Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

didn’t see what. “Here is for you, special.”
    “Not now, Rosie.”
    I was already in the hallway when I heard her exclaim, “You, not hungry? Call the record books!”
    I sprinted up the stairs, my footfalls muffled by the thick carpet, calling out, “Michelle! Mish! Are you here?”
    Second room on the left, the door standing open. I stumbled to a stop in the doorway, grasping the frame.
    Michelle sat at the dresser wearing a pink silk robe, a blusher brush in one hand. Her blue eyes were wide with surprise when she turned to me. “What on earth? Is the house on fire?”
    Laughing breathlessly, I crossed to the bed, sank onto it and lowered my face to my knees.
    “Rachel?” Michelle prompted. “What’s wrong?”
    Straightening, I shook my head. I was amazed by my own behavior, and couldn’t explain my enormous relief at seeing Michelle safe in her blue bedroom. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”
    Avoiding her skeptical eyes, I ran a hand over the cool surface of the blue satin bedspread and realized my palm was sweaty. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Are you going out somewhere—Oh, that’s right. Kevin’s coming over.”
    My odd entrance apparently forgotten, Michelle shifted her attention back to the mirror and dusted her cheeks with a blush of color. “It’s ridiculous how excited I am about seeing him again. The boy I went to the senior prom with!” She laughed. “I feel like I’m back in high school, getting dolled up for a date.”
    I watched her apply rose-pink lipstick, then release her blond hair from a clip and shake it loose over her shoulders. My sister wasn’t a school girl; she was twenty-three years old and a graduate student in psychology, following in our mother’s footsteps.
    When we were kids I was the one Michelle followed, padding after me through water and woods. She dutifully studied the birds I pointed out, she cringed when I handed her live frogs and snakes to examine but held them anyway, all the while emitting a faint high mewl from the back of her throat.
    For years she was held fast by an inexplicable fear that I would leave her, that one day I wouldn’t come home from school, that every separation was permanent. “Promise you’ll come back” was always her parting plea. I would have done anything to make her feel secure.
    If she was coddled and indulged, allowed to become demanding and temperamental, it was my fault as much as Mother’s. I wasn’t jealous of Mother’s special tenderness toward my sister. Michelle was the fragile child we both doted on.
    Her dependence on me lessened as we grew up, but the bond didn’t go slack until I went away to vet college in upstate New York. Michelle, nineteen and already a student at George Washington University, bawled like a heartbroken baby when I got in my crammed-full car and backed out of the driveway for the trip to Cornell that first year. The sight of her sobbing in Mother’s arms stayed with me for weeks and made me sick with guilt. 
    Her resentment over my desertion solidified like a clear sheet of ice between us. I couldn’t break through it. Michelle grew closer to Mother, and gave up any pretense of sharing my interests. My summer breaks at home didn’t restore our attachment. I worked at the clinic as a tech, she took supplementary courses and worked at a school for autistic children, and we didn’t see a lot of each other.
    Then came my long final absence. After graduation I stayed on for a six-month internship in internal medicine, and for a year and a half I saw Michelle and Mother only briefly, at Christmas and when they traveled to Cornell to watch me receive my doctorate.
    Returning to McLean for good, moving back to Mother’s house, I hoped Michelle and I could form a new kind of friendship, as adults, equals. But here we were four months later, and I still had the odd sensation that we were simultaneously close and distant, intimate strangers.
    I wanted her to have what would make her happy, and at the moment that seemed to be a reunion with Kevin Watters.
    He’d grown up on this street, two houses down from us, but his family moved to Chicago while he was in college and we hadn’t seen him since. Now he was back to take an associate position in one of the big D.C. law firms.
    I’d always liked Kevin, a big handsome jock who was a lot smarter than he looked, but the last thing I wanted was to spend an evening listening to him and Michelle catch up. Sighing, I lay back