me. Would she? Something deep inside me, below the layers of respect and confidence and love, answered my suspicion with immediate belief.
    I backed out. I’d look for the file when I was alone in the house. When I’d figured out a way to defeat the locks. When I’d worked up the courage to read what I found.
    In the kitchen I poured a glass of milk with shaking hands and stood at the glass patio doors, watching the fox family sniff around on the moonlit lawn. Two adults with four young ones trailing. One adult