The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (7 page)

“That doesn’t matter.” Michelle leaned into the space between us. The strand of hair loosened and brushed her cheek again. “I understand why it upset you. Mother’s sorry she told you now. If you were able to deal with it you would’ve remembered it on your own. Sometimes forgetting is a blessing—”

Parroting Mother, her very words.

I sprang to my feet, wanting to run out. But need kept me where I was. “All right, since you two have been analyzing the whole thing, analyzing me, tell me something. If I was such a mess, why did Mother leave me alone? How long did it take, burning all those pictures? And where were you when I was doing it? You were practically a baby. Did she leave you in the house with your mixed-up sister—”

“Rachel, Rachel.” She rose and crossed to me with three quick steps. “Mother wasn’t at home when it happened. It was the nanny, she wasn’t careful—”

“Mother said she left me alone—”

“Well, you must have misunderstood her. It was the nanny. Mother fired her for it.”

I gaped, hardly knowing what to think. The Mother-like mask faded and in her face I saw my sister again, just Michelle, beseeching, anxious.

“Why are you bringing all this up?” she said. “Can’t you see how much it hurts Mother? It tears her apart, having it all dredged up. Can’t you see that?”

“Of course I can, it makes me feel awful. But we’re talking about something major that happened to me. Don’t I have a right to know about it? And don’t we both have a right to know more about our—”

Michelle’s hand slipped into mine, and I was silenced by a sudden disorienting memory of her as a tiny child, little hands reaching for me, fingers clutching.

“Please don’t dwell on it,” she said. “Please, Rachel. Don’t torment yourself.”

I backed away, freed my hand. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

As I opened the door to leave I heard her sigh, softly.

***

I paced my room, propelled by the questions that slammed around inside my head. Every answer created another doubt. Why hadn’t Mother told me about a nanny? I was positive she’d said she was the one who left me alone. Could I have misunderstood because I was upset when she told me about it? If it was a careless nanny who allowed me to destroy the pictures, could the same person have let Michelle and me get caught out in a storm? But why would our careful mother hire somebody like that?

It was such a long time ago. Maybe she’d been a different person then, not as watchful and thorough. Or was she so grief-stricken herself that she hadn’t been thinking normally, had taken risks with her children? I could imagine what would happen if I went to her and tried to probe this subject. She would turn sad, reproachful eyes on me and the words would freeze in my throat.

I flopped onto my back across the bed. She was downstairs in her study, the room she now locked because I couldn’t be trusted to stay out of it, the room whose closed door I casually ignored.

I was exhausted by the effort of pretending nothing was wrong.

Sitting up, I reached for the cell phone on my night stand. I had the next day, Wednesday, off work, and I would put the free time to good use. Theo Antanopoulos, Mother’s old friend and former professor, might have the answers to some of my questions. I flipped open the phone and punched in his number.

***

“What a treat!”

Theo stood in the morning sunshine outside his red brick townhouse, one arm flung wide and waiting to hug me. His other hand leaned on a four-footed metal cane. I walked into his hug and kissed his cheek just above the white beard.

“What a pleasure to see you,” he said, patting my back. “Did you have to park far away?”

That was always his first question of visitors to his Georgetown home. Parked cars lined the narrow streets, and finding a space near your destination was a wildly unlikely stroke of luck. “Not too far,” I told him. “Over on N Street.”

“Oh, excellent, excellent. Your young legs can handle that quite nicely.”

He shifted toward his door, the pain of the movement producing a wince. Theo’s barrel-chested body didn’t look frail, but the brisk stride I remembered from years ago had given way to a slow shuffle. I didn’t ask about the state of his knee and hip joints because I knew he considered his arthritis the single most boring topic under the sun.

When he pushed open the bright red front door, two Siamese cats jumped back with a duet of unholy screeches. “Oh, now, now,” Theo chided. “Here she is, just as I promised.”

When I leaned to pet them, Helen leapt onto my shoulder, where she dug in her claws for purchase and ecstatically rubbed her chocolate-brown face in my hair. Sophia shrieked and started climbing my slacks. 

“Good grief.” Laughing, I tried to extract Helen’s claws from my skin and the silk fabric of my blouse without doing further damage. “I think it’s time I gave these girls another pedicure.”

“I’d be grateful, if you wouldn’t mind.” Theo waved a gnarled hand, scowling at it in disgust. He couldn’t manage the nail clippers anymore.

“No problem.” I hoisted Sophia onto my free shoulder, and with Helen balanced on the other I followed Theo into the living room.

I plopped, cats and all, onto an overstuffed green velvet sofa with shredded arms. The antique wedding ring quilt thrown over the seat cushions also had a few rips, I noticed. It was one of many quilts Theo’s late wife Renee had collected, and it still carried a faint scent of the lavender sachet that always called up her smiling image.

Theo stood his cane to one side of a deep plump chair, then grasped the chair arms and lowered himself slowly to a sitting position.

“You let these animals run wild,” I said, fingering a rent in the quilt’s delicate old cotton. Helen stood on the sofa back and licked my hair while Sophia circled in my lap preparatory to settling.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Theo said. We’d had this exchange before. “But aren’t they charming little anarchists?”

Sophia answered with an ear-splitting yowl. Theo and I laughed.

“Now,” he said, “tell me how things are with you.”

For nearly an hour, as I made coffee for us, trimmed the cats’ claws and brushed their creamy fur, I answered his questions. Theo—Dr. Theodore Antanopoulos, professor emeritus at George Washington University, semi-retired private practice psychiatrist—had known me since I was five and was acquainted with all the surface details of my life. I hoped he knew more, and would be willing to tell me. But before I could work back to the past, I had to satisfy his curiosity about the present.

