Kiss Her Goodbye (32 page)

Lucy never knew how he discovered their affair. Perhaps in her carelessness she failed to cover her tracks; perhaps somebody saw her with John and told her husband.

When Henry found out, he beat her so badly that she couldn't show her face in public for weeks. He made it impossible for her to leave the house, and when her bruises healed, he forbade her to go anywhere without him. Even to church.

The one time she dared to sneak out to see John, she had every intention of bidding him a platonic farewell.

Platonic. Hah.

That was the night they conceived the baby and set in motion the tragic chain of events that led to this moment.

“Maybe we should go to the police now,” she suggests to John, uneasiness settling over her when he shakes his head vehemently.

“It's too late now. They think the case is closed. If we go to them, they'll reopen it. They'll think one of us had something to do with what happened.”

She nods, having already arrived at the same conclusion herself. The whole thing will blow up in their faces. The media will have a field day. And Henry—well, Henry will show her no mercy. Not if he's innocent . . .

And not if he isn't.

Lucy's voice is plaintive as she asks John, “What are we going to do? Whoever tried to kill Margaret might go after her again. And we don't even know why. Who would want her dead?”

John averts his gaze.

Who, indeed?

John's wife.

Lucy's husband.

Henry wasn't there for the birth; he was working when she went into labor and she didn't call him. By the time he got to the hospital, the baby was swaddled in a clear glass isolette beside Lucy's bed.

She cowered when Henry bent over the sleeping infant, certain he would realize the instant he saw her that she didn't belong to him.

Henry went crazy, leaping on his wife like a rabid animal. A frantic nurse and several orderlies had to haul him off Lucy. When they did, her nose was broken, her ribs were fractured, and Henry was arrested.

She called John and asked him to come to the hospital the next morning.

He did. And he left with their daughter cradled in his arms, wrapped in the pink blanket and bootees Lucy had lovingly knit for her during all those months of waiting.

 

 

The sled—Erin's little wooden sled—wasn't in the garage, and it wasn't in the shed out back, either.

Maeve trudges back through the house through the mounting drifts of snow. She can hear Sissy clattering around in the kitchen and decides to move her search to the basement.

Heedless of the cobwebs in her snow-dampened hair and the mouse droppings beneath her feet, she pokes through distant corners piled high with junk.

Some is Gregory's: outdated patient files and dental school texts, forgotten sports equipment, the fancy wooden croquet set he coveted and then, when Maeve bought it for him as a Father's Day gift the year Erin was born, never used.

Maeve's castoffs are gathering dust and spider eggs down here, too: the never-unpacked sewing machine her misguided mother-in-law gave her as a wedding shower gift, the punch bowl set with twenty-four crystal cups she gave her one Christmas, the set of golf clubs Maeve bought thinking she could spend more time with Gregory if she learned how to play.

She rummages past her belongings and Gregory's, idly thinking she should toss all of it into the garbage or see if Sissy wants anything.

But that can wait. She has other business to attend to right now.

Erin's old Barbie dolls, clothes, and accessories fill two large plastic tubs. Maeve pushes them aside without opening them. She does the same with several cartons of Erin's school artwork, swallowing over a lump in her throat as she remembers how proudly Erin would place her own manilla paper scribbles beneath the refrigerator magnets when she came home from kindergarten each day.

Maeve saved the best of them, but tossed quite a few. What she wouldn't give to have them back, all of her baby's precious crayon drawings. How could she have thrown them away so blindly? Did she think Erin was immortal?

“Damn it,” she whispers, wiping at the tears that are beginning to trickle.

There's no sign of the sled.

She turns away from her daughter's belongings, unprepared to keep searching. She's had enough for today.

But she can't go upstairs yet.

She can hear the distant rumbling hum of Sissy's vacuum in the kitchen on the floor above. If only she would just hurry up and finish and get out.

Maeve isn't leaving the basement until she has her house to herself again. The last thing she wants is the cleaning lady's sympathy, or worse yet, her prayers.

Prayers are a reminder of the man who killed Erin; of the God who let her die.

Maeve wipes her streaming eyes and nose on the sleeve of her black cashmere cardigan and is instantly reminded of the black cashmere pullover she bought for Jen Carmody just a few weeks ago. She remembers the tension at the dining room table that night. Tension between Kathleen and her father, between Kathleen and Matt, between their daughter and hers.

Erin's words. She and Jen had had a falling out, but Erin refused to tell Maeve why.

Now she'll never know what came between the girls—unless Jen chooses to tell Kathleen. Highly unlikely.

Nor will Maeve ever know what Erin was doing at the Gattinskis that night with Jen.

You weren't supposed to be there,
Maeve tells her daughter in silent despair. It's become a familiar refrain.
You lied to me. Why did you always have to lie to me?

Yet would it have made any difference if she had known where Erin was going that night when she left? Would Maeve have foreseen danger in a night spent babysitting a few blocks from home?

Of course not.

Reaching into the pocket of her sweater for her cigarettes and lighter, Maeve searches for a place to sit down. She settles for an old webbed lawn chair, reaching up to remove it from the nails in the rafters where it's been hanging for years.

As she pulls it down something crawls across her hand.

Crying out, she drops the cigarettes, lighter, and chair, also knocking over an old straw broom that was propped against the wall.

The vacuum cleaner is abruptly silenced above, and Sissy's footsteps approach the basement door. “Mrs. Hudson? Are you all right down there?”

“I'm fine.” Shuddering, she watches an oversized centipede disappear beneath the chair on the floor.

“I thought I heard you scream.”

