Kiss Her Goodbye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I could pay the mortgage on a ski chalet for this, Maeve. This is ridiculous.”

  She shrugs.

  A hygienist Maeve has never seen before pokes her head into the doorway. “Dr. Hudson? The molds . . . ?”

  He spins on his heel. “I have to get back to my patient,” he informs Maeve. “You and I will have to discuss this later.”

  “We definitely will, Gregory.”

  Watching him walk out on her without a backward glance, she reminds herself that all she wants is what she has coming.

  Rather, what Erin has coming, she amends with a smile, as she rises and walks airily out of the office, unfazed by Nora’s glare.

  As Kathleen climbs out of the SUV, a frigid wind whips her hair across her cheeks. She pauses to button her wool peacoat against the chill, then reaches into the backseat for the tissue-wrapped bouquet.

  Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves and prepare for what lies ahead, she inhales the scent of roses along with the promise of snow that seems to hover in the air.

  November already, and Buffalo has yet to see its first snowfall.

  As Kathleen closes the door and walks along the gravel path, she wonders idly if her hometown’s legendary weather has changed that drastically since she left. She can remember taking her sled out in October and riding it well into April.

  Not that she cares one way or another when the first flakes fall. Contemplating global warming is a way to keep her mind from registering where she is—and why she’s here.

  The path between the gravestones has become a familiar route in the six months since she came home again—back to the western New York suburbs, back to this place. By now, she’s grown accustomed to the somber silence; she finds it more comforting than macabre.

  But today is different.

  Today is November second.

  Today is supposed to be about life, not death.

  Yet here, surrounded by countless epitaphs of lives lived long and well, of lives cut tragically short, it’s impossible for Kathleen to think of anything other than profound loss. She’s here not to commemorate the child she first held in her arms fourteen years ago today, but to grieve the life that was over far too soon.

  She leaves the gravel path, the heels of her boots sinking into the marshy grass. She slows her pace as she approaches the red maple tree, its branches left nearly bare after yesterday’s stormy weather. The bouquet begins to tremble in her wind-chapped fingers. Tears spill from her eyes, stinging her cheeks in the cold air.

  Mollie Gallagher.

  Loving Wife, Devoted Mother . . .

  Kathleen brushes her coat sleeve across her damp face and the rough wool feels like an emery board against her raw skin and red, sleep-deprived eyes.

  Protective Grandmother.

  A shuddering sigh escapes her, a sigh that becomes a bitter sob. It’s unfair. So unfair.

  Life is unfair, Matt’s voice calmly reminds her, and she hates him for it with a blaze of irrational fury.

  Hates him because he’s wrong. Life isn’t unfair to everyone. Not the way it’s been unfair to Kathleen Gallagher Carmody.

  She glares at the cross etched into her mother’s stone monument. All those years of doing everything right . . . of going to church, and saying her prayers, and giving up chocolate for Lent, and putting half her allowance into the poor box at St. Brigids.

  Why is God punishing me like this, Father Joseph? Why?

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Katie. Stop blaming God and start accepting what is. Start asking him for guidance.

  Start accepting what is. Start accepting that she had a hand in her own fate.

  Huddled in misery, she shifts her gaze away from the cross—and spies another set of footprints sinking into the muddy patches that dot the leaf-littered grass nearby.

  They aren’t her own prints from yesterday; a quick perusal confirms that these are larger, wider, deeper.

  Clearly, they belong to a man.

  Somebody just passing through?

  No.

  Tracing the footprints’ path with her eyes, Kathleen sees that they lead directly to Mollie Gallagher’s gravestone and then back again in the opposite direction.

  Who, besides Kathleen or her father, would have reason to visit her mother’s grave after all these years? Mom’s family is in Chicago; Dad lost contact with all of her local friends after she died.

  Contemplating the question, Kathleen feels oddly unsettled—until she realizes that it was probably just the groundskeeper. Maybe a tree limb came down in this spot, and he removed it.

