The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (8 page)

“Theo!”

He raised a hand, asking for patience. “Judith’s parents, their home life, it was a dreadful situation. Devastation and chaos. It’s a testament to her strength of character that she made such a success of herself. She’s an admirable woman. If you want to know more than that, you’ll have to ask your mother.”

I rubbed at the tiny fierce pain between my eyes.
Devastation and chaos.
I couldn’t remember Mother ever talking about her family. It was one more subject that wasn’t discussed in our home. But what astounded me was the realization that I’d never given them more than a passing thought. Surely it wasn’t natural to have no curiosity about my grandparents, aunts, uncles—Good God, I didn’t even know if I had any aunts or uncles.

I felt as if some part of me was waking from a long sleep.

Theo watched me with a kind, steady gaze. “Is this why you came to see me? To ask me these questions?”

Helen and Sophia crowded onto my lap, jostling each other and muttering resentfully. I stroked them and tried to speak in a calm and reasonable tone. “I want answers. About my family, my childhood. I don’t think Mother’s ever going to tell me any more than she already has. Theo, I can’t remember my father at all. Or our lives before he died. I want to remember what happened to me right after he died.”

I saw him flinch and draw back, his fingers tightening on the chair arms. I hurried on, before he had a chance to deflect my questions. “Was I really in such a bad state that Mother thought about putting me in a mental hospital?”

“Oh—” He hesitated, a crease cut between his full white brows. “She would never have done it, Rachel. She knew the three of you needed to be together.”

“Then it’s true?” My voice wavered. “I had some kind of breakdown?”

“Not a breakdown. I wouldn’t use that term at all. You were very hard-hit by the loss of your father. But you were perfectly functional. You did well in school. Your mother made certain the headmistress and teachers understood the situation. They went out of their way to help you.”

The faces and names came up on cue, the wonderful staff at McLean Country Day School, where I’d attended classes in a sheltered, privileged atmosphere. I remembered the headmistress and teachers, and I recalled myself in the later grades, but the first couple of grades were a blank.

“Was I difficult? Did I—fly into rages, or what?”

Theo laughed gently and shook his head. “Rages? That’s a very harsh word. You had occasional outbursts, yes, early on. Completely understandable. But for the most part, whenever I saw you during that time, you were withdrawn, very quiet. Grieving, as I said. But eventually you healed, as much as any child can heal from such a loss. You have your mother’s patience and love to thank for that. It turned out she knew what was best.”

“How—What—” My lips felt numb, and I stumbled over my words. “What was that? What was best? Did I see a doctor? A child psychiatrist?” Somebody who might still have records.

“No. I urged her to place you in therapy with a specialist, but Judith was determined to get you through it by herself. Frankly, at the time I thought it was a bad idea, not only because you’re her daughter, but because she was in a terrible state of grief herself. She believed it would be a healing process for both of you. And she was right, I must admit.”

“What did she do? Did we talk, have therapy sessions?”

“Talk, yes. Hypnosis, also, on occasion. You were always receptive to hypnosis, but of course you know that.”

I nodded. Mother had hypnotized me, and Michelle, many times. To calm pre-exam jitters, to cure Michelle of her fear of thunderstorms, to relieve anxiety about any big upcoming event. I’d been a willing subject until the nightmares and inexplicable visions started when I was fifteen. After that I’d refused Mother’s help, however much I wanted or needed it, for fear that I would inadvertently allow her a glimpse of the crazy things going on in my head.

I sat silent for a moment, sifting through Theo’s words, Mother’s words, layer on layer. “Why don’t I remember grieving over my father’s death?”

“I don’t know, Rachel.”

“I’m blocking it out—I’m blocking him out—for some reason.”

Theo’s voice was quiet. “There’s a reason for everything the mind does.” 

I was sitting but I felt like I was falling, tumbling through empty space. I gripped the sofa cushion on either side of me. Unsure what I was asking of him, I asked anyway. “Theo, will you help me?”

He leaned forward and stretched out a hand. His twisted fingers had little strength, but they were warm and gentle.

“Of course I will,” he said. “If I can.”

Chapter Six

During dinner that night my gaze stole toward Mother again and again, furtively studying her, seeing her anew. What did I know about her, really? She was the parent who’d raised me, but in many ways she was as much of a mystery as my dead father.

My head ached. I couldn’t eat. I was grateful for the excuse to escape when my rehabber friend Damian Rausch arrived to pick up both me and the red-shouldered hawk.

The bird was less than thrilled about being grabbed just as he was settling down for the night, then stuck in a cat carrier and taken for a ride, and ultimately pinned on a cold steel table at the vet clinic. He protested the only way he could: he opened his beak and hissed. If Damian and I hadn’t been wearing falconers’ gauntlets, we might have lost a finger or two.

“Ungrateful little bastard,” Damian said affably. He restrained the bird’s body while I extended its wing under the tube head of the x-ray machine. Damian, who looked a little like a hawk himself with his beaky nose and hooded dark eyes, had been rehabbing raptors for twenty years, and showed none of the tension I felt at handling such a dangerous yet exquisitely delicate creature.

