Kiss Her Goodbye (4 page)

“So . . . wings?” Matt asks, his recliner squeaking as he raises it to the upright position again.

“With extra blue cheese,” she tells him, smiling as he walks into the kitchen.

I'm so lucky. Lucky to have him, and the kids, and this house.
Kathleen looks around the cozy family room, which she spent two hours cleaning this afternoon. She admires the burgundy leather sofa and chairs, the butter-colored rug with fresh vacuum marks in it, the creamy, textured beige walls she painted herself using a rag technique she saw on one of those cable decorating shows.

Maeve laughed when she popped over that day and found Kathleen on her hands and knees, covered in paint.

“You can hire somebody to do that, you know.”

“I don't want to. It's fun.”

Fun, for Maeve, involves salons and personal trainers.

She's always trying to get Kathleen to pamper herself more. Lately, she's been telling her that she needs to hire a housekeeper, though Kathleen protests that she finds cleaning therapeutic.

“That alone is evidence that you need therapy,” Maeve declared.

Somehow, though, they're friends. Still friends, or friends again, depending on how you look at it. There were a few years when Kathleen lost track of her, along with everyone else from her old life in suburban Buffalo—Dad included. But you can't run away forever.

Rather, you
can
. . . but you might discover that you don't want to after all. You might conclude, when enough time and distance have buried the old hurts, and your husband has been offered his dream job at a Fortune 500 corporation in, of all places, your hometown, that it's time to stop running.

So.

So Matt accepted the job, and here they are. And everything is fine, after all.

She doesn't face unpleasant memories on a daily basis. She's stopped worrying that somebody is going to look at her and
know
.

What about Jen?

What if somebody—

But that's ridiculous. That can't happen. It won't happen. Nobody could possibly . . .

She frowns then, unsettled by the sudden memory of this morning's soccer match, and the person she saw—or thought she saw—standing on the edge of the field.

 

 

“Want another white wine?”

Stella glances at her husband, then at the half-full glass in her hand, and the empty one in his.

She contemplates a playful wink, but settles on a suggestive grin. “Are you trying to get me drunk so you can have your way with me later?”

“Christ, Stella, what kind of thing is that to say?” Kurt's brown eyes are not amused. He looks over one suit-clad shoulder and then the other, as if he half-expects to find one of the bank's board members eavesdropping.

Embarrassed, Stella sips her wine and fights the urge to glance again at her reflection in the mirrored pillar beside them. She knows her cocktail dress won't be a size bigger and her hips won't be a size smaller than the last time she checked. Black is supposed to be slimming, and she skipped lunch so that she'd be able to get the zipper up without straining. But she can't stave off a self-conscious awareness that her dress is too snug, not to mention too dated. The other women in the banquet room—some of them bankers' and doctors' and lawyers' wives; many of them bankers, doctors, lawyers themselves—seem infinitely more slender and fashionable.

“I'm going to get another drink,” Kurt says. “I'll be right back.”

She refrains from telling him to go easy on the whiskey. He's already striding toward the bar.

But he has to drive them home. She can't see well enough in the dark to drive on the highway. Night blindness, Daddy used to call it.

Kurt calls it bullshit. He says that if she wears her glasses, she should be able to see just fine.

Stella sips her wine, silently cursing her husband, missing her father. It's been almost a year since Daddy's heart attack, but she still forgets sometimes that he's gone. Every moment that she remembers is a moment when she feels newly robbed. There is one less person in the world who loves her unconditionally.

But Kurt doesn't love her unconditionally. Sometimes she wonders if Kurt still loves her at all.

She sips more wine, her eyes searching the three-deep crowd in front of the bar. Kurt is waiting for his drink, chatting animatedly with an older couple. His pale hair is receding at the temples and he, too, has put on a few pounds in the past few years, but he's still handsome. Back when she met him, she thought he looked like a Nordic ski instructor: tall, blond, gorgeous.

The same flattering adjectives could have described Stella, back then.

No. She's not gorgeous by any stretch of the imagination. These days, other adjectives crop up whenever she glimpses her reflection. Less flattering adjectives: dumpy, flabby, faded, weary.

No wonder Kurt doesn't want to get her tipsy and have his way with her. No wonder she caught him eyeing their beautiful teenaged babysitter tonight with more interest than he's shown his wife in years.

Caught up in her lousy self-image, it takes Stella a moment to realize that the faint sound of a ringing cell phone is coming from her black beaded evening bag. She hurriedly snaps the purse open, fumbling inside. The cap has come off the lipstick she tucked in earlier, and the hand that emerges with the cell phone is streaked in red. Lovely.

“Hello?” She must have dropped her cocktail napkin. Damn. There's no place to wipe her hand.

“Mrs. Gattinski?”

It's Jen. The connection is underscored by static, but the sitter's voice is unmistakable, higher-pitched than usual. It sends a ripple of alarm through Stella.

“Jen? Is everything okay?”

The line goes dead.

 

 

“Want extra celery, too?” Matt asks, poking his head back into the family room, cordless phone in hand.

Kathleen nods. “And extra blue cheese, too.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Did I tell you to get mild this time? The mediums were too hot.”

“No, but I will. Anything else I can do for you, your highness?”

Kathleen grins. “I'm sure I can think of something.”

He raises a suggestive eyebrow. “Really?”

“Really. Don't look so surprised.”

“Well, it's been a long time.”

“Something tells me we're not talking about wings anymore,” she says with a laugh.

“Pretty sharp there, aren't you?”

“Oh, I try.”

Yes, and she also
tries
not to fall into bed too exhausted for anything but sleep every night. Not that he seems to mind that their once torrid love life has cooled to an occasional, fleeting fifteen minutes in each other's arms. It's not as though he's pulling out all stops to seduce her, either.