  The explanation is a logical one; her curiosity is momentarily assuaged.

  Then, as she removes the tissue wrapping from the bouquet, her gaze falls on yesterday’s floral offering. The bundle of roses she left on the stone yesterday have blown to the ground beside her mother’s headstone, most of the stems having come loose from the bunch. The blossoms have faded to a deep maroon . . . all but one, its petals still lush and scarlet as a drop of fresh blood.

  Frowning, Kathleen bends to examine it, her heart quickening its pace.

  How could one rose retain its freshness and the others lose theirs? Is it the rose she symbolically separated from the bouquet?

  No natural phenomenon Kathleen considers can possibly be responsible for that—and she refuses to entertain a supernatural one.

  Still, her thoughts drift back to the middle of the night—to her fleeting thoughts of ghosts and hauntings. She doesn’t believe in that stuff. Really, she doesn’t. It’s just a little eerie that one rose is still red, that’s all. Just one.

  Gazing down at the flowers, she doesn’t even comprehend that she’s counting the stems until she reaches a dozen—and is struck by something odd.

  There’s still one more.

  She must have counted wrong. Quickly, she goes through them again, this time reaching to touch each flower.

  Thirteen.

  There are thirteen red roses on her mother’s grave.

  Yesterday, there were only twelve. The florist’s shop, unlike the bakery, does not give out baker’s dozens.

  Again, Kathleen looks at the muddy footsteps.

  Somebody else was here.

  Somebody else left a rose by Mother’s grave.

  Somebody knows.

  The words are swept into her brain on a wave of sheer panic that leaves her desperate in its wake, desperate to believe that this has nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with her secret. Nothing at all.

  Remembering yesterday’s overwhelming sensation of being watched in church, she swivels her head from side to side now, her eyes darting warily around the cemetery.

  The place is deserted, just as she expected. She doesn’t feel that frightening awareness here; she hopes she’ll never feel it again.

  Maybe she was just being paranoid yesterday in church. Paranoid, too, about the cries in the night, about the phone calls, about the roses. Perhaps some of it is her imagination playing tricks on her, and the rest is her guilty conscience making itself heard after all these years.

  Leave me alone, she begs the part of herself that refuses to forget—or forgive.

  It was long ago, so long ago. I was somebody else then. Look at what I have now. Look how far I’ve come. What happened then can stay in the past. Nobody ever has to know.

  She glances again at the single blood-red rose and closes her eyes, praying that nobody does.

  Today, the doors at 9 Sarah Crescent are locked.

  How amusing, really. A little too late to start exercising caution, isn’t it? Rather like locking the barn door after the horse, or however that old saying of Mother’s used to go.

  Funny, too, how people go to the trouble of installing fancy deadbolts in their doors, then leave the keys right in the locks. Only on the inside, of course. As if that makes much difference. You’d think they’d realize how simple it would be for anyone inside the house to slip a key out of a lock, run it right down to Home Depot for a duplicate,
and be back ten minutes later, before anybody even realized the key was missing.

  The house is deserted, of course. That was to be expected with both the car and SUV missing from the driveway. The Carmodys never park in their brand-new two-car garage, but they will. When Buffalo snow starts falling in another few weeks, they definitely will.

  Where is Kathleen off to? Last minute shopping, perhaps. Birthday presents for her oldest child?

  So Jen is fourteen today. Isn’t that amazing? Fourteen already. Seems like only yesterday that she was born.

  The stairway creaks a bit on the ascent. You’d think stairs wouldn’t creak in a fancy new house like this.

  They probably wouldn’t creak if you slowed down. But after this morning’s unexpected complication, there’s little time to waste.

  “Here’s your money. I’ve changed my mind.”

  So said pathetic Robby the would-be hero as he handed over the coffee can.

  He was sweating despite the chilly wind. Sweating, as though he knew he was in over his head.

  “Fine. You can’t do it. No problem.”