“I'm fine,” she calls, irritated. “Just finish cleaning, please, Sissy.”

After a moment, the vacuum starts up again.

Maeve warily retrieves her cigarettes and lighter from the concrete floor, leaving the chair and broom where they fell. Settling onto the bottom step, she lights up and inhales a soothing stream of menthol.

There.

Better.

She takes another drag and finds herself facing a stack of high school yearbooks on a nearby shelf. So that's where they went. She hasn't seen them in ages.

For a long time, she stares at books, fighting the urge to reach for one.

At last, temptation gets the best of her.

Doesn't it always?
she thinks grimly, lit cigarette clenched between her lips as she opens the yearbook from her senior year at Saint Brigid's.

She flips past the pages filled with various versions of oversized and backhanded high school girl handwriting punctuated with smiley faces, balloon letters, coded initials whose meanings Maeve has long since forgotten, signatures she'd be hard pressed to match with faces after all these years.

She gazes at her senior portrait, marveling at how much her own daughter was beginning to resemble her, sobbing out loud when she remembers that Erin will never sit for a senior portrait of her own.

She stubs out the cigarette on the basement floor and turns the pages slowly backward until she reaches Kathleen's face, frozen in time.

Well, she looks nothing like
her
daughter, Maeve notes with a bizarre twinge of satisfaction. Jen must resemble her deadbeat father. What was his name?

Quent.

Or Quinn.

Quinn something.

Maeve shakes her head, wondering how Kathleen could find herself in so much trouble and still miraculously land on her feet. To think that she was once destitute, out on the streets, carrying a druggie musician's baby.

To think that now she has it all.

Resentment stirs within Maeve.

Kathleen still has her daughter. God chose to save
her
daughter. Not Maeve's daughter.

Kathleen still has her husband.

Her loyal, loving husband.

Or is he?

Was it Maeve's imagination, or did she catch Matt staring at her the night of Jen's birthday dinner?

She remembers thinking at the time that she might have seen him stealing a glimpse, remembers wondering if his good night kiss on the cheek was more flirtatious than perfunctory.

She also remembers trying—and failing—to catch his eye afterward, then reasoning with herself that no man in his right mind would blatantly do so with his wife hovering at his elbow.

As she and Erin drove home silently that night in the darkened car, Maeve vowed to try and catch Matt alone, just to see if . . .

Well, if there was anything to her intuition. To see if Kathleen's perfect husband was as human as anybody else when it came to temptation. As human as Maeve was.

She remembers vowing to find out the answer.

Then her daughter was murdered, and life as Maeve knew it disappeared into haze of hot tears and insomnia, whiskey and cigarette smoke.

Now she's alone.

Kathleen isn't alone.

Now she has nothing.

Kathleen . . .

Kathleen has everything.

And slowly, Maeve's resentment boils over into rage.

Footsteps sound at the top of the stairs.

“Mrs. Hudson? Are you still down there?”

For a moment, she's tempted not to answer. Can't the dumb girl just leave her alone?

Then the footsteps start down the stairs, and Maeve sighs. “What do you want, Sissy?”

The girl pauses, her white sneakered feet all that is visible of her body on the top of the cellar steps. “I'm leaving now. Do you want me to lock the doors when I go?”

“Why would you? I'm here.”

“I know, but I thought maybe you'd want the doors locked.”

“Why?”

There's a pause. “I don't know.”

“You're thinking the neighborhood might not be safe anymore, aren't you, Sissy?”

Maeve watches the girl's feet twitch anxiously, one sneaker crossing briefly over the other and then back again. “I don't . . . that's not why I—”

“You're thinking that if somebody could slaughter my daughter in cold blood, somebody could walk through my front door and do the same thing to me. Aren't you, Sissy?”

“No, Mrs. Hudson, I didn't mean—”

“Trust me, that might be the best thing for everyone.”

No reply.

Sissy shifts her weight.

“Get out of here, Sissy,” Maeve says wearily. “Just go. And don't lock the doors on your way out. I'll take my chances.”

“Are you sure you don't need anything else?”

What could she possibly need that Sissy could possibly provide?

Feeling utterly helpless, overwhelmed by pain, Maeve closes her eyes.

Ha. The kind of help she needs is beyond reach.

Matt Carmody's words echo in her head.

Then again . . .

Maybe there is something she needs. Something Sissy can't provide . . .

Something Matt Carmody can.

Maeve glances at her watch. He'd be at work right now. And she has the number. Kathleen proudly gave her one of his business cards back when they first moved here. Maeve slipped it into her wallet and never took it out.

“Mrs. Hudson?”

She glances up impatiently to see that Sissy is still hovering on the stairway above, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“What?” Maeve asks sharply. “I thought I told you to go.”

“You did . . . It's just, umm . . .”

Oh. Her pay.

Her thoughts focused on the phone call she's about to make to Matt Carmody, Maeve sighs and heads for the stairs.

 

 

Jen punches her pillow in frustration, then winces at the pain that shoots down the splintered bones in her fragile arm.

It shouldn't. She'll probably be better off if she never has to relive what happened that night.

After all, it's over.

The man who tried to kill her is dead.

You'd think something like that—taking another person's life—would be etched in her mind as permanently as Jen's name is etched in the metal plates on the trophies that line the shelf overhead.

The trophies.

She stares at the shelf as though she's seeing it for the first time.

With tremendous effort, she hoists herself upright and reaches for the nearest one. It's heavier than she anticipates—almost too heavy for her to lift now, even with her good arm.

She stares at the gleaming figure of a girl kicking a soccer ball, stares at her name improbably engraved on the brass plate.
Jen Carmody.