Kiss Her Goodbye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Kathleen,” Matt’s urgent voice rises above the roar of panic sweeping through her, “what are you talking about? It’s Maeve. Not Jen.”

  “What?”

  “Maeve’s dead.”

  “But . . .” Foot on the brake, heart still accelerating, Kathleen instinctively steers into the right lane.

  Bewildered, she tries to focus on what Matt is telling her, all the while thanking God that it wasn’t Jen; then blaming God for stealing her friend.

  “She killed herself.”

  Oh, Maeve. No.

  “Gregory found her this morning. The police came to question me because—because . . . Kathleen, you have to believe me. I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Matt . . . what are you talking about?”

  “Maeve . . . she called me. At work. Yesterday. They must have hit redial on her phone.”

  “Who?”

  “The police, the detectives, whoever—they found out she called me, and they came down here to talk to me.”

  “Matt, you’re not making any sense. Maeve called you at work? What did she—”

  “Kathleen, I swear, nothing happened between us.”

  “What?”

  Yesterday. Matt was late getting home. He was acting so cagey, so distant this morning . . .

  “Kathleen, she killed herself. Or maybe she didn’t. All I know is that I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t there. I told her I couldn’t—”

  “Were you having an affair with Maeve?”

  “No! Christ, Kathleen, aren’t you listening to a word I’m saying? Do you actually think that I would—”

  “I don’t know what you would do, Matt, and right now I don’t care. Jen is in trouble.”

  “In trouble? What happened?”

  “I can’t explain. Just get home, Matt. Get over there now. Please, Matt. Hurry.”

  “I can’t go anywhere, Kathleen.”

  “Why not?”

  “The police—”

  She doesn’t stay on the line long enough to listen to what he has to say. Disconnecting the call, she throws the phone, shaking in fury, in terror.

  Maeve is dead . . . and the police are questioning Matt?

  Do they think her husband is capable of murder?

  Do you?

  Chilled to the bone, Kathleen presses the gas pedal once again, speeding toward home.

  The winding streets of Orchard Hollow are quietly deserted at this hour on a wintery weekday. Most parents are at work; most children are in school; most stay-at-home mothers are cozily inside their large houses watching over napping babies and toddlers.

  Pulling up in front of 9 Sarah Crescent, Lucy spots a familiar car parked in the driveway.

  John’s car.

  “Oh, God, no,” she whispers, throwing the gear into Park and jumping out of her own car.

  She breaks into a frantic run, halfway to the front door when she realizes that the car in the driveway isn’t empty.

  John is there, behind the steering wheel, looking as stunned to see her as she is to see him.

  He rolls down the window and leans out.

  “What are you doing here?”

  They say it in unison.

  John begins to speak, but Lucy won’t let him.

  Seething with barely controlled rage, she blurts, “It was you. You tried to kill Margaret.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Don’t lie. No more lies, John.”

  “Lucy, what are you—”

  “You were the one who wanted her dead, John. You were the one who killed Father Joseph because he tried to protect her. And now . . . what? You’re sitting here spying on her house?”

  “No! Not spying. I—I just got here. I was about to get out of the car when you pulled up.”

  “Well, why are you here? To finish the job? I swear to God, John, you’ll have to do it over my dead body.”

  “No, Lucy.” His voice is ragged; his face is etched in despair. “I would never hurt you, and I’d never hurt her. She’s my daughter. She’s my baby girl. I’d do anything to protect her . . . you know that.”

  His fervent tone sends a chill down her spine. She wants to believe him. She so wants to believe him. But she can’t ignore the lies.

  “You promised me that fourteen years ago, when you took her from the hospital that day. You promised you’d keep her safe. And then . . . what? What the hell happened, John?”

  He remains silent.

  “Deirdre told me she was dead. You knew she wasn’t, didn’t you? You knew, and you let me believe it for all those years.”

