Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

stronger than an awareness of where we were. He was too much a part of the turmoil I’d been swept up in lately. He’d prodded me to do things I wouldn’t have done otherwise.
    He was dangerous. I had to free myself of his influence.
    “We’re going to talk about this,” he said, “and we’re going to do it soon. I’m going to find out—”
    He stopped when Alison walked by, smiling merrily at us in passing.
    I closed the pantry door and stepped away. “My patient’s waiting.”
    ***
    Days passed. I was crisply efficient at work but drifting the rest of the time. At unguarded moments the longing for Luke surged through me like a current, setting every numbed nerve on fire again and nearly knocking me off-balance. I stamped down hard on that unwelcome desire, told myself I was well out of it, that getting involved with my boss had been a bad idea from the start. I avoided him at the clinic and refused to talk to him when he called me at night.
    At breakfast and dinner I sat with my mother and sister, and it seemed to me that Mother was more cheerful than I’d seen her in weeks. I kept quiet except when Mother spoke to me directly, then I gave a polite answer to whatever I imagined her question had been. Her expression told me I didn’t always guess right.
    ***
    Luke grabbed my arm, yanked me into the staff lounge and slammed the door behind us. I was on my way in to hang up my white coat before going home. He’d been waiting for me just inside the room and I hadn’t seen him until it was too late.
    “You’re going to listen to me,” he said.
    I tried to move away from him. He shoved me back and pinned me against the wall, his hands gripping my wrist and shoulder.
    “Now listen.” His face was inches from mine, his breath hot on my cheek.
    I averted my head. I wouldn’t let myself look in his eyes.
    “Try to remember what happened, Rachel. Try, damn it! You set up a tape recorder before your mother hypnotized you. You recorded the whole thing. Don’t you remember that?”
    I looked at him now. My thoughts were a jumble, but his words struck a faint chord. “Why?” I said. “Why would I do that?”
    I felt his hands loosen. He released me as if I were a squirming animal that had decided to cooperate.
    “You wanted to find out what she’d say to you while you were under,” he said. “Remember?”
    “No.” I tried to slip past him, but he was too quick for me, and I found myself pressed against the wall again. “Let me go. What do you think you’re doing?”
    “I’m going to talk some sense into you if I have to keep you here all night.”
    “Let me go!” Using my whole body, I shoved, but all I did was rock him backward for a second. He was stronger than I was.
    “You remember the tape recorder, don’t you?” he said. “Rachel, look at me, listen to me! You told me you were going to hide it behind some pictures and a stack of books on a table next to the couch. Is it still there? Have you moved it?”
    I stopped struggling. The tape recorder. New batteries. New tape. Put it in, test it. Testing one two three. Yes. But why?
    “Jesus Christ, Rachel. What’s she done to you this time?”
    His hands relaxed again. Moving cautiously, I slid sideways along the wall a few inches. He didn’t stop me.
    His eyes were bleak. “Will you look for the recorder? Will you listen to the tape? Maybe then you’ll—”
    I strode away from him, fumbled with my locker’s combination, plucked my shoulderbag off its hook. A moment later I was at the door and out, still wearing my lab coat.
    ***
    Somehow I got home safely, without an instant’s awareness of the drive. Rosario, finishing up dinner in a kitchen redolent of thyme and basil, spoke a greeting I half-heard and didn’t respond to. I climbed the stairs unwillingly, yet unable to stop myself.
    I found the recorder on the table, hidden in a stack of books, its microphone behind a picture of Theo and Renee. At the sight of it a chasm seemed to open under my feet, dark and bottomless, nothing solid beneath me.
    It came back to me now, with a sharp punch of clarity. What I’d suspected, what I’d set out to prove. 
    I lifted the little machine from its hiding place. Popping open the lid, I saw the tape had recorded all the way to the end.
    I sat on the couch for long minutes, turning the tape over and over in my fingers. I could listen to it or I could throw it away and never face what might be on it.
    When I realized it was almost six