Kiss Her Goodbye (37 page)

“I just want a chance to tell him how much I love him. Please . . .”

Does he know?

Does her father even know that she loves him?

The car in front of her moves.

Kathleen takes her foot off the brake.

She and her father never resolved what happened when she was pregnant, when he told her to get out. He simply showed up at her wedding, met her husband and daughter, and they moved on.

Rolling forward toward the toll booth, she nearly rear-ends the car in front of her. She jams on the brakes just in time, trembling.

She shouldn't be driving. She's a basket case.

It's all too much. All of it. Jen, Matt, Erin, and now her father . . .

It's too, too much.

What if her father is already dead?

“He'll never know,” she whispers, eyes fastened to the brake lights in front of her as she clenches the wheel with both hands. “He'll never know how sorry I am . . .”

Sorry?
a disdainful voice echoes in her head.
Sorry for what? Why are
you
sorry? He's the one who should be sorry. He turned his back on his only child when you needed him most.

“He is sorry.” Kathleen speaks aloud in the empty car, speaks with ragged conviction. “He just doesn't know how to say it.”

Still . . .

How could he have done it? How could he have told her to get out? How could he have sent her, alone and frightened and pregnant, out into the night?

She hated him for it then; she hated him even more for it once she was a parent herself. She would never turn her back on her own child.
Never.
She would never . . .

Even parents. Even parents who love their children so much that they would die for them.

Everybody makes mistakes.

She's crying now, fumbling for the button on the door to lower the window, fumbling in the ashtray for change to pay the toll.

She thrusts it into the toll taker's outstretched hand, barely noticing the young man's startled expression as he glimpses her tear-soaked face.

The ramp ahead is clear.

Kathleen presses down on the gas at last, roaring onto the thruway.

 

 

John's home, like the man himself, has taken on a faded, tired appearance after all these years.

This is a working-class neighborhood not far from where Saint Brigid's used to stand. The homes here are humble but generally well cared for. John's two-story frame house sits in the middle of a row of others just like it, all of them fronted by three or four concrete steps with wrought iron rails, and glassed-in porches.

But the shrubs in front of John's house are overgrown, the neglected flowerbeds filled with brown stalks nobody bothered to cut back after they bloomed months ago. The clapboards need a paint job. One second-story shutter hangs crookedly on a single hinge.The obviously leaking gutter beneath the eaves is rimmed by jagged, dripping icicles that ominously resemble drooling fangs.

Buoyed by unexpected courage from an inner well she had assumed was long dry, Lucy mounts the recently shoveled front steps, presses the bell, hears it ring somewhere inside.

A neighbor's dog instantly begins to bark.

Lucy waits, shivering in the cold, wondering what she'll say if Deirdre comes to the door.

Maybe I should have just gone to talk to the Carmodys alone,
she thinks, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other.

But that didn't seem right. In the long wait for Henry to leave for work, she concluded that she owes it to John to include him in the decision to confront Margaret's parents.

Her
real
parents.

The ones who are raising her, loving her, responsible for keeping her safe.

The dog is still barking in the adjacent yard, and nobody has answered the door.

Lucy presses the bell again.

The dog grows more frenzied, hurtling itself against the chain link fence next door.

She hears a door opening over there, hears a man's voice snap, “Shut up, Ribs!”

“I'm sorry,” Lucy calls across the fence to the dog's disgruntled-looking gray-haired owner.

The man shrugs. “I don't think they're home.”

“I guess not.”

Lucy turns away.

A thought occurs to her then, and she calls out to the man again just before he closes his door.

“John and Deirdre still live here, right?”

The man hesitates.

He lied, Lucy realizes. John lied when he told me he still lives here. Why did I trust him?

“John does,” the man tells her. “With his daughter.”

“What about his wife?”

The man shakes his head. “She's been dead for years.”

 

 

Heading toward the nursing home at breakneck speed, Kathleen alternates between praying and talking to herself. Or maybe it's the same thing.

“Oh, please. Please, I have to get there in time . . .”

