Kiss Her Goodbye (31 page)

Father Joseph had comforted her in her bereavement, had been there for her when nobody else was. And when he retired from the priesthood, he told Lucy to call upon him if she ever needed him again.

It was Father Joseph who tracked down the girl from the
Eyewitness
newscast and found her living in Orchard Hollow with the Carmody family.

It was Father Joseph who confirmed that Jen Carmody was, indeed, the spitting image of John—and that there was no record in the foster care system of Margaret's death on the second of November fourteen years ago.

It was Father Joseph who promised to watch over Margaret, now known as Jen Carmody, after Lucy got the anonymous note in the mail.

Yes, she's alive,
it read.
But she won't be for long.

Enclosed with the note was a photograph of Jen Carmody, apparently shot through a telephoto lens.

Walking wearily into the kitchen, Stella deposits yet another heavy cardboard carton with the others in the far corner, by the door to the garage.

“Is that it from the girls' room?” Kurt asks, his voice nearly drowned out by the ripping sound as he pulls a wide strand of packing tape across the flaps of a box on the counter top.

“There's one more. You'll have to get that one, though. It's full of their books. It's too heavy for me to lift.”

He nods, focused on sealing the box before him.

Stella sniffs the air, makes a face. This kitchen where she spent so many hours now smells foreign to her, like mildew, bleach, Magic Marker, death—even if that horrible scent lingers only in her imagination.

They haven't lived in this house in almost a month—not since the night of Erin's murder. Kurt has been staying with his mother; Stella and the girls with her mother. They couldn't come back here after what happened.

The bloodstains have been scrubbed from the hardwood floor, the walls have long since been painted over. The broken pane of glass in the window where the murderous fiend broke into the house has been replaced.

And yes, the smell of death has been chemically vanquished. Stella never knew there were experts who specialized in that sort of thing: cleanup crews who were called in to remove all traces of violent death. It was lucky for her—and lucky for Sissy, too, she supposes.

She hasn't seen the cleaning lady since that awful day, but a shaken Sissy called after being interviewed by the police. She said she'd told them everything she knew and that she was frightened by the thought that the killer might have been prowling around the house on that last day while she was upstairs cleaning.

The police, who have no real reason to think otherwise, believe that he might have been.

But Stella is convinced it was Kurt, sneaking in for a lunch hour tryst with his mystery woman. She hasn't asked him about it and he hasn't given her the specifics.

She wasn't about to tell even Sissy about her husband's affair. Better to let the cleaning lady think she, too, narrowly escaped the killer's grasp.

Sissy said she was praying for Jen Carmody's recovery, and for Erin Hudson's soul. She has a lot of faith for somebody who can't be much older than her early twenties.

She said she'd pray for Stella and the girls, too, when Stella told her they were moving away.

“Thanks,” she told Sissy. “We need all the help we can get.”

Yes, prayers are helpful. Money would be even more helpful.

Outwardly, the house is ready to be placed on the real estate market. With any luck, perspective buyers will be immune to the aura of tragedy that seems to hover in the air—and to the thought of paying more than two hundred thousand dollars to purchase the scene of a double homicide.

“Can you hand me that marker?” Kurt asks now, his attention on sealing the box before him.

She retrieves it from the table, places it in his outstretched hand. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Do you want something to drink?”

“No, thanks, I'm good.”

She nods and walks to the cupboard, almost amused—if she were capable of smiling these days—by their overly civil conversation. They sound like those two ridiculously polite cartoon chipmunks.

A sound escapes Stella.

It isn't a laugh; she hasn't laughed in a month. It's more like a snort.

“God bless you,” Kurt says.

Her mouth quirks again; she murmurs, “Thanks.”

Stella opens a cabinet door to look for a glass, but finds that he's already packed them. She hunts through the fridge—which smells of sour milk and month-old leftover chili—and comes up with a half-full bottle of diet ginger ale.

Knowing it will be flat, she takes a sip anyway, and makes a face. It's from the night she sent him out to the store when she was so sick with that stomach bug.

It was only a month ago. God, is there anything in their lives that hasn't changed since then?

She goes to the sink and pours what's left of the ginger ale down the drain.

Kurt looks up from the box. “What's that?”

She holds up the empty bottle, waits for recognition to cross his face, is almost relieved when it doesn't.

They're long past rehashing what went wrong between them.

They handled all that in the wake of the murders; that those intense days are a blur is surely a blessing. Stella remembers only bits and pieces of the screaming arguments that erupted between them: her accusations, his denials, her threats, his confession.

Yes, he's been having an affair.

No, he doesn't love Stella anymore.

Yes, he wants to leave.

No, he doesn't want to go to marriage counseling.

So far, they're only referring to it as a trial separation. But deep down, Stella knows it's permanent. Their possessions are packed into separate sets of boxes, marked with three different destinations: his mother's, her mother's, and the storage unit they had to rent.

It might officially be a trial separation, but they agree that their only option is to sell the house. Even if they could afford to keep it and live separately for a while, the house no longer seems important to Stella. She doesn't want to live surrounded by the constant reminders, not only of her marriage, but of the grisly murders.

The last of the boxes of household stuff will be moved into storage tomorrow; their furniture on the weekend, before the listing appears. Stella has already seen it.

Stella had to ask the realtor what some of the abbreviations stood for. Kurt made a bad joke, asking if MBS meant murderous bloody stains. Nobody laughed. The realtor stiffly informed him that it meant Master Bedroom Suite.

She then warned them that it's difficult to sell a house during the holidays, but not impossible.

The sooner they sell, the sooner Stella and the girls can make permanent living arrangements. She's anxious for life to get back into some sort of rhythm. As of today, she's used up the last of her personal days at work—most of them spent dealing with legal issues and reassuring the girls that everything is going to be okay.

