Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

support as you’d give a patient who’s trying to understand her past.”
    She swiped at her cheeks with the back of a hand. “All my patients are going to be children,” she said. “They won’t have pasts.”
    I laughed, although I felt like crying. “Well, that’s one problem solved.”
    She sniffled and looked up, beyond me, as she blinked rapidly. “You’ve got your work,” she said. “You’ve got Luke. You function well, you’re not a neurotic crippled by unresolved issues. You should be enjoying the present, not digging around in the past. I’m not going to help you do something that will only hurt Mother.”
    Before I could answer, she turned and hurried away, toward the house, leaving me feeling as alone as I’d ever felt in my life.

Chapter Fifteen
    Friday, the Fourth of July. This day that would end so badly began in a cool mist, the air a white gauze of fog drifting in from the Potomac.
    Mother, fussing over preparations for the party she gave each year, peered out through the patio doors and wondered aloud whether it would be cloudy all day. When the fog burned off and sunlight drenched the back lawn, she fretted that the afternoon would be unbearably hot. Then the clouds settled back in to stay and she worried that we might have rain for the first time in three weeks.
    Rosario went on with her baking, Michelle and I set up rented tables and chairs on the patio, and none of us bothered to respond to Mother. Rosie and Michelle knew as well as I did that her concern over the weather was more than a convenient focus for free-floating anxiety. Any extreme would force the guests indoors, and Mother didn’t want two dozen people roaming her house.
    It would have been useless to ask why she did this every year, inviting a group of near-strangers to the house. The July 4 party, a longtime event at the home of Theo and his wife Renee, moved to our house when Renee’s battle with cancer began. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary, a favor, until she recovered. But she didn’t recover. For some reason Mother felt obliged to continue the annual ritual after Renee’s death, even though it was a chore and a strain.
    Michelle and I worked silently, unfolding chairs, pushing card tables together in two long rows. She avoided my gaze and shied away every time I brushed against her. Watching her from the corner of my eye, I began to wonder. She was acting secretive, guilty, the way she used to as a kid when she was waiting for some misdeed to be discovered. Candy pilfered from the basketful meant for trick-or-treaters. Christmas gifts unwrapped for a peek, then inexpertly rewrapped. A sister’s confidence broken.
    Mother gave no sign that Michelle had told her what I was up to, but I wouldn’t expect that. Mother would choose the moment to reveal what she knew.
    I had another reason to worry—I’d invited Luke to the party without telling Mother. He’d said yes without hesitating, and he was entirely too enthusiastic about showing Mother she hadn’t driven him out of my life. For days I’d been trying to make myself tell her he was coming, but now the party was hours away and she still didn’t know.
    My mother and sister and I floated through the house in our separate bubbles of anxiety, occasionally bouncing off one another.
    It was also Michelle’s birthday, but our pause at lunchtime to celebrate was only a momentary break in the tension. At the dining room table, when our barely touched sandwiches had been cleared away, Mother presented Michelle with a small oblong package. She smiled as Michelle stripped off the silver ribbon and glossy white wrapping paper, opened a blue velvet box and gasped at an elegantly simple gold bracelet. “It’s beautiful, it’s perfect!” Michelle cried, and she rose to give Mother a hug and kiss.
    My gift, a navy blue leather briefcase with her initials in brass, was something she’d pined for and hinted about, but it was accepted now with a short “Thanks” and a flick of a smile in my general direction.
    ***
    I was in jeans and Michelle wore Bermuda shorts, but Mother’s idea of informality was black silk slacks and a white short-sleeved blouse. At four o’clock she stood stiff and alert on the patio, waiting for the first guests to arrive. They would all show up because none of them had anywhere else to go, and they’d all arrive precisely on time like patients keeping appointments.
    They advanced up the driveway in little chatting groups,