In time for what?

In time to tell her father that she loves him.

That she's sorry.

That she forgives him.

That everybody makes mistakes.

Everybody deserves to be forgiven. Even Daddy.

Even me.

“Please forgive me. Please.” Kathleen chokes out the words, not sure whether she's talking to her father, or to God . . . or to herself.

Begging herself for forgiveness.

“I didn't know,” she whispers, swerving to avoid a slow-moving delivery van in the right lane. “I didn't know I was pregnant.”

If she had known, she would have stopped.

She did stop, the minute she realized.

From the moment she found out she was expecting a baby, she quit cold turkey. Quit drinking, quit smoking, quit drugs. She never even took an aspirin, never drank a cup of coffee, so conscious of the fragile fetus growing inside of her.

But it was too late.

Her baby girl was so tiny . . . but not too tiny, the nurses said. Not dangerously tiny. Despite Kathleen's nagging fears, little Genevieve was born seemingly healthy. She had ten fingers and ten toes, and a thatch of reddish-blond hair that reminded Kathleen of her mother.

See, Mom?
she used to say, looking heavenward as she proudly cradled her newborn daughter.
See? She looks just like you.

How she wished her mother could see her grandchild.

How she wished her father could.

She convinced herself that if he took one look at the baby, he would fall in love with her. He would take Kathleen in again, both her and the baby.

A few weeks after giving birth, Kathleen boarded a train back to Buffalo, the tiny pink bundle cradled on her lap.

“We're going home, Jen,” she whispered to her daughter every so often, kissing the downy fuzz on her head. “We're going home.”

She got there on All Saints Day and went right to the church to see Father Joseph. She showed him the child she'd named after his mother, and she saw the tears in his eyes as he made the sign of the cross on the baby's forehead.

He invited Kathleen to stay at the rectory that night, but she told him she had made other arrangements. He had already done too much for her. For both of them.

She brought her baby to a small motel not far from her father's house. She had worked part time near the home for unwed mothers and had saved enough money to get through a few days on her own. She was going to work up her courage to face Drew Gallagher.

“We're going home, Jen.”

But she wasn't ready.

Not yet.

“Soon,” she promised her baby girl as she nursed her to sleep. “Soon you'll meet your grandfather, and you know what he'll say? He'll say welcome home.”

Would he have said it?

Kathleen will never know.

She fell asleep that night to pleasant dreams, her baby's warm, soft body cradled in her arms.

She woke in the morning to a mother's worst nightmare, her baby's cold, stiff body cradled in her arms.

SIDs.

That's what it was. She knows that now. Back then, all that mattered was that she woke up and her little girl was dead.

What happened after that is a blur. Everything until the cemetery is a blur.

She remembers only the guilt—the terrible, crippling guilt.

All those months before she realized she was pregnant . . . all that liquor and drugs; she was barely eating, barely sleeping. Then the certainty that when the baby came there would be something horribly wrong with her . . .

She should have known better.

She should have known she would pay sooner or later. That no sin goes unpunished.

Yes, she should have known. But somehow, she didn't.

She should have learned from her mistakes. But somehow, she hadn't.

Twice in a lifetime, she managed to lull herself into a false sense of security.

Once, when tiny Genevieve was born apparently healthy.

And again, when Kathleen got her second chance at motherhood.

Well, she's finally learned her lesson.

Never again will Kathleen Carmody blindly believe in happy endings.

Mouth set grimly, foot sinking on the gas pedal, she plows full speed ahead toward whatever hell her future holds.

Mom has been gone almost half an hour, and there's still no sign of Daddy.

Jen restlessly flips the pages of a fashion magazine Rachel brought her in the hospital.

To her surprise, she's actually getting hungry. She had to force down the cereal her mother practically force fed her for breakfast and the toast her mother insisted she eat for lunch.

Now, for the first time in a month, she feels hunger pangs stirring in her gut.

That's a good sign,
she tells herself, gazing down at an impossibly skinny model wearing an impossibly short skirt.

