Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

agreeing to join Michelle and me in our conspiracy to hide the truth.
    He was questioned because he’d come into the house while the medics were on the scene. He told the detective he knew nothing about Dr. Goddard’s mental state or her reasons for wanting to take her own life. His first visit to the house that night remained a secret between Luke, myself, and my sister.
    ***
    On the telephone I asked Michelle to come see me. She coldly refused. Rosario, who brought clothes to me at Luke’s apartment two days after Mother’s death, told me Michelle was obsessed with erasing all traces of blood from the kitchen and bathroom.
    I sat on Luke’s bed while Rosario hung my blouses and slacks in the closet.
    “I washed the walls,” she said. Tears filled her eyes. “I thought I had cleaned them well—”
    “Oh, Rosie,” I said. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to do that.”
    She pressed her lips together and took a moment to compose herself, blinking away the tears. “But your sister wasn’t satisfied. Already this morning is a man come, taking off the old, putting up new.” Her arms swung up and down in imitation of a paperhanger.
    I saw blood-spotted wallpaper and quickly shoved the image out of my mind.
    She closed the closet door. “And the floor, the tiles—what is in between?”
    “The grout.” Blood soaking in, the stain spreading.
    “A man come and take it out, dig it out. The kitchen and the bathroom, is all broke up. Two men working same time, walls and the floors, they bump into each other.” She shook her head. “I got out of the way.”
    Her eyes, puffy from tears already shed, filled again. She pressed a hand to her mouth. I rose and went to slip my free arm around her shoulders, and for a moment we leaned into one another, my chin resting on the top of her head.
    “She was good to me, your mother,” Rosario said, wiping at her nose with a handkerchief she’d pulled from her dress pocket.
    I guided her to the bed and we sat down together.
    “Your mother was not—” She searched for a word. “—warm, but she was good to me.”
    She gave up her struggle against tears then. I stayed beside her, silent, while she wept.
    ***
    Theo, too, came to see me and pour out his sorrow. I wasn’t sure I would ever tell him the truth. Maybe someday, when I knew all of it myself. But not now.
    I was waiting. Waiting for the police to be finished with me, and for Mother to be laid to rest. When I thought of her, a swell of grief and rage and desperation rose in me, and I had to fight to subdue it and regain my equilibrium. I tried not to consider what I would do next, where my search would take me. Getting through each day took all my strength.
    ***
    The crime lab found only Mother’s and Rosario’s fingerprints on the knife. Blood and tissue tests showed that Mother had been taking antidepressants, something I hadn’t known. Our lie was closer to the truth than I’d imagined.
    The police issued a statement saying that Judith Goddard’s death was suicide. The case was closed. Her body was released, and on Monday, five days after she died, we buried her.

Chapter Twenty-three
    They sweated in the morning sun, sneaked glances at their wristwatches, and avoided looking at the casket, the grave, or my sister and me. Surely, I thought, they’d rather be in their air-conditioned offices listening to the prattle of neurotics.
    About twenty psychiatrists and psychologists showed up for the brief graveside service, the same people who came to the Fourth of July party. Men and women who’d thought they knew Judith Goddard. They stood apart from Michelle and me, crowding together on the opposite side of the grave.
    No neighbors had come, and no friends except Theo, who was at my side, his hand coming up now and then to touch my elbow, and Kevin Watters, who stayed close to Michelle. Rosario and her husband, looking unnaturally formal in a black dress and a suit, hovered behind us despite my efforts to coax them forward.
    Luke had wanted to come with me, but I told him I was going without him and the finality of my tone stopped any argument. Michelle had said, when she called to give me the time and place of the service, “If that man shows up with you, I’ll make sure he regrets it.” I wouldn’t even let him drive me because I didn’t want her to see him.
    Blank-faced, clutching a single red rose, my sister stood inches from me, but we didn’t touch. We didn’t comfort one another.