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Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

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BOOK: Kiss Her Goodbye
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“No. I know we have to talk to her, but I don't even know how to approach it without alienating her right from the start. That's why I'm asking you.”
He rubs his forehead again. “Look, I'm burnt out. Today was a lousy day at work, and it took me an hour to help Curran with his math homework . . .”
A dig at Kathleen, since she couldn't figure out fifth-grade fractions. Matt used to think it was charming that she isn't good with numbers; clearly that wore off some time ago.
“Plus then I had to read that story to Riley,” he goes on, “and all I wanted to do now was sit here and watch TV for a few minutes before I fall asleep and it's time to get up and start all over again.”
She stares at him. “So you're saying you can't be bothered with our daughter's issues because you're
tired?

“Not that I can't be bothered, just . . .” He sighs. “Kathleen, I know you worry about her getting into trouble. I know you don't want her to end up the way you did.”
She winces. She can't help it. Sometimes, she thinks that she told him too much.
Other times, she wonders if she should have told him everything, right from the start. Maybe then he'd understand.
Or maybe, if he knew the whole story, he'd stop loving her. Maybe he'd leave her.
Taking a deep breath, she looks her husband in the eye. “No,” she says. “I don't want her to end up the way I did. I want to protect her. I just . . . I just don't know how.”
“Well, I do.”
 
 
Biology sucks even more than Mondays suck, Jen concludes, setting aside her homework, with its rows of four-box grids called Punnett Squares. This genetics stuff is incredibly boring. Not to mention confusing.
Mom has green eyes and so does Grandpa Gallagher. Dad has blue eyes and so do Grandma and Grandpa Carmody.
Jen has brown eyes. The chances of that are . . . um, slim?
Unless Grandma Gallagher, who died when Mom was little, had brown eyes?
That must be where I got them.
She glances at the Punnett Squares again, then at the back of Sissy's flier, where she made several practice attempts at plotting her own heredity.
According to the diagrams, the chances of Jen having brown eyes regardless of her grandparents' eye color appear to be nil, which means she didn't do it right.
She sighs and crumples the flier into a ball. She probably should have stayed after school for biology tutoring. She stinks at science, and she's having an especially difficult time with this genetics unit, which has only just begun.
And anyway, if she had stayed after for tutoring, she wouldn't be dealing with this horrible guilt complex she's had all evening . . . ever since she got out of Robby's car over on Woodsbridge Road.
Lying to Mom's face about who had dropped her off was even worse than lying on the answering machine. Her mother said nothing, just nodded and told her to get washed up for dinner.
Mom was quiet throughout the meal, too. She gave Curran most of her steak, and she didn't even laugh when Daddy told the silly joke about the parrot and the old man. Even Riley cracked up at that, but Mom just smiled with this blank look on her face and looked like she hadn't even heard it.
Jen didn't laugh, either. Sometimes, especially when her father and brothers are laughing together, she feels like an outsider. She just doesn't have the same sense of humor—at least, not lately. She used to think her father's jokes were hilarious; now they're just corny.
Jen pitches the crumpled flier toward her wastebasket and misses.
She rises from her desk chair to get it, almost knocking over one of her swim team trophies on the shelf overhead. She grabs the wobbling trophy, which weighs enough to kill somebody if it fell on their head.
Good old Franklin Delano Roosevelt High, she thinks, reading the inscription on the bottom. Sometimes she misses her old school so much that she gets a lump in her throat.
She retrieves the crumpled paper from the floor and deposits it into her wastebasket. Then, swallowing hard, she tries to concentrate on the things she really likes about Woodsbridge High.
But all she can think about is that she wants to go back to Indiana and her old friends. Dana and Colleen would never dream of lying to their mothers and riding around in a car with a senior who also happens to sell drugs.
Not that Robby seems like a drug dealer. He's actually pretty nice. Funny, too. He had all three of them laughing all the way to the Galleria. And he didn't mind waiting while they shopped. Both Erin and Amber bought stuff at the Abercrombie sale but Jen was too nervous to shop. And anyway, all her babysitting money was here at home, tucked into the box set of Little House on the Prairie books, her secret hiding place.
“What if your mom sees that and wants to know where you got it?” she asked Erin as her friend crammed her new tops into her backpack.
“She won't notice. Or if she does, she'll think my dad bought it for me. He's always getting me new stuff.”
True.