  “I thought it was the best thing, Lucy, for all of us. You couldn’t keep her. Not with Henry. And I couldn’t keep her, either. Not with—”

  He breaks off; Lucy finishes the sentence for him.

  “Deirdre.”

  He remains silent.

  “You told me Deirdre wanted to raise her. You told me she accepted her.”

  “She did! She did accept her, Lucy.”

  “Then why did you put her in foster care?”

  John takes a deep breath. “I didn’t put her in foster care. Do you know what happens to kids in that system, Lucy?”

  She doesn’t.

  But she knows that he does. She’ll never forget the horror stories he told her about his own childhood—stories that made her cry for the frightened, abused little boy he’d once been.

  “I couldn’t do that to her,” he tells Lucy. “So I—I brought her to the church.”

  “To the church?” she echoes in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

  “I left her on the steps at Saint Brigid’s with a note. I figured God would watch over her, and Father Joseph would see that somebody—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was afraid to. I was afraid you’d insist on keeping her, and I was afraid of what Henry might do to her. To both of you. And I couldn’t keep her either. She wasn’t—she wasn’t safe with me.”

  “Why? She was your daughter, John. You just said you would do anything to protect her.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I’m trying.” She looks into his eyes, frightened of what she sees there. “Did Deirdre try to hurt her, John? Did Deirdre try to hurt our baby?”

  “No.” His voice is a strangled whisper.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No. Not Deirdre.”

  “Then who? You?” She holds her breath, anticipating the answer, trying and failing to see the man before her as capable of hurting anyone, much less a helpless child.

  “No, Lucy. Not me.”

  She’s so relieved to hear his answer—and to realize that she believes it—that she almost misses the rest of it.

  But she doesn’t miss it. And the single, whispered word—just a name—sends a fresh storm of foreboding roaring through her.

  “Susie.”

  “Who are you?” Jen asks incredulously, staring into the crazed eyes that seem oddly, hauntingly familiar.

  “You know who I am. I’m Sissy.”

  Jen shakes her head. That’s not why she’s familiar, this insane woman whose face is mere inches from Jen’s. It’s something else. Something . . .

  “Don’t you remember me, Margaret?”

  Margaret? Who’s Margaret? And why—

  “I’m your big sister.”

  What?

  Jen shakes her head, whispers, “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Sure you do. You mean you don’t remember?”

  “Sissy—”

  “Sissy. Isn’t that perfect? That’s what he started calling me after he brought you home.”

  “Who?”

  “Daddy. Who else?”

  Daddy. The word lands hard in her gut, bringing with it a fierce longing.

  I want my Daddy. Please, Daddy. Please come and save me. Please. She’s insane, and she’s going to hurt me.

  Shaking beneath the blankets, envisioning Matt Carmody bursting into the house at any mo
ment, Jen resolves to keep the lunatic talking.

  Ask questions. Hurry. Before she does something crazy.

  Jen settles on the first thing that pops into her mind.

  “Is his name Quint?”

  “Whose name?”

  “Your—our—father’s name,” she forces herself to say.

  “Quint? No. Not Quint. It’s John. And I’m Susie. Susie-Q—that’s what he always called me. Until he showed up with you.”

  She’s deluded. She has Jen mixed up with someone else. Margaret, whoever that is.

  “When you came along, he started calling me Sissy, when he bothered to talk to me at all. He said that was what you would call me, when you were old enough. Sissy. He was so wrapped up in his wittle tiny new baby girl,” she says in a mimicking singsong tone, her face a grotesque caricature.

  Oh, God. Keep her talking. Ask questions. Go along with it.

  “How did you happen to come work for my mom?”

  “Oh, that’s the best part,” Sissy says, obviously quite pleased with herself. “I stuck a flyer in the Hudsons’ mailbox advertising my services.”

  The fliers. Jen recalls the September night she ran into Sissy on Sarah Crescent with a handful of them.

  She gave me one, she remembers incredulously. Even back then, she was trying to work her way in. Still . . .