So far, she's managed to shield them from the macabre events that transpired in the house that night while they were tucked safely into their beds upstairs. They're too young to understand; young enough, thank God, that their few curious questions about the commotion were easily brushed aside. The detective managed to question them so gently that the girls seemed to think it was a game. They giggled as they recounted what they did with Jen and Erin, and innocently asked when they would be babysitting again.

Stella doesn't have the heart to tell them the truth.

But she can't protect her children from every harsh reality. They comprehend now that their parents' marriage has splintered; that Daddy will be living someplace else for a while—perhaps forever. Now Michaela has started wetting her pants, and Mackenzie chews holes in her sleeves, and it's all because Kurt has fallen out of love with Stella.

He tosses the marker aside abruptly, tells her, “I'm going up to get that last box from their room.”

She nods, staring out the window into the backyard. Jen was found out there beneath the lilac shrub, bleeding to death. The corpse of the man who tried to kill her lay beside her in the grass.

Case closed.

Case closed . . . but it doesn't make sense. Why would an aging priest break into Stella's house? Why would he be bent on murdering two young girls?

Stranger things have happened, according to Detective Brodowiaz. Sometimes the only motive for homicide is blood lust.

Still . . .

Sometimes, she finds herself wondering if Father Joseph really was the killer.

Sometimes, she wonders if he might have been an innocent bystander who was caught in the life-and-death struggle.

But why would an innocent bystander with no connection to this neighborhood be in a fenced backyard late at night?

And anyway . . . who else could have done it?

Stella feels Kurt's eyes on her and looks up to see him hesitating in the doorway.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She nods.

“You sure?”

“I'm sure.”

“You look upset.”

He has to pick now to start caring?

Unsettled by the probing concern in Kurt's gaze, she forces herself to look her soon-to-be ex-husband in the eye, saying, “I'm not upset. This is the best thing for everyone.”

“Of course it is. We can't stay here.”

“I didn't just mean the move. I meant . . . the divorce.”

There. She's said the word. And it isn't so bad now that it's out there.

Kurt remains silent for a minute.

She wonders if he'll reiterate what he's said all along—that this is merely a trial separation.

Then he nods, telling her, “Yeah. It's the best thing.”

 

 

“Lucy.” Her name escapes John's mouth on a wispy cloud of frost in the frigid air.

“Hi, John.” Her body trembles with the cold and with the effort to keep from hurtling herself at him. His arms aren't open to her this time. Not like before.

There's been a change in the past few weeks since she last saw him. He's withdrawn. His eyes are ringed in blue-black circles; his mouth is a taut slash amidst a few days' growth of razor stubble.

“Thank you for coming.”

He nods. Shrugs. Remains silent, his bare hands buried in the pockets of his baggy tan corduroy pants.

She blurts, “Father Joseph didn't try to kill Margaret.”

She can see John's shoulders stiffen beneath his down jacket. Still, he's mute.

“In case there's any doubt in your mind, he didn't do it,” she rushes on, needing him to know that, if nothing else. “He was there because I asked him to watch over her. He'd been following her around, keeping an eye on her, watching their house. Just to make sure she was safe.”

“What made you think she was in danger in the first place?”

She reaches into the pocket of her coat and retrieves the anonymous note folded around the photo, hands it to him wordlessly.

He reads the note, glances at the photo. “Where did you get this?”

“It came to my house. Back in October. A few days after I found out she was still alive.”

Deep down inside, Lucy believed then that Henry was the one who wrote the note.

Now, she isn't so sure. He was home in bed with Lucy the night somebody tried to murder Jen Carmody. Or was he?

She remembers waking to find his side of the bed empty. But he couldn't have been gone for very long . . . and he was home shortly after ten. It wouldn't have been enough time for him to slip across town and murder three people . . . would it?

God help them all, would it?

“You didn't tell me you got a note when I saw you last month.”

“I meant to tell you, though. I just . . . I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

Why? Because he shut down emotionally when she confronted him with the news that their daughter was still alive.

Because she didn't trust him.

And because she suspected then—and maybe she still does now—that John might have known all along that the baby didn't die in foster care, as his wife Deirdre told Lucy on that awful day fourteen years ago.

Why did she simply take Deirdre's word for it? Why didn't she ask for some kind of proof? A death certificate? A grave site? Something, anything, to prove that Margaret was really gone?

She didn't ask because it wouldn't make a difference. She had already signed away custody.

And she didn't ask because by then, she was already planning to join her daughter.

She went home, slit her wrists, and woke in the psych ward.

Shuddering at the memory, she tugs at the band on her left glove, then at her right, pulling them higher beneath the sleeves of her coat lest John glimpse the faint pink remnants of her suicide attempt.

“Lucy?” John prods, still holding the note. “Why didn't you tell me about this before?”

He shakes it at her. Just a little. Just enough to make her look around the park, this time not to make sure there's nobody else in sight, but to hope somebody is.

The park is deserted.

Lucy takes a step back from John, feeling his eyes blazing into her.

“I don't know why I didn't tell you about it. I guess I wasn't sure it was real. Maybe I thought it was some kind of prank.”

“You thought it was real enough to go to Father Joseph for help. Why didn't you come to me? Or at least go to the police?”

“Because . . .”

Literally. She was afraid her husband would kill her.

He almost did the first time, after he laid eyes on the newborn he thought belonged to him—and immediately recognized another man's genetic imprint on her tiny face.

Henry knew John, of course, if only by sight. John and his wife Deirdre attended the same church, lived in the same neighborhood, traveled in the same circles.