The clinic, closed for the night, was eerily quiet around us. From inside the cubicle housing the x-ray controls, Luke called out, “Ready. Hold it.”

The machine hummed. The hawk’s body vibrated with rapid breaths and racing heartbeats.

“Okay, now,” Damian said. “Let him up real easy.”

We synchronized our movements, slowly allowing the hawk to get to its feet and fold its wing. The bird was back in the carrier and glaring at us from behind the grilled door when Luke came out with the developed radiograph. He slapped it onto the lighted view box. We studied the white-on-black image of a hollow bone healed around a tiny metal rod.

“Looks great,” Luke said, beaming at me as if he took a personal pride in my achievement.

“Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.” It was the first surgery of this type I’d ever done. “When I see him flying free, I’m going to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne.”

“I want to go with you when you release him,” Luke said. “I’ll supply the bubbly.”

“Won’t be long,” Damian said. He hoisted the carrier off the table. “Okay, pal, let’s get you to your new accommodations.” He had a big flight cage where the bird could get back into hunting condition before being freed. “You ready to go?” he asked me.

“I’ll give you a ride home, Rachel,” Luke put in quickly. “It’s right on my way.”

My house wasn’t even close to his route home. I hesitated, reading the question in his eyes. For the last two days I’d avoided being alone with him for a second, and it had felt like a form of self-torture. The so-near-and-yet-so-far method. Doubts clamored in my head, but suddenly I wanted him so much I thought I couldn’t get through another hour without him.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, trying to sound casual.

Damian glanced between us, then nodded with the same knowing expression I’d been seeing on my coworkers’ faces. Luke and I hadn’t so much as touched since his visit to the house, but we must be giving off some kind of signals. Alison, the desk manager, had even taken to wiggling her dark eyebrows at me when Luke walked by.

When Damian was gone, we were alone on the darkened main floor of the clinic. Under the pale security light in the reception area, Luke put his arms around me and said, “I missed you today. The place seems kind of empty when I know I’m not going to see you coming around a corner.” His lips skimmed mine. “You know I’ll take you straight back to your house if you want me to, but—” His smile was nervous, boyish. “Will you come home with me for a while first?”

The uncertainty and longing in his voice brought a rush of warmth that dissolved my doubts. “Yes,” I said, and put my arms around his neck and kissed him. I was going to do this, and I wouldn’t let myself think about anything else.

***

He lived in a highrise off Leesburg Pike, in a congested area ten minutes from the clinic and a world away from the quiet streets of McLean.

Going up in the elevator, Luke pulled me into his arms for a kiss that lasted to the eighth floor. The door opened on a white-haired woman carrying a small plastic basket of laundry. When we separated quickly, she smiled and said, “Don’t stop on my account. It looks like fun.” 

Laughing, his arm around my shoulders and mine around his waist, we walked down the long hallway to his door.

It was hard to believe he’d lived in this apartment for weeks. An open carton of books sat beside a half-filled bookcase. No pictures on the white walls. Venetian blinds, no curtains, on the wide window. Half a dozen cardboard boxes formed a ragged pyramid in a corner. The beige-striped couch and two chairs seemed marooned on the forest green area rug, trying their best to look cozy.

“Not exactly what you’re used to, I know,” Luke said. He stood beside me, hands in his pockets, as I surveyed the room.

“Well,” I said. “It’s very…clean.”

He laughed. “I can’t get real excited about decorating when I’m the only one who ever sees the place.” He slid a hand under my hair and caressed the back of my neck. “Now, if I could count on regular company, I’d make it more inviting.”

I turned into his arms, letting my shoulderbag slide to the floor. We kissed, then I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder, “I should call home and tell them I’ll be a while getting back.”

“Ah, I like the sound of that. The phone’s right there.” He pointed to a desk that also held a computer.

If Mother’s Caller I.D. registered Luke’s number I would be barraged with questions. “I’ll use my cell phone,” I said, reaching for my shoulderbag.

While I talked to Mother, Luke’s arms circled my waist from behind and he trailed kisses down the side of my neck. Somehow I managed to keep my voice cool and even.

After I snapped the phone shut, Luke asked, “Want something to drink?”

“Not a thing.” I dropped the phone into my purse and faced him.

“How about a snack? I’ve got a bag of cookies that might still be fresh.”

I laughed. “Very tempting, but no, thanks.”

“I’m just trying to be a polite host,” he murmured against my ear.

“Oh, Miss Manners would give you an A-plus.” Nuzzling his neck, I drew in the wonderful smell of his skin, like grass and wheat and clean air on a hot day.

The top buttons of his blue shirt were open, showing a pale gray tee shirt with some sort of picture on it. With a fingertip I traced the outline of a canine ear. “What species are you wearing?”

He grinned down at me as I undid the rest of the buttons to his waistline and pulled his shirt open. A gray wolf looked back at me with a disarmingly friendly expression. “A wolf fancier, huh?” I said. “I like wolves myself.”

“Is that right?”

He smoothly freed my shirt from my jeans waist and slipped a hand beneath it, onto my bare skin. His hand felt hot, but his touch made me shiver.

