Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

was a foreign thing, distant and unattainable. The day’s events churned through my mind, Mother’s wildly skipping heartbeat pulsed against my fingertips. I rose and paced the room. I opened a window and breathed in the heavy humid air, listened to the screech and buzz of nocturnal insects. I flopped on the bed again and kicked the twisted top sheet away.
    Despite my anxiety over Mother’s illness, my thoughts kept sliding in one direction: her keys were in her purse, and her purse was in her room, unguarded. The file cabinet keys had to be in her purse.
    I shifted, turned onto my side. No, I couldn’t do it.
    Deep silence enveloped the house. Was Michelle asleep?
    I slipped out of bed, crept to the door, opened it a crack. Across the hall, no light showed under Michelle’s door.
    The hallway was so dark that I had to feel my way to Mother’s room. Inside, I closed the door quietly, then groped across the room toward the dresser. My searching hand struck the lamp shade. I grabbed and fumbled to keep the lamp from tipping over. After giving my suddenly racing heart a minute to slow down, I switched on the light.
    Mother’s purse lay on the dresser, a navy blue leather shoulderbag with a gold clasp. I eased the clasp open, slid a hand inside, gripped the keys tightly so they wouldn’t jangle when I removed them. Even so, I glanced at the door, afraid I’d somehow given myself away.
    My throat was so tight that I was conscious of every dragging breath. I sorted through the dozen keys, able to identify most of them. One looked like the key I’d had made for the box in Mother’s study. The two smallest keys, I hoped, would open the file cabinets.
    I moved slowly down the stairs, feeling for each step in the dark, and tiptoed along the hall to Mother’s study. Behind the closed door, I switched on the ceiling light and was momentarily stunned by the full illumination of my actions. I almost stopped then, but a minute later I was riffling through the manila file folders in one of the cabinet drawers.
    Like everything Mother did, the filing system was impeccably organized. Dividers identified cases according to the patients’ afflictions: ACROPHOBIA, AGORAPHOBIA, CLAUSTROPHOBIA , and so on. I skimmed the names on the individual folders, glanced inside some, feeling like a peeping tom at the windows of strangers’ lives. I began to doubt that I would find a case record about myself among these files, but I kept going out of a compulsion to be thorough.
    At very back of the last drawer, I saw a folder with no name on it. I yanked it out.
    The folder contained a single sheet of blue note paper with a few lines in a handwriting I didn’t recognize. A small memo square, paper-clipped to the sheet, bore Mother’s familiar script. I took the folder to the desk and sat down to read. Mother’s note said, “Explore the motivations of a woman who is capable of such a thing.”
    The slightly uneven top and bottom of the note paper made me believe the names of both recipient and sender had been scissored off, and perhaps part of the message too. What remained was:
    I want you to know that I have no regrets. I could lie and say I’m sorry it happened because it turned my life upside down, but I’m not sorry. It was wonderful, and it gave me the one beautiful thing I’ve got left.
    “What on earth?” I murmured. I read the letter again, then Mother’s one-sentence memo. If the letter had been written to her, why had she attached the note and put both away in a folder as if this were a possible topic for a paper? I had no idea how to interpret any of it, but the words were charged with meaning, weighted with a dark emotion I couldn’t name. They chilled me.
    Overhead I heard movement, then footsteps in the upstairs hall. Michelle walked like a lumberjack when she was groggy.
    The file was back in the cabinet and I was out the door when she called, “Rachel? Where are you?”
    “Right here.” I moved into the light that now spilled down the stairs.
    Michelle stood halfway up the steps, barefoot in a short pink nightgown, hair tangled around her face. “What are you doing in the dark?”
    “I couldn’t sleep. Have you been awake too?”
    She rubbed at her eyes. “I went to sleep and kept dreaming about Mother. I’m so worried. Do you really think she’ll be all right?” 
    She was my little sister again, a scared child coming to me for reassurance. I climbed the steps to meet her, hoping she wouldn’t