But the only person who ever takes Jen shopping is her mother. Mom would be suspicious right away if she saw her wearing something new.
Startled by the sound of two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs, she glances at the digital clock on her nightstand. It's not even ten o'clock yet—much too early for her parents to be coming up to bed. They never come up until the eleven o'clock news is over, at the very earliest.
The footsteps creak along the hall and there's a knock on her door.
“Yeah?” Jen asks, as a chilling thought—
they know
—careens through her mind.
“We need to talk to you,” her father says sternly through the door.
Yup. They know.
But how did they find out? Erin would never slip about it to her mother. And Mom doesn't even know Amber's mother. And Robby . . . well, no way does his mother—if he even has one—travel in the same circles as Mom.
“Come in,” she calls, trying to sound calm. She hurriedly sits at her desk again, thinking it might help if they see that she's been studying.
The door opens and her parents step over the threshold. One look at their faces tells her that she was right. They know.
“I'm sorry,” Jen blurts.
Her parents look at each other, then back at her.
The truth spills out. “I lied. I wasn't at school. I was at the mall.”
“With Erin?” her mother asks quietly, the disappointment in her eyes more painful, even, than the blatant anger in Dad's.
Jen nods miserably. “With Erin and Amber.”
“Who drove you?” Mom asks.
Dad has yet to speak.
When he does, it isn't going to be as calmly as Mom
, Jen thinks with a shudder. Aloud, she admits only, “A friend of Erin's.”
“Which friend of Erin's?” her mother demands.
She hesitates.
“If you lie again,” Dad's tone is ice, “you'll be sorry.”
“His name is Robby.”
“The drug dealer?” Mom is horrified.
“You're driving around town with a drug dealer?”
When Dad puts it that way, it sounds so . . .
bad
. And it wasn't. She has to make them see that.
“Robby isn't a drug dealer.” Not if you don't consider weed
drugs
. “He's really nice. He dropped us at the mall. We shopped for a little while. Then he brought us home. That was it.”
“That was
it?
” Her parents echo in unison.
“I'm sorry I lied. I didn't mean to. I don't know what—”
“You're grounded,” Dad announces. “For a month. You won't go anywhere except to school and to church. That's it.”
“But—that isn't fair!”
“Life isn't fair,” is the maddening reply; one she's heard far too often.
“But what about soccer?” she protests. “The team needs me.” She has to bite her lip to keep from saying it wouldn't be fair to inflict her punishment on the whole team, knowing what her father will say to that, even if he is assistant coach.
Her parents look at each other. “School, church, and soccer,” Mom clarifies. “That's—”
“What about—”
“Jen, that's it!”
“—babysitting,” she finishes, looking from one parent to the other. “Mrs. Gattinski needs me on Wednesdays.”
“We need to discuss the babysitting thing, anyway,” Dad says. “Mom and I aren't sure you're ready for that kind of responsibility.”

What?
” Frustration and anger bubble up inside of her.
“Saturday night made us think that you might be too young to be alone in a strange house with two small children, Jen,” Mom says gently, “and there's nothing wrong with that.”
“But—”
“You're still a kid yourself, Jen.”
“I am not a kid! I was scared. I couldn't help it. Mom would be scared if she looked out the window and saw somebody lurking there at night.”
“If somebody was lurking in the Gattinskis' bushes, that's all the more reason we don't want you over there.”
Jen opens her mouth to protest, then clamps it shut again. Not only is this unfair, but they're treating her like a baby. She'll be fourteen on November second, damn it. Fourteen.
How old was that girl April
? she finds herself wondering, not for any good reason. What does some trashy runaway have to do with her?
“You can babysit this week,” Mom relents, oblivious to—or choosing to ignore Dad's glare. Obviously, he doesn't agree.
“But what if Mrs. Gattinski can't find—”
“You can babysit until Mrs. Gattinski finds a regular sitter for Wednesdays.”
Her father growls, “But absolutely no babysitting at night. And no play dates—”
“Play dates?” Jen echoes, outraged. “Dad, play dates are for preschoolers. I don't have play dates.”
He shrugs. “Whatever you call them at your age—doing your nails in your room with your friends, or going shopping, or anything like that. When you're not at school, or soccer practice, or babysitting, you're here. Where we can keep an eye on you. Got it?”
“Yeah,” she says miserably, turning her back.
“Good.”