Hunger is normal.

She can smell the beef stew her mother left in the Crock-Pot downstairs. Her mouth is actually watering.

Maybe when her father gets home she can ask him to bring her something to eat, she thinks, until she remembers that she shouldn't be asking
him
for anything.

Her feelings might have thawed toward Mom, but that's different. Different because . . .

Nothing has changed with Matt Carmody. He's still not her father.

But last night, he came to check on her. He came to check on her, and he opened the shades for her. He would have changed the lightbulb, too, if she had asked.

She refused to ask.

Still . . .

Maybe you're being too hard on him,
Jen thinks reluctantly. After all, he's tried to be a decent father to her. He even coached her soccer team.

Her gaze once again drifts to the trophies on the book shelf above her bed.

He wouldn't have coached girls' soccer if he didn't love her. Right?

Shaking her head, she turns the page of the magazine.

The U2 song on the radio ends. The DJ announces that it's one o'clock.

“Coming up in the next half hour, we continue our lunch box blocks with Phish and Blink 182, so stick around. Now Mercury Rev's latest release opens up the one o'clock hour.”

His voice gives way to opening guitar chords that slam into Jen like a wall of falling snow from the roof, bringing an icy chill that steals her breath away.

That song . . .

It was playing.

On MTV.

When she came downstairs.

The song was playing, and she went into the kitchen, and Erin had been peeling apples.

The apple corer was there.

No knife.

Jen clutches her head, her thoughts racing frantically.

And then . . .

Then somebody was there.

Somebody in a rubber Halloween mask.

And the priest . . .

“He tried to save me. Oh, my God. He tried to—”

She presses her hand against her mouth, her fingers colder than a tombstone.

It's all coming back to her.

They were wrong. All of them.

It wasn't the priest. He didn't kill Erin . . .

“And I didn't kill him.”

Jen squeezes her eyes shut, remembering the figure in the mask looming over her . . . even as another sound reaches her ears.

The faintest of sounds, nearly drowned out by the music on the radio, but there, as real as her sudden memory of that night: a floorboard creaking somewhere below.

 

 

Back in her car, Lucy instinctively steers toward Woodsbridge, knowing what she has to do now.

No. It's not just that he didn't mention it. He lied.

Omission of information is one thing. It's almost forgivable.

Outright lying is unforgivable.

What was it that he said that day in the coffee shop, when Lucy asked about his wife?

That she was fine.

Deirdre isn't fine. She's dead.

Why would he lie?

It was an accident, the neighbor told Lucy impatiently, as his agitated dog barked and lunged repeatedly at the chain link fence. A fall down the stairs.

Deirdre. Dead. All these years.

If Lucy had known . . .

No. It wouldn't have changed anything. She's still married, even if John is not.

He knows she would never divorce Henry, just as she always knew John would never divorce Deirdre. He wouldn't leave her and their daughter. It was that simple.

How Lucy resented John's wife for that. For a lot of things.

She was married to the man Lucy loved; she was going to be the mother of Lucy's precious baby.

John told her that Deirdre was understandably upset at first, but that she accepted the child, had agreed to raise Margaret as her own. The one condition was that Lucy stay out of their lives.

What could Lucy say? How could she argue?

Deirdre had taken in her husband's illegitimate child. She was a better person than Henry . . . or so Lucy believed.

It was John's wife who answered the phone the day Lucy worked up her nerve to call and find out how her daughter was.

“I thought you promised you would leave us alone,” Deirdre snapped into the phone.

“I just wanted to check on Margaret. Please . . . how is she?”

There was a pause.

“We had to send her to foster care,” Deirdre said.

“What?”

“It just wasn't working out. It was too hard on me. On Susie. Our family was falling apart. So John put her into foster care . . . and she died. I'm sorry.”

It was a token apology; one Lucy barely heard and didn't acknowledge.

Her baby was dead.

Why would Deirdre have lied about her death?

Why would John have lied about Deirdre's?

None of it makes sense.

And yet . . .

