Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

into the oncoming traffic lane. Police said no alcohol was found in Goddard’s blood and they have ruled out intoxication as a cause of the accident.
    Goddard was a junior partner in the law firm of Jensen, Dubie, Goddard, and Brown, where his father, Michael J. Goddard Sr., is a founding partner. The younger Goddard attracted widespread attention last year when he won a $10.5 million judgment in a wrongful death suit against chemical fertilizer giant Alco Industries. His wife is a psychologist in private practice in Minneapolis. Michelle Theresa was the couple’s only child. 
    Lund, married with two continued on page 10, col 1
    My mind refused to absorb what I saw in front of me. Michelle slept in the room across the hall from me, she sat across the table from me at breakfast and dinner. She hadn’t died in a car wreck at the age of two.
    Michelle Theresa was the couple’s only child.
    The story wasn’t real. I was imagining it. I’d been sitting here waiting too long, anticipating, worrying. I closed my eyes, opened them. The words sat heavy and black on the screen.
    I was dreaming, then. I gave my head a rough shake, trying to pull myself out of the nightmare, and was dimly conscious of the man beside me turning his whole body in my direction. His movement released a faint odor of perspiration.
    I leaned my face into my hands. A rational explanation had to exist for what I was reading. There was a rational explanation for everything.
    With fumbling fingers I pressed a button on the machine, zipping through to page 10 and the rest of the story. I found a picture of the baker Lund with his wife on their twenty-fifth anniversary, and a school photo of little Marcy Linda Bergman, smiling gap-toothed, her dark hair in two long braids tied with ribbon bows. Between them was a studio portrait of my mother and father, the kind of formal posed picture a man keeps on his desk at work. I’d seen this photo before, in one of the albums Mother kept hidden. On Mother’s lap was a smiling child, little more than a baby. Pale wispy hair curled over the child’s head and onto her cheeks. Her eyes were big in her small face, and full of joy. I read the names under the picture: Michael, Judith, and Michelle Goddard.
    Transfixed, I sat for a long time, waiting for the flat grainy image to give back a spark of revelation that never came. I leaned closer and tried to examine the face of the little girl. The picture separated into a field of shaded dots, it wouldn’t hold together, wouldn’t allow inspection.
    When a clerk passed I turned and said in the most ordinary of tones, “Excuse me, could you help me make a copy of something?”
    He did it for me. He copied the entire story, complete with pictures, and handed the sheets to me. I thanked him and went back to my desk. I placed the roll of December microfilm back in its box and carried all four rolls to the main desk.
    ***
    When I emerged from the cool building, the humid hot air slammed into me, making me recoil. I stopped for a moment to get my bearings. I couldn’t remember how to get back to Union Station, where I’d parked my car. I walked half a block, past the Capitol on one side of the street and the Cannon and Longworth buildings on the other, before I realized I was going the wrong direction. 
    I retraced my steps, one hand tight on my shoulderbag strap, the other crushing the copy sheets. After a time that could have been minutes and could have been an hour, I was driving toward the 14th Street Bridge on my way home.
    Home. I glanced at the two sheets of paper lying wrinkled and twisted in the seat beside me. Home to Mother and Michelle.
    Michelle. My dead sister.
    The couple’s only child.
    I couldn’t let myself think about this while I was on the road. I pushed it back, back, until it was a monstrous dark thing looming at the edge of my mind.
    I drove in heavy traffic along the George Washington Parkway, my fingers tight around the steering wheel. Just past the Key Bridge I glanced down at the Potomac and saw a blue heron, motionless on a spit off the bank. Farther out, gulls bobbed where surface ripples hinted at the river’s undercurrent, and along the far shore the white trunks of sycamore trees gleamed like ghosts in the late day sun.

Chapter Twenty
    On Wednesdays Michelle always came home in mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day working at the computer in her room. She was at her desk when I walked through her open door.
    “Hi,” she