She stares blindly down at the ink doodles in the margins of the spiral-bound notebook lying open on her desk.
Her father leaves the room.
Mom lingers, standing behind Jen. After a moment, she puts a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Jen flinches.
The hand remains.
She shrugs it off, scowling.
Mom bends and kisses her good night, same as always.
Jen sits stiffly, ignoring her.
After a moment, she hears her mother's footsteps retreating into the hall, followed by the quiet click of the door closing.
 
 
He lowers the binoculars only when the last light has been extinguished on the second floor at 9 Sarah Crescent.
His breath puffs white in the night air; his legs are numb despite the trousers beneath his robe.
He doesn't know which room is hers; the shades are all down. That doesn't matter. He knows that she's there, somewhere. Perhaps asleep already; perhaps lying awake in bed.
What is she thinking about?
Is she afraid?
Does she sense that he's here in the darkness, watching her?
The other night he was caught off guard when Genevieve—
think of her as Jen; they call her Jen
—seemed to look right at him through the window.
Instinct kicked in and he ducked out of sight.
But if she spots him again, he won't make that mistake. No, next time, he'll be ready.
Ready to do whatever it takes.
Just as he promised.
FIVE
On Wednesday afternoon Kathleen reluctantly joins Maeve for a “power walk” around the neighborhood. It's not that she doesn't desperately need the exercise; plus she's been hoping for a chance to discuss their daughters' Monday afternoon escapade. Still, Kathleen can't help feeling guilty as they stride along in the brisk autumn sunshine, and tells her friend as much.
“Guilty? Why?” Maeve asks, barely short of breath, her fists moving rhythmically alongside her ribs.
“Because my house is a disaster area and I should be home cleaning it.” Kathleen huffs as she tries to keep up with Maeve's long legs and fast pace.
They've only been at it for ten minutes, and she's wiped out already. She can't even tell how far they've gone, or exactly where they are. Orchard Hollow's circular streets and big new houses are interchangeable, right down to the SUVs in the driveways and the pumpkins and potted mums on the steps. Even the campaign signs on the lawns tend to be for the same candidates—in this neighborhood, the Republican ones.
“You need a cleaning lady,” Maeve declares, not for the first time. But this time she adds, “I'm sending you Sissy. She just told me she really needs more work to pay off a medical bill.”
“Sissy?”
“My cleaning lady.”
“I thought her name was Marcia.”
“It was Marta, and she's out of commission with a broken leg or something. Sissy does a better job anyway, though. And she doesn't talk my ear off the way Marta did. She's very professional.”
Kathleen hedges. “I don't know. I feel funny hiring household help when I'm not even bringing in an income.”
“Oh, get over it. Matt won't care.”
True. He's been urging her to get help, but Maeve doesn't know that . . . or need to. Sometimes, Kathleen gets the sense that Maeve thinks she makes Matt sound too good to be true.
For a long time, Kathleen believed that he was.
“Matt will do whatever makes you happy,” Maeve is saying, in a voice laced with envy. “You know that.”
Not necessarily.
Kathleen wonders if she'll ever get over the sense of being beholden to her husband—not for all he does for her now, but for saving her years ago, when she had nowhere else to turn.
Maeve says briskly, “Listen, Kath, I'm going to send Sissy over to do your house from top to bottom. My treat. Okay,” she amends with a laugh, “Gregory's treat. Not that he'll even realize it.”
“I can't let you do that, Maeve.”
“I'm not asking your permission, Kathleen. Sissy really needs the work, and you really need the help. It's a win-win situation. And if you like her, you can hire her to do a few days a week for you. Okay?”
“A few days?” Kathleen shakes her head. She'd feel extravagant enough having a housekeeper here for one.
But Maeve is insisting, and anyway, Kathleen does need help. Her energy is utterly depleted this week, thanks in large part to her worry about Jen and to the old memories that have been intruding more frequently. She knew that moving back here would stir painful, long-buried emotions, but she truly believed she could handle the hurt after all these years.
“What do you say, Kathleen?” Maeve is asking. “Can I hire Sissy to do a day at your place?”
“Okay,” she relents. “Is tomorrow too soon?”
Maeve laughs. “I'll find out. The house is that bad, huh?”
“Worse. Every time I turn around there are dishes in the sink and crumbs on the floor and the bathroom smells like pee. I swear, the boys can't aim to save their lives.”
