Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

said nothing.
    “Rachel, does Luke ask questions about our family?”
    Still I didn’t answer.
    “Do you tell him things about our family?” 
    When I failed to answer again, she said, “I won’t be angry if you tell me the truth, sweetheart.”
    Words burst from me in a strangled childish cry, “You will! You’ll be mad at me!”
    “No, no, I won’t. Don’t be upset. I won’t be mad at you.”
    A sound like weeping. A deep sigh from Mother.
    “Rachel, you know what you have to do, don’t you? You have to protect your family. You can’t let an outsider make your family unhappy. You have to protect your family from Luke. Will you do that?”
    A ragged sob.
    “I know you will. I know you don’t want him to come between you and your family. Don’t cry, Rachel, don’t cry, sweetheart, he’s not worth crying over.”
    After a gulping intake of breath I fell silent.
    Mother let a moment pass, then said, “Rachel, thinking about your father is very upsetting to you. You don’t want to think about him anymore.”
    Statements, not questions.
    “You know that talking about him upsets me too. When you talk about him you make me remember terrible things. You don’t want to upset me. You don’t even want to think about him anymore. Do you, Rachel? You want to put him out of your mind, don’t you?”
    “Yes.” A whisper.
    “Can I trust you? Will you be a good girl and do what I say?”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    “Promise you’ll be good?”
    “I promise.” A little girl’s voice.
    “After you wake up, you will do what you promised to do. But you won’t remember what we talked about while you were under hypnosis. You will act on it but you won’t remember what we talked about. Do you understand?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m going to count backward from five. As I count you’ll become more and more awake, and when I reach the number one you’ll open your eyes. You’ll be awake but you’ll feel sleepy and ready for bed.”
    She started counting.
    I listened to the sounds of Mother putting me to bed as if I were a child, saying good night and sleep well. Then the tape held only silence.
    My eyes shifted to the glass next to the tape player and I reached for the water, suddenly feeling a desperate thirst. When I lifted the glass my hand shook so violently that Luke had to steady it while I drank. He placed the glass back on the table and wiped a drop from my chin with a fingertip.
    Crumbling, sliding toward an abyss, I let him catch me and pull me into his arms.
    “I could kill her,” he muttered against my hair. “I swear to God I could kill her.”

Chapter Nineteen
    Luke sat on the couch and listened, his eyes following me as I prowled the room. When shock had worn off, feeling had flooded back, pushing me to my feet, propelling me into motion.
    “How could she do this to me? I always knew she was controlling, but my God, something like this—” I shook my head. “How could she believe she’s got the right? Nobody has the right—Oh, God.”
    I stopped and covered my face until I rid myself of the urge to cry. No more tears. No more.
    “If I were still a child, she could claim she’s just protecting me.” I marched to the window, looked out at the streetlights blinking on along Leesburg Pike, turned and started back across the room.
    “But I’m almost twenty-seven years old. She’s not protecting me. She’s protecting herself.” Bewilderment, anger, hurt warred in me. “But from what?”
    I pivoted, took a dozen steps, spun around. “Why does she have to control me to protect herself? And why is she afraid of you? She’s always been afraid of anybody getting too close to us. I always thought she just wanted to keep us to herself, we were all she had, but she’s afraid of anybody getting too close and asking too many questions, that’s so clear to me now.”
    I balled my right hand into a fist and rapped it against my left palm. “She’s keeping something from me, and I feel like it’s something I already know but I can’t get my mind around it—”
    Waves of pain, rage, fear knocked me in one direction after another, leaving me exhausted. I sank onto the couch, head in hands, and came to rest at last in a cold, still place deep inside myself.
    We sat in silence until Luke asked, “What are you going to do about all this?” 
    I’d already decided. “First, I’m going to find out what I can about my father’s death.”
    “How?”
    “The Library of Congress has old