Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

I whispered. 
    “She drank a pint of Clorox bleach. It ate through her throat and esophagus and stomach. She died in agony. I watched her die.”
    I reached for her hands. “Oh, God, Mother, I’m sorry—”
    She snatched her hands away, raised them in a defensive motion in front of her. Her gaze darted about the room. “Then he didn’t have her around to beat up anymore. He wasn’t happy then. He needed her. So he put a shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains out. And I was glad. I was glad he was dead and it was finally over.”
    She stopped abruptly. I heard my own breath, ragged and noisy, and in the background the rhythmic sloshing of the dishwasher. Beyond Mother, I saw Michelle, eyes wide and shocked, both hands clamped over her mouth.
    Mother slumped back in her chair, and a mask came down over her face, smoothing away emotion. She was deathly pale. “I had a sister,” she said, her voice quiet and toneless. “Anna. She disappeared and never came back. And that’s what I did too, in my own way.”
    She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them her lashes were wet. “I didn’t want to give you and your sister that kind of heritage. What would have been the point?”
    I sat numb and cold, groping for the questions I’d wanted to ask, the demands I’d meant to press. My father. The pictures. The missing birth certificate. The things she’d said to me under hypnosis. What was she trying to make me forget?
    I blurted, “Mother, was I adopted?”
    She stared at me, her dry lips slightly open.
    “Mother?” I said. “Was I?”
    She let out a little cry that mixed amazement, bewilderment, pain. “Why would you think something like that?”
    I couldn’t waver now. I couldn’t let the familiar grip of guilt stop me. But I was unable to make my voice any louder than hers. “Is it true? Is that why I don’t have a birth certificate?”
    “Rachel, for God’s sake!” Michelle exclaimed. She rushed forward and threw her arms around Mother’s shoulders. “Have you gone completely crazy?”
    “Mish—”
    A groan from Mother cut me off. She pressed both hands to her left chest, closed her eyes, opened them and blinked rapidly. Her breath came in quick gasps.
    “Mother?” I said. “Mother!”
    I was up and leaning over her, pushing Michelle away. I clamped my fingers on Mother’s wrist and refused to let her shake off my hand. For a terrifying second I couldn’t feel a pulse, then it came, erratic, weak, beat on top of beat, a pause, a cascade of faint vibrations too rapid to count.
    “My God, she’s fibrillating. Mish, call 911.”
    Michelle stood motionless, open-mouthed, blank-faced.
    “Do it! Now!” I pushed her toward the wall phone.
    She fumbled with the receiver, got the 911 operator, babbled uselessly. Mother protested the fuss even as she gasped for breath. I crossed to Michelle, grabbed the phone and reeled off the information.
    When I hung up, Michelle had her arms around Mother. She glared at me over Mother’s head. “Just look what you’ve done. Are you satisfied now?” 
    ***
    I drove behind the ambulance, Michelle flushed and trembling beside me. When I said I was sure Mother would be all right, she snapped, “What do you know? You’re nothing but a cat and dog doctor.”
    I bit back angry words and drove on in silence to Fairfax Hospital. She will be all right. She will be. I didn’t cause this. Dear God, did I cause this?
    As the medics had forced Mother to lie on the gurney, she’d reached for my hand and gripped it weakly in her cold, cold fingers. “You’re not adopted,” she’d said, the words breathy and urgent. “You’re not.”
    I’d tucked her arm against her side and murmured, “I know, Mother, I know.” At that moment I’d believed her.
    Nothing was resolved. I’d made my mother ill, and the answers I needed remained out of reach, waiting for some still unimagined question to be asked.

Chapter Sixteen
    Michelle and I didn’t hear the doctor’s report. We heard Mother’s version of it, after she’d been moved into a room for overnight observation. We stood on either side of her bed, with a gray curtain separating us from the patient who shared the room. I could hear the unseen woman snoring softly.
    “Just minor irregularities,” Mother assured us. The head of her bed was raised part way so that she was almost in a sitting position. Her auburn hair fell loose on the pillow, catching the light from the single lamp above