Maeve wrinkles her nose delicately. “Yuck. I'm glad I don't have sons. Girls are easier.”
For some reason, that rankles.
“Not lately,” Kathleen mutters.
A slight breeze stirs the tree branches overhead, sending dry leaves fluttering toward the ground.
“What did you say?” Maeve pushes a windblown strand of silky dyed-blond hair out of her eyes.
“I said, not lately.”
“Not lately, what?”
Honestly, Kathleen wonders whether Maeve hears anything Kathleen's saying when she seems oblivious even to the words that spill out of her own mouth.
“You just said girls are easier. I said not lately.”
Maeve's eyes widen. “Is Jen peeing on the floor?”
“Maeve! Of course she isn't peeing on the—”
“Relax, Katie, I was kidding.”
She winces at the sound of her old nickname. “Oh.”
“I know Jen doesn't pee on the floor. I guess you're talking about the lying and sneaking around thing, huh?”
With a sigh, Kathleen admits, “I can't get past it. How am I supposed to trust her again?”
“She's a teenager. You should never have trusted her in the first place.”
“You're kidding again, right?”
“Wrong. This time I'm serious.” Maeve shrugs. “She's going to lie and sneak around, Katie. That's what teenagers do. We did. And we're fine.”
“It's Kathleen,” she says churlishly. “Not Katie anymore. And what I did back then—which wasn't much of anything—has nothing to do with what Jen does now.”
“It has everything to do with it. You're not being realistic.”
“I won't have her lying to me, or riding around town with boys who smoke, or—”
“You don't have much say in it, Kathleen. What are you going to do? Lock her away until she's eighteen?”
“That would probably suit Matt just fine. He's already grounded her for a month. She's not allowed to go anywhere but school. And church.”
“I thought she was babysitting for Stella Gattinski's kids after school today.”
“She is. Just until Stella can find somebody else.” Kathleen hesitates, then decides not to bring up Saturday night and the prowler Jen thought she saw. Maeve might mention it to Erin, and Erin will tell Jen, and Jen will feel betrayed.
Funny that Kathleen is worrying about betraying her daughter when Jen had no problem lying to her just two days ago. But she hasn't forgotten what high school is like and she can't help feeling protective of her daughter. The last thing Jen needs is for the other kids to find out she was spooked enough to call her parents while she was babysitting.
Kathleen wipes a trickle of sweat from her temple and looks at her watch, then remembers that it doesn't matter what time it is. She doesn't have to be at the bus stop this afternoon. Curran has a boy scout meeting after school and Riley has a play date at a friend's house.
“Want to go grab a quick Starbucks before you have to get the boys off the bus?” Maeve asks.
Rather than correct her, Kathleen shakes her head. “Sorry. Maybe tomorrow.”
She's had enough of Maeve for today. Her friend means well, but Kathleen doesn't agree with her parenting style.
What Maeve considers mere adolescent mischief, Kathleen considers playing with fire—and she's hell bent to keep Jen off the self-destructive path she herself knows all too well.
“Okay, I'll call you later and let you know about Sissy.”
Oh, right. Sissy. The cleaning lady.
If she can come tomorrow, Kathleen doesn't have to clean today. That leaves her with a few hours to kill . . . and, she thinks, as a chill slips down her spine, she knows exactly where she'll go.
 
 
“How's school going, Jen?” Stella asks, counting out several bills as the twins dive into the Happy Meals she picked up for them on the way home from work.
“School's fine.”
Stella glances up from her wallet, noticing that Jen seems subdued today. “Is everything okay, hon?”
“Everything's fine. It's just . . . I, um, can't babysit here anymore.”
Stella's heart sinks, her initial reaction purely selfish. She knew Jen was too good to be true.
Then, catching the distress in the girl's brown eyes, she asks gently, “Why can't you babysit, Jen?”
Jen's chin quivers. Her gaze tilts down to her white Nikes. “My parents won't let me. They grounded me.”
“Uh-oh. What did you do?” She probably brought home a rare C on her interim report card, Stella thinks, pressing several tens and a five into Jen's hand. Jen is such a model teenager she can't imagine that it was anything more extreme than that.
“I didn't do anything.”
“They grounded you for no reason? Come on, Jen. What happened?”
“It was no big deal.”
Aha.
“It was obviously a big deal to your parents. What was it?”
Jen shrugs, her gaze still averted. “Nothing. I just got a ride home from school with this kid who has a car.”
