Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

cradling them in my unencumbered arm, I carried the tools to the cages. With one hand I set to work prying loose nails, screen, strips of wood. Every movement of my body made my wounds throb, and I was quickly drenched in sweat, but I worked on and on, piling boards on the ground.
    At last, when the cages were reduced to rubble, I pushed past the shrubs and staggered onto the sunny lawn, still gripping the crowbar.
    The dahlia blossoms in the flower bed before me were bright and jaunty, little jewels lifting their faces to the sun. Life, going on.
    I raised my arm high over my head, then brought the crowbar down on the plants, slashing leaves and stems, shattering flowers, raining yellow, red, pink petals onto the pine bark mulch.
    I swung again and again, until I had no strength left and fell to my knees, sobbing. I didn’t hear or see Luke approach, but when he knelt and folded his arms around me it seemed natural that he was there.
    “Let’s go home now,” he said.
    “It’s not over yet.” My voice was muffled against his shoulder. “I have to find out who I am.”
    “I know,” he said. “I know.”

Chapter Twenty-four
    Hours later, when we were in his small kitchen preparing dinner, Luke asked what I planned to do next.
    “I’m not sure,” I said. “I have to be careful. Look what’s already happened because of me digging around in the past.”
    “It’s not your fault, Rachel.”
    “Regardless of whose fault it was, it happened.” I leaned against the counter and watched him chop vegetables. The knife sliced through a succulent red bell pepper, down, across, again and again, leaving red stains on the wooden chopping block. With a shiver, I turned away, and busied myself stirring the rotini pasta that was boiling in a pot.
    “Maybe you ought to stop now,” Luke said. He scraped the pepper slices into a skillet that already held snow peas, mushrooms and olive oil, and turned on the burner under the pan. “Just come back to work when your arm heals, and we’ll get on with our lives.”
    It was something I’d said to myself many times in the last few days. I longed for the things that meant normality. I missed the clinic, the people I worked with, the warm little bodies and wide eyes of my patients. Even the smell of alcohol and antiseptic would be a balm to me now. But I was useless for the moment, unable to efficiently do exams, give injections, perform surgery with only one hand. And when my cast came off, I had to complete my search.
    “I’ll never have any peace if I don’t at least find out who Michelle and I really are.” 
    Luke sighed. “Have you had any luck remembering your real parents’ last name?”
    I shook my head. “I looked through the phone book yesterday. I was hoping something might ring a bell, but nothing did. I know I was just a kid, but how could I forget my own last name?”
    “It’s a miracle you can remember anything after what that woman did to you.”
    “Luke, please,” I said wearily.
    “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
    “It would have been in the papers. Two little sisters disappearing together.” Olive oil sizzled in the skillet. I removed a spatula from a drawer and stirred the vegetables. “If I find the story, I’ll find the names.”
    “Do you remember when it happened?”
    “Well, she brought us here the summer after our father—after Michael Goddard died. So it must have happened just before that. When I was five.” Realization struck me like a blow. “I don’t even know for sure how old I was. How old I am.”
    We fell silent a moment, as I stirred the vegetables and he tipped the rotini into a colander to drain. Steam rose in a cloud from the pasta.
    ***
    August 26. The day Mother had chosen as my birthday. I had no idea why, and suspected it was a random choice. But it had been my birthday for twenty-one years, and when it came round again I woke with the thought, I’m twenty-seven today. It was almost certainly a lie but it still felt like the truth. I lay in bed remembering the year Mother had the weeping cherry tree planted as a gift to me.
    Luke had bought concert tickets weeks before—Mary Chapin Carpenter at Wolf Trap—but I couldn’t imagine rousing myself to go. Over an ordered-in dinner at home, Luke gave me his gift, an exquisite gold chain necklace made of tiny interlocking hearts. With a wry grin, he said, “I told you this would be a birthday to remember. I had no idea.”
    Earlier in the day a bouquet of yellow