And yet, deep down, Lucy is starting to realize that it might.

In a way, it might make perfect sense.

Her pulse racing along with the car, Lucy drives madly toward 9 Sarah Crescent, praying that John doesn't get there first.

 

 

Kathleen careens into the parking lot at Erasmus Home for the Aged, pulls into a blue handicapped spot by the front entrance, and leaps from the driver's seat.

“Hey!” a voice calls. “You can't park there!”

Kathleen ignores the elderly man sitting on a bench in front of the nursing home, racing past him toward the wide double doors.

“You can't park there!” he calls again. “Look at you! You're not handicapped!”

A wall of stale, cabbage-scented heat hits her as she bursts into the lobby. She rushes to the front desk, where a startled-looking and unfamiliar receptionist looks up from the
National Enquirer.

“Yes?”

“I'm Kathleen Carmody,” she says breathlessly. “Drew Gallagher's daughter?”

“Yes?”

“You called,” Kathleen tells the woman, even as she glances at her name badge and sees that she isn't Helen; she's Gaile.

“Somebody called,” Kathleen amends, “and said I had to get right over here. Something's wrong with my father.”

“All right . . . wait here.” Clearly puzzled, the receptionist disappears for a few moments, leaving Kathleen to battle a growing sense of panic.

Time is running out.

She can feel it.

Why is that woman taking so long?

You'd think they'd have alerted the receptionist to what's happening upstairs. You'd think they'd have told her Kathleen was coming, and why.

At last the woman returns, a nurse at her side. Kathleen recognizes her at once. Betty, who was named after Betty Crocker.

“Mrs. Carmody—”

“I came as soon as they called. Is he . . . ?”

“He's fine.”

Fine?

There must be some mistake.

“How can he be fine?' Kathleen asks, feeling as though she's stepped into an episode of the
Twilight Zone.
“Where is he?”

Betty looks just as puzzled as the receptionist. “He's upstairs eating Jell-O. I just saw him.”

“But . . .” Her mind whirling, Kathleen clings to the desk for support. It's so warm in here she can barely think straight. Could she have possibly imagined the phone call? Suddenly, she's riddled with uncertainty.

“Why are you here, Mrs. Carmody?” Betty asks gently.

“Because . . . they called and said something was wrong.”

“Who said it?”

“The nurse. Helen. She had a southern accent.”

Betty and the receptionist exchange a blank glance.

“Mrs. Carmody,” Betty is shaking her head, “I don't know who you spoke to, but there are no nurses here with southern accents, and none named Helen.”

 

 

“Who's there?” Jen calls faintly, her heart pounding in dread as she listens to the footsteps treading up the stairs. “Daddy?”

No answer.

She shrinks back into her bed, chilled and trembling.

The footsteps pause outside her door.

Then, slowly, it creaks open.

Jen braces herself to come face to face with the monster in the rubber mask again.

Then the crack in the door widens and she sees a familiar face behind it.

“Sissy! Oh, God, you scared the crap out of me.” Relief courses through her as she sinks back against the pillows at the sight of her mother's cleaning lady.

“I'm sorry. You scared me, too. I didn't know anybody was home.” Sissy, clad in her usual sweats and white sneakers, steps into the room, a ski jacket slung over her arm. “Usually nobody's around when I come to clean.”

“How did you get in?” Jen asks, wondering if her mother forgot to lock the house in her haste to leave. If she did, anybody could have snuck in. Anybody could be hiding, wearing a rubber mask, waiting to pounce . . .

“I have a key,” Sissy tells her.

Okay, so the killer hasn't snuck in yet, Jen assures herself. She's safe, and she's no longer alone.

“Are you here all alone? Where's your mother?”

“She had to go check on my grandfather.”

“And your father's at work?”

“Yes. Listen, as long as you're here, would you mind doing me a favor?”

“Sure.” Sissy steps closer to the bed. “What is it? And how are you feeling?”

Jen dismisses the question with a shrug and says impatiently, “I just need you to bring me the cordless phone. I have to make an important call.”

She'