“That was it?”
“Well, we stopped at the mall on the way, but that was it. My parents freaked.”
“Because they don't want you riding around in cars with other kids? I don't blame them, Jen. They're just making sure you're safe.”
“No, they're just making sure I'm totally miserable. My mother won't let me do anything. She's ridiculous. She's always worried about where I'm going and who I'm with and what time I'll be back. I swear, she's smothering me!”
Surprised at the fervent outburst from mild-mannered Jen, Stella loops an arm around her shoulder, patting her reassuringly. “She's just being a mom, Jen. She loves you.”
“Can you talk to her, Mrs. Gattinski? Maybe you can tell her that you really need me to babysit. And while you're at it, you can sort of tell her to lighten up.”
“Oh, Jen, I don't want to poke my nose into—”
“But it's true, right? You need me to watch the girls, right? They'll be upset if I can't come anymore, won't they?”
Stella glances at her daughters, happily munching french fries at their little table in the corner. That they'd be bitterly disappointed if Jen doesn't come back goes without saying, but. . .
“Please, Mrs. Gattinski . . .” Jen lifts her blond head at last, her expression beseeching, “Can't you just tell my mom you really need me? It's really important to me to keep this job.”
It isn't about the money, Stella realizes, looking into Jen's troubled brown eyes, and it isn't about the girls. Both undoubtedly matter to Jen—but this goes deeper. This is a power struggle between mother and daughter; one Jen is desperate to win.
Remembering her own sheltered adolescence, Stella is half-tempted to agree to talk to Kathleen on Jen's behalf. But another part of her—the protective, maternal part—feels compelled to tell Jen that her mother is right to keep a watchful eye. That the world can be a dangerous place; that every mother fears the worst that can happen and must do everything in her power to see that it doesn't.
“Never mind.” Jen bows her head again, scuffing the toe of her sneaker along a line of grout in the ceramic kitchen floor. “You don't have to talk to my mom. That would probably be weird for you, huh?”
“A little,” Stella admits. “But, Jen, if you feel that strongly, why don't you talk to her yourself? Explain how much the babysitting job means to you. Maybe if you have a rational conversation when you're both calm, she'll understand.”
“Yeah,” Jen says in a
whatever
tone typical of a teenaged girl convinced that all adults are clueless.
Stella isn't clueless. She remembers what it was like to be a kid. But things are different now. Thirteen-year-old girls want to grow up too fast. They dabble in things Stella didn't even discover existed until college. And even if they don't get into trouble on their own, they're prey for predators. They vanish from neighborhoods like this.
“Jen . . .” Stella begins, but trails off when Jen looks up expectantly—too expectantly. Stella doesn't know what she was going to say, but she's certain that Jen wouldn't want to hear it. She settles for, “I'll call your mom if you want me to.”
“You will? Thank you!” Jen takes a pen and a spiral-bound notebook from her backpack. “Can I give you her cell phone number? If you call our house my dad might answer, and you don't have to talk to him.”
Stella sighs. “Sure.” She takes the number Jen scribbles on the sheet of paper, and tucks it into the drawer by the phone. “I'll call her as soon as I have time, okay?”
“No rush. I really appreciate it.”
“Come on, Jen. I'll drive you home.”
“I can walk.”
“I'll drive you,” Stella repeats firmly. Now that the line has been drawn, she'll stay on the maternal side of it, if only for consistency's sake.
She doesn't blame Kathleen Carmody for wanting to keep Jen close.
She's willing to bet April Lukoviak's mother wishes she had done the same.
 
 
Mollie Gallagher's grave sits in a remote corner of the sprawling Saint Brigid's cemetery, sheltered beneath the spreading branches of an enormous red maple tree whose trunk is several yards away.
As Kathleen shuffles through the fallen red leaves toward the familiar gray stone, she finds herself noting that the tree's roots have likely snaked as far underground as the boughs have above. She wonders whether they've twined their way around her mother's coffin, around—
Stop it!
Kathleen swallows hard, shoving the macabre thought from her mind as she stares at the grave, toying with the green tissue paper wrapped around the stems of the crimson roses in her hand.
She always brings red roses. She has ever since she was a little girl. Back then, the parish priest Father Joseph was the one who brought her to the cemetery. Drew never did; not once. Aunt Maggie said he couldn't face it.
BOOK: Kiss Her Goodbye
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