“I went to the Wolf Sanctuary once,” I said, “and did the twilight howl thing.” I kissed his neck and ran my fingers up through his hair. It looked coarse but it felt silky. “You know, when they get the people and wolves howling together.”

His tongue flicked my earlobe. “I’ve got a tape of wolf howls,” he said. “Want to hear it?”

“Well, I had my heart set on seeing your etchings—”

“The tape’s in the bedroom.” 

“What luck.”

His bedroom looked as unfinished as the living room. The bed was made with white sheets and a couple of pillows. We removed our shoes and stretched out, propped on our elbows, the tape player between us. The glow from the lamp behind him turned Luke’s hair a soft gold.

From the recording a single wolf’s voice lifted in a long deep-throated undulating howl. One by one other voices joined in, rising and falling in an ecstatic chorus, like a gospel choir at Sunday service, carried away by the joy of being alive.

I began to howl with them, and so did Luke, both of us lying back and baying at the ceiling until we burst out laughing.

“The neighbors are going to call the cops,” he sputtered. “God only knows what they think we’re doing in here.”

He clicked the tape player off and laid it on the bedside table, his laughter settling to a smile. He drew his thumb across my lips and looked into my eyes for a long time. “Are you sure about this?” he said at last.

Was I? A stab of fear made me hesitate. But then I said, “Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”

We undressed each other slowly, fabric slipping over skin, hands exploring. No one had ever touched me the way Luke did, lingering, savoring the fullness of my breast in his palm, the curve of my hips, tasting the hollow at the base of my throat.

I moaned shamelessly as he kissed my nipples, my stomach, my thighs, and I cried out when he touched his tongue to the ache between my legs.

When he slid inside me a sharp flash of alarm froze me and I jerked my head aside so he wouldn’t see my face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked hoarsely. “Look at me, Rachel. What is it?”

I turned my head, focused for a moment on his chin before raising my eyes. His gaze mixed tenderness and desire. The moment of anxiety melted away, and without answering him I drew his head down and covered his mouth with mine.

He began to move inside me. I locked my legs around him and buried my face against his shoulder as he made love to me.

***

Afterward I lay in his arms, knowing that everything had changed.

He brushed a damp strand of hair from my cheek and kissed my forehead. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

I skimmed my fingertips over the scratchy blond stubble on his cheek, my voice stolen by a clutch of unnameable dread. How easily he had become precious to me. How easily he might wound me, even unwittingly.

For a moment he rubbed my back, his hand moving up and down in a gentle caress, then he said in a quiet voice, “What are you afraid of, Rachel? I can tell you’re afraid of something.”

I pulled away and sat up.

“You’re not still worried about this affecting your job, are you?” Luke said.

I shook my head, but said nothing because I didn’t know what to say.

“I wonder,” he murmured, almost to himself.

His fingers traced the bumps of my spine. Suddenly wanting to cover myself, I tried to draw the sheet around me, but it was caught underneath us. 

He sat up beside me. His hand massaged my shoulder. “Have you been involved with somebody who hurt you?”

I shook my head. No one had ever hurt me because no one had ever gotten close enough. I thought fleetingly of the other men I’d been with, two of them, guys my own age, totally wrapped up in working toward their futures, as self-absorbed as I was. A lot of fun, no demands, easy partings. We hadn’t made love; we’d had sex. No other man had touched my heart the way Luke did.

“Whatever’s bothering you, I want you to tell me,” he said. He cupped my chin in his hand and turned my head toward him. “I’m falling in love with you, Rachel.”

I stiffened. “How can you be sure of that? It’s too soon—”

“It’s about time, I’d say. I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve never found anybody I wanted to be with, till now. I don’t jump into things like this. I’m sure about how I feel.”

“But you hardly know me. Maybe I’m not the person you think I am.”

“I doubt that. And we’ve got all the time in the world to fill in the blanks. I want to know everything about you, nothing left out.”

Oh, do you?
I could tell him a few things that might break his fall and send him off to find some nice uncomplicated girl with a normal family. If he recoiled—well, better now than later, when it would hurt me more.

But I said nothing. I swung my legs off the bed. Where was my underwear? I scooped panties and bra from the floor, then sat still for a moment before I shifted to face him. “I’ve never been seriously involved with anybody before. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.”

“Okay. I understand.” He touched my hair. “I’m not scaring you off, am I?”

He laughed a little, but his eyes were filled with an apprehension that wrenched my heart. I put my arms around him.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” I said. “Please. For now. And just see how it goes.”

He smiled with obvious relief and kissed my bare shoulder. “Sounds good to me.”

Then his hand was on my breast, gently rubbing the nipple erect before gliding over my stomach and urging my legs apart.

***

It was so late. I had to get home. I cleaned up as best I could in the bathroom, then pulled on my clothes.

Luke was coming into the living room from the kitchen, two glasses in his hands. I took one, sipped cold tingly ginger ale, washing the taste of him out of my mouth.

“Come on, sit down while you finish that,” Luke said. He gestured at the couch.

“I’ve really got to go.”

He frowned and smiled at the same time. “Your mother got you on a curfew, or what?” he said, then laughed as if to soften the question.