We're becoming middle aged and boring
, she frequently wants to tell him. But if she acknowledges it, she—or he—will probably feel compelled to do something about it. And frankly, most of the time she's just too tired to care.

Footsteps pound overhead. “Mommy!” Riley bellows from the upstairs hallway. “He shoved me in the closet again.”

Kathleen eyes Matt. “How about if I call for the wings and you handle that?”

“Too late. I already dialed.” He holds up the phone, retreating toward the kitchen.

“Liar. You don't even know the number off the top of your head.” She sticks out her tongue at him.

There's a thud overhead, followed by another shrieked “Mommy!”

“I'm coming.” She starts up the stairs with a sigh, stepping around the heaping basket of folded laundry at the bottom. She'll put it away later; she's had it with housework today.

She's halfway to the second floor when the phone rings.

Kathleen rolls her eyes and grins, muttering, “I knew you were a liar . . .”

“Mom!” Curran is grunting from somewhere above. “Get him
off
of me!”

Moments later, she's on her knees prying her scuffling sons apart when she hears Matt's hurried footsteps and keys jangling below. He calls something up to her, his voice sounding oddly urgent.

“Shh!” Kathleen admonishes the boys. “Matt! I didn't hear you. What?”

Too late. Downstairs, the front door slams.

Kathleen's heart begins to pound. “Curran—Riley—did either of you hear Daddy?”

Her youngest shakes his head, still intent on poking his brother.

Squirming, Curran says, “Cut it out, Riley!” then, to her, “I think he said something about Jen.”

Kathleen leaves the boys and hurries to the window in the front bedroom, just in time to see her husband take off down the street. Where on earth would Matt be going on foot?

Each piece of the puzzle seems to fall into place with a heavy thud, stirring billows of worry within. Her eyes fastened to her husband's retreating figure out the window, Kathleen attempts to quell the uneasiness.

Maybe the toilet is overflowing, or . . . or . . .

Maybe Jen can't get a jar of peanut butter open, or—

Matt is running now. Sprinting, as if his life—or God help her, Jen's—depends on it.

 

 

The trouble with events like this, Maeve decides, sipping her pleasantly chilled Pinot Grigio, is that she's bound to run into Gregory. As a prominent local dentist, her ex is always invited to these Chamber of Commerce affairs.

In the old days, Maeve reluctantly accompanied him, knowing they'd both drink too much, flirt too much, and wind up in a shrill argument on the way home.

“How is your wine?”

“It's wonderful.” She smiles absently at her escort—Mo, as he likes to be called. His full name is Mohammed and she can't begin to pronounce his last name, but that isn't important. What matters, in Maeve's opinion, is the
M.D.
that comes after it. And that the exotically handsome Mo is better looking, and wealthier, than Gregory.

As Mo carries on a boring conversation with a couple of boring businessmen, Maeve expertly feigns interest while scanning the crowded banquet room for her ex. Either Gregory isn't here yet, or he's not coming at all.

There are, however, several recognizable faces in the well-heeled throng: a few couples from the neighborhood, and one or two women she's seen at Pilates classes at the gym.

Maeve's eyes narrow in fascination as she spots Kurt and Stella Gattinski. She's met them once or twice since they moved into the development. The husband is charming; the wife could stand to lose a few pounds. At the moment, they appear to be in the midst of an argument. He seems irked and is obviously conscious of the spectacle they're making; she looks distraught and clearly doesn't give a damn who sees or hears them.

After a moment, Stella Gattinski spins away from her husband and strides toward the coat room.

Maeve watches Kurt shrug and turn back to the bar.

Trouble in paradise, hmm?

So what else is new? Is
anybod
y happily married anymore?

Okay, Katie—er,
Kathleen
—and Matt seem to be, she admits to herself, while nodding in blind agreement with whatever the hell Mo is saying.

She finds herself wondering what her old friend did right . . . and how on earth she managed to land Matt Carmody. There was a time when Maeve would have sworn that Kathleen was destined to wind up homeless—or dead. In fact, during the years when they lost touch, she was certain Kathleen had fallen off the face of the earth.

Then she heard that her old friend was back in town—more specifically, in Maeve's upscale suburb, as opposed to the blue-collar enclave a few miles away, where they'd both grown up. She was stunned to discover that Kathleen had a charming husband and three beautiful children in tow: the proverbial Phoenix risen from the ashes of a traumatic life.

There was no hint of the moody recluse Kathleen became in those years after high school. No, these days, she sounds like the same old Katie—aside from a few oddly skittish moments. She certainly isn't fond of discussing what happened to her before—and after—she left town.

Or rather,
disappeared
.

For that's how Maeve has always thought of her friend's departure from the sheltered world where they grew up.

One moment, Kathleen was there—on the fringes of Maeve's world, and running around with a crowd of losers, but
there
—and the next, she was, quite simply,
gone
.

Maeve knows why. She'd have figured it out even if she hadn't heard through the grapevine that people had seen Kathleen and she was obviously pregnant. Their daughters are about the same age: Erin a mere six months older than Jen. But Maeve was married to her high school sweetheart when she had Erin. Hastily married, yes—too hastily, and too young, and not permanently—but married, just the same.

Kathleen wasn't at the wedding. Though they had grown apart, Maeve sent an invitation to her father's address. Kathleen never RSVP'd. When she returned from her honeymoon, Maeve heard that Kathleen was pregnant and her father had sent her away when he found out. That wasn't surprising. Drew Gallagher was stern, old-fashioned, extremely religious. The last thing he'd endure was having a pregnant, unmarried daughter under his roof.