Eventually, as I knew he would, as he always did, he asked, “And do you have a man in your life these days?”

Usually I gave him a quick no, or shrugged and said I’d seen some guy a few times but it didn’t amount to anything. This time I hesitated, grinning in spite of my effort not to.

Theo’s eyes widened. “There is someone,” he said. “At last! Who is he? He must be special to put that sparkle in your eyes.”

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen. It’s just—” I stroked Sophia, curled on my lap, then gave equal treatment to Helen, whose hot little body pressed against my right leg. “It’s too soon to talk about it. I doubt anything will come of it.” I glanced up. “Don’t mention it to Mother, okay?”

“Of course not. A true relationship takes time, you know. You mustn’t rush and make a mistake. But do give it a chance to grow. Promise me that?”

I nodded. “I’ll try.” Luke and Theo, I thought, would be crazy about each other. Maybe I’d introduce them someday.

Only after giving me his whole attention for so long did Theo ask about Mother and Michelle. Although he seemed fond of Michelle, the two of them had never been strongly attached, and his questions now seemed more politeness than genuine interest.

His feelings for Mother were a different matter. He loved her the way I imagined a father might love a daughter. His wife Renee had felt the same. They had no children, and I sensed that Mother filled that gap in their lives, if only partially. The one time I’d seen my mother break down and sob was the moment Renee’s coffin was lowered into its grave.

I tried to talk about Mother as if everything were fine between us. “She’s getting all her fear-of-flying patients together for a chartered flight in a couple of weeks,” I said. “Low altitude, and not too far from the airport. She’s got one person who might freak out, so she wants to stay near a runway. She doesn’t want a repeat of the Washington Monument experience.”

Theo threw back his head and roared. “I have to take credit for that, I’m afraid,” he said when his laughter subsided. “I referred that poor man to her. But I swear I thought his only problem was a fear of heights. I had no idea he was harboring a latent claustrophobia.”

“Well, it’s not latent anymore. She’s treating him for it now.” I glanced at my watch. It was almost 11:30, and I knew he had afternoon patients to see in his K Street office. I’d better get to the point.

“Theo, did you ever know my father?”

He laughed. “Please signal the next time you’re about to change directions. You’ve given me whiplash.”

“Sorry. It’s just that talking about Mother made me wonder. Actually, I’ve been thinking about him lately. Wondering what he was like. I guess they weren’t married when she was here getting her doctorate. Her maiden name’s on her degree.”

He gave me an odd look, surprised and puzzled. “Good heavens, no. They weren’t married until she returned to Minnesota. Rachel, don’t you know when your parents got married?”

“Not really.” Here was my opening, and I tried to sound as if it were all occurring to me on the spot. “Now that I think about it, I don’t know much of anything about their marriage. Mother won’t talk about him, you know.”

Theo shifted in his chair and seemed to be scanning the books on the shelves behind me. “Well, of course, it’s still painful for her. Losing him when they were both so young was a terrible blow. Terrible. She was very much in love with him.”

Why was it hard for me to imagine my mother as a young woman deeply in love?

“Did you know them while they were married?” I asked.

“Oh, no. I completely lost touch with Judith after she earned her doctorate and went back to Minnesota. I had no contact with her until she called, out of the blue, to tell me her husband had been killed in an accident and she wanted to get away from home and all the reminders.”

“So she came back here with Michelle and me. Just the three of us.”

Theo nodded. “Yes. Well, you know about that. Renee and I helped her get set up in practice, but she didn’t require a great deal of help. She’s always been a superb therapist, and her reputation spread quickly.”

“Did you ever meet my father?” I asked again.

“Oh, yes. He came to visit her once when she was my student. Actually, I seem to recall he was here because he had business in Washington. In any case, she brought him to one of our little buffets, you know the kind of party Renee liked to give for students and faculty. He made quite a stir among the women, as I recall.”

“Really? How do you mean?” 

“Oh, his looks, of course, to begin with. You know how handsome he was. It was extraordinary the effect he had when he walked into a room. But that was only part of it.”

“I don’t remember any of that.” How had Mother felt about other women being attracted to her husband on sight?

“Well, look at his pictures and add to his handsome face a charming personality, very smooth, very self-confident, a talent for witticisms—”

He went on, but I’d frozen on one phrase: look at his pictures. Theo should know the pictures were gone, that I had destroyed them. Had he simply forgotten?

“I have to admit,” he said, “I was a bit worried about Judith marrying someone so different from herself. Not just the personalities, but the backgrounds.”

“How were their backgrounds different?”

He cocked his head, frowning. “Rachel, that’s a very strange question.”

“Why? I don’t know the answer.”

He studied me, his frown deepening. At last he sighed and said, a statement rather than a question, “Judith has never told you about the trouble in her family.”

I went still and cold inside. “No.”

He averted his head, staring into the empty grate of the fireplace. “I thought surely she would have told you by now.”

I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. Bursting with frustration, I demanded, “Tell me what you mean. What kind of trouble in her family?”

“Rachel, if your mother wanted you to know—”

I jumped up, dropping Sophia off my lap and startling both cats into resentful screeches. “Why is it up to Mother? This is my family we’re talking about too, my flesh and blood. What’s the big secret? You obviously know. Why shouldn’t I?”

He was silent for so long I thought I’d scream. But I could see him thinking. I stood with my hands clenched at my sides and made myself wait for him to speak.

“Rachel, dear girl,” he said, “please sit down.”

When I was on the couch again, facing him, he said, “It’s not so much a secret as something your mother simply doesn’t like to revisit. I’ve certainly never felt it was my place to talk to you about it. And since you’ve never asked before—”