  “Maeve just happened to hire you?” Jen asks in disbelief.

  “Oh, it was a real coincidence. Her cleaning lady, Marta, just happened to have broken her leg the same day. It was a hit-and-run accident.”

  Her wild laughter is inhuman. Jen realizes with a chill that Marta’s accident was no accident.

  “I put my fliers in the Gattinskis’ mailbox, too, after I knew you were babysitting there,” Sissy is saying. “And Stella hired me, too, just like a charm. I planted the seed in Maeve’s head about needing more work and the next thing I knew, your mother decided to get a cleaning lady.”

  Jen feels sick, thinking about her mother unwittingly inviting a killer into their home.

  “You know what’s amazing?” Sissy asks. “None of you—not even your mother—ever looked closely enough at me to realize that I look like you. It’s not as though there isn’t a resemblance, if you really look. Just . . . nobody ever really looked at me.”

  She trails off.

  Jen stares at her, feeling as though she’s looking at a twisted caricature of her own face.

  Sissy looks up suddenly and catches her. Her eyes narrow maliciously.

  “How old were you when . . . when I was born?” Jen asks quickly.

  Sissy laughs bitterly. “About your age. Isn’t that ironic, Margaret? I was fourteen when you showed up to ruin my life. And now you’re fourteen, and here I am to do the same for you.”

  “I didn’t mean to ruin your life, Sissy.”

  “Don’t call me that! It isn’t my name!”

  And Margaret isn’t mine, Jen wants to hurl back at her. Yet, wincing at Sissy’s harsh tone, she understands that she has to control her fury along with her fear.

  She murmurs only, “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be. If it weren’t for you, everything would have been fine.”

  “It will be fine, I promise. I won’t—”

  “You’re right, it will be. Because you’re not going to get another chance to steal him away from me.”

  “I don’t want to steal him,” Jen protests, struggling to keep from crying. “I don’t even know him. Really. I don’t want to know him. I have my own father.”

  And she does.

  In that instant, she comprehends that Matt Carmody is her father in every way that counts. And if she can just hang on long enough, he’ll be here to get her out of this.

  Sissy is shaking her head, sneering. “Do you really think I believe you? Why would you stay here with him when you can be with your real parents?”

  “I would never leave my mother,” Jen protests feebly, her mind spinning. “Not even to be with my real father.” She almost chokes on the phrase. Who’s lying about her father’s identity? Her mother? Or Susie?

  Is he Quint or John?

  Is he dead or alive?

  “She isn’t your mother.”

  Jen stares at Sissy. Now what is she talking about?

  “So you really didn’t know.” Sissy’s expression is gleeful.

  “Know what?”

  “Kathleen isn’t your mother.”

  Stay calm, Jen. Don’t listen to her. She’s insane. You know she’s insane.

  And yet . . .

  Something has clicked into place. Something Jen realizes she might have already sensed, deep down.

  Sissy is saying, “She’s not your mother any more than he’s your father. But I’m definitely your big sister. Do you believe me, Margaret?”

  “Yes,” Jen croaks, still not sure what she believes.

  “No, you don’t. But I’ve got proof. You know how you can tell?”

  Jen shakes her head mutely.

  Sissy spits on her fingers and wipes her hand across her left eyebrow. She holds up her hand and Jen sees that her fingertips are smudged with black.

  “Mascara,” she explains.

  Confused, Jen shifts her gaze from Sissy’s hand to her face.

  Then she sees it.

  As Kathleen races toward home, she goes over and over the phone call. Not the call with Matt. The first call. Right now, every ounce of her being has to remain focused on Jen. Otherwise, she’ll lose her mind. She really will.

  So. . .

  Helen.

  The accent.

  The voice that seemed so familiar . . .

  Why?

  She just assumed she’d heard it before while she was visiting her father at Erasmus, but obviously that isn’t it.

  So where did she hear it?