  The look of relief on the kid’s gullible face was priceless.

  He actually turned his back.

  He actually thought he was going to walk away.

  He took three steps, maybe four, before he heard the gun click and froze in his tracks.

  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

  Another old saying of Mother’s. She had so many of them.

  Bet you never expected me to put your advice to such good use, did you, Mother? Ha!

  In the linen closet beside the master bedroom door, way in back on the top shelf behind a stack of neatly folded beach towels, is the tiny tape recorder.

  It’s tempting, so tempting, to press rewind, just to hear the baby’s pathetic cries and imagine how that must have sounded in the middle of the night.

  Did the whole family hear it?

  Or just Kathleen?

  It would be fun to leave it here, and set the timer for it to go off again tonight. Fun, but risky. This time, they might be lying awake, waiting for it. They might trace the sound to the closet, find the tape recorder, and . . .

  And what? They’ll never figure out where it came from even if they do find it.

  No, but it’s far more delicious, for now, to let them fret about the disembodied cries in the night.

  That decided, it’s on to the next order of business.

  Only one other door along the hallway is closed. Closed, but not locked, because there are no locks on the bedroom doors in this house. Who needs locks in a perfect family like the Carmodys? They have no secrets from each other.

  Do you, Kathleen? Do you have secrets?

  Oh, dear. The daughter’s bedroom isn’t very neat, now, is it? She probably expects somebody to come along and pick up after her. She’s spoiled. Daddy’s little princess is spoiled rotten.

  You have secrets, too, don’t you, sweetie? Secrets from your parents, secrets from your friends.

  Ah, Jen Carmody. You’re just a regular teenaged girl, aren’t you?

  Fourteen.

  Welcome to the last birthday you’ll ever have. And I’ve got the perfect little gift for you . . .

  Is the back door locked?

  That’s unusual. Maybe it’s just stuck because the weather is damp. That used to happen sometimes back in Indiana.

  Jen attempts to turn the knob again, even as she tells herself that this house is brand-new construction, not a quirky Victorian rattletrap. Doors don’t stick here, not in any kind of weather.

  Which means that it’s definitely locked.

  But Mom’s SUV is sitting in the driveway, and she never locks the door when she’s home in the afternoon. Sometimes, she doesn’t even lock the house when she isn’t home. In this neighborhood, nobody really does, not in broad daylight.

  Well, today, for whatever reason, the back door is locked.

  So, Jen realizes when she walks around the house, is the front door.

  Uncertain why she feels so annoyed, she knocks—rather, bangs on the door, her palm flat. She bangs so hard that the cluster of Indian corn topples from the wreath hook and falls to the ground at Jen’s feet.

  Ignoring it, she spots the curtain fluttering in the window.

  “Mom, it’s me!” she calls, exasperated.

  The door opens and her mother appears, looking frazzled. She’s wearing frayed, outdated jeans, her hair is pulled back into a haphazard ponytail, and there’s a smudge of flour on her cheek.

  Jen mentally compares her to Erin’s mother and hopes to God that Mom didn’t leave the house looking like this. She wants to ask, but thinks better of it. No need to start a whole big thing right now. She’s just not in the mood.

  “How was your day?” Mom asks, stepping back to let her in.

  “Why did you lock me out?” is Jen’s peevish reply. She can’t help it.

  “I didn’t lock you out. I locked the door.”

  “Same difference,” Jen mutters, pushing past her.

  “Watch the attitude,” her mother replies tartly, already on her way back to the kitchen, where a buzzer is going off on the stove.

  The house is warm, the air scented with sugar and cinnamon.

  She’s baking my birthday cake, Jen realizes with an unexpected pang.

  Every year, her mother makes her a pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting for her birthday. She has a special recipe that doesn’t use eggs.

  Jen was convinced that the cake would be store bought this year, purchased from the local health food grocery that caters to customers with allergies like Jen’s. Mom frequently buys egg-free cookies and treats for her from the in-store bakery.