  She hasn’t been to the south in years; she hasn’t run across anyone with a southern accent here in ages.

  The only thing that makes sense to her is that the accent might have been fake. Perhaps it was the caller’s attempt to disguise a voice Kathleen might otherwise recognize.

  “Mrs. Carmody, we need you to come right down here.”

  Whoever called her with that false message had access to the intimate details of Kathleen’s life. They knew about her father. Knew his name, knew where he was. Knew, too, that it would take a life-or-death situation to drag her away from her daughter’s side after all that had happened.

  “Maeve Hudson was surprised, too,” Sissy tells Jen conversationally, gesturing at the pale hairs that are barely visible now that the makeup is wiped away. “I got careless yesterday when I used a towel to dry my hair and get the snow off my face. That’s what happens when you get careless, you know, Margaret? You give yourself away.”

  Jen nods, gulping back fear.

  “At first she didn’t even notice. She was too busy rummaging around the house. And then do you know what she did?”

  Jen shakes her head.

  “She called Matt. She made me stand there in the kitchen waiting while she went to get her purse. She made me wait for my money while she called him. I bet you didn’t know she was in love with him, did you?”

  “No,” Jen whispers. “I didn’t know.”

  “So anyway, Maeve hung up the phone and she was crying. And she saw me standing there, and you know what happened then?”

  She pauses.

  Jen makes a futile attempt to find her voice.

  “I said, do you know what happened then?” Sissy snarls.

  “No,” is all Jen can manage, a single high-pitched sound that is more a whimper than a word.

  “She saw that scar in my eyebrow. That’s what happened. And she got suspicious. She shouldn’t have started asking questions, Margaret. Bad things happen when you ask too many questions.”

  “What happened to Maeve?” Jen asks, a sick feeling taking hold in the pit of her stomach.

  Sissy laughs shrilly. “What do you think?”

  The bootee
.

  The thought strikes Kathleen out of the blue, and she clenches the steering wheel with all her might.

  Oh, God. She should have told Detective Brodowiaz about the bootee. And the phone calls. The baby crying . . .

  She’ll tell him as soon as she sees him. She’ll tell him the whole story.

  But then Jen will find out the truth. Jen will know that Kathleen isn’t her mother. That she stole her away . . .

  But somebody left her there. On the church steps. She was abandoned.

  I didn’t steal her. I found her. I found her, and I did what the note asked me to do.

  In her grief-stricken state that night, it was the only thing she was capable of doing. Hadn’t she just come from the cemetery, where she had buried her own dead child with her bare hands in the wet earth beside her mother’s grave?

  What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call the police when you found the baby dead?

  She’s asked herself that question a thousand times since that night, and the answer has never been clear.

  All she knows is that she was in no condition to make rational decisions.

  Blaming herself and her unhealthy early pregnancy for her baby’s inexplicable death, she pleaded with God—and with her mother—to give her another chance. To send her baby back to her.

  As the shock wore off and despair took over, she found her way to the church, knowing she had to confess to Father Joseph what she had done.

  Then she saw the pink bundle on the church steps.

  “What happened to Maeve? Hmmm.” Sissy grins at Margaret. “Here’s a clue. Like mother, like daughter. Have you ever heard that old saying?”

  The girl is silent, but the expression on her face speaks volumes. She’s scared out of her mind.

  Just like Maeve was right before she died. Erin, too.

  Yes. Like mother, like daughter.

  “You know,” Sissy comments conversationally, “that’s one thing my mother never said. She loved to spew old sayings at me. You name a cliché, and she said it. But not that one. She never said ‘like mother like daughter.’ At least, not about me and her. I was always Daddy’s girl, you know? You know?” she repeats vehemently when there’s no answer.

  Margaret’s head bobs a little, in either a shrug or a nod. Clearly, she’s all but paralyzed with fear. Sissy relishes the feeling of utter control, enjoying this whole experience even more than she anticipated.