  But for whatever reason, she’s baking the cake this year, same as always. A wave of nostalgic longing sweeps over Jen as she deposits her heavy backpack on the bench by the door.

  In the past, she would have gone right to the kitchen, sniffing around for a batter bowl or beater to lick. She and Mom would have laughed together as Jen tried to talk her into giving her one of her presents before evening, when birthday gifts are traditionally opened in their family. Mom has almost always relented and given her one, just a small one, ahead of time.

  That won’t be happening this year, Jen concludes as she pushes back the unwanted wistfulness and the guilt that goes with it. This year, everything is different.

  She tosses her down jacket over the hall tree and heads for the stairs.

  Her mother’s voice stops her in her tracks. “Jen, did you call Mrs. Gattinski and tell her you can’t babysit tomorrow because of detention?”

  “How could I call her? It’s not like I have a cell phone,” she grumbles, unable to resist the dig. Until everything blew up in her face, she had been hoping her parents might relent and get her one for her birthday. Now she’s certain there’s no chance of it—especially when she hears her mother’s icy tone.

  “There’s a phone right here, so you’d better hurry up and do it. She’s going to be in a bind.”

  Jen walks slowly into the kitchen, where her mother wordlessly holds out the cordless phone.

  Sure enough, several round cake pans sit steaming on the counter beside the stove.

  Jen’s mouth waters. She skipped breakfast and tossed her school lunch into the garbage uneaten.

  But with Mom in the kitchen, she isn’t about to start hunting down a snack. All Jen really wants to do right now is get the dreaded phone call over with, then escape to her room and wallow in misery.

  Riding the late bus home was one of the most humiliating experiences of her life. Especially since she’s taken it so many times in the past, having stayed after school for club meetings, for soccer practice.

  Never for detention.

  Riders of the late bus are a fairly balanced mix of wholesome extracurricular types and troublemakers. Normally, Jen would sit up front with the nice crowd. She’s one of them, after all.

  Not anymor
e, you’re not.

  Mr. Krander, the teacher in charge of detention, always waits to release the students until just before the bus is ready to leave—probably so nobody has time to land in more trouble between their lockers and departure.

  The front of the bus was already full by the time Jen climbed onboard. She was acutely aware of the stares as she passed one occupied row after another. Fighting back tears, she wound up taking a seat halfway down the aisle. Alone. She couldn’t quite bring herself to walk all the way to the back of the bus to mingle with her fellow detainees. She isn’t one of them, either.

  Really, she’s not.

  “Don’t you know the phone number?” her mother asks, intruding on her thoughts. “Do you want the phone book?”

  “I know it.” Jen turns her back on her mother as she dials. When it begins to ring, she walks into the dining room, out of earshot.

  Three rings . . . four . . .

  Convinced—and relieved—that she’s about to get the answering machine, Jen is dismayed when there’s a click and a raspy-sounding “Hello?”

  “Um, is Mrs. Gattinksi there?” she asks the unfamiliar voice.

  “Speaking.”

  “Mrs. Gattinski? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Jen, is that you? I’ve just been sick. One of those flu bugs.”

  Jen senses her mother standing in the doorway behind her, and turns to find her eavesdropping. She scowls, faces the wall, cradles the phone into her mouth as she says, “I’m sorry this is such short notice, but I, um . . . I can’t babysit tomorrow. I have to stay after school for . . . for something.”

  Conscious of her mother listening, Jen wonders if she’s expected to admit the reason. Well, she won’t. She’s not about to confess to Mrs. Gattinski that she got into trouble at school. That’s none of anybody’s business.

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and then Mrs. Gattinski says, “That’s all right, Jen. I wouldn’t want you to catch what I have, anyway. I’ll probably still be home recuperating. But I was going to call and see if you were available Friday night starting at seven? I have to chaperone a dance at school and Mr. Gattinski has a banquet to go to.”

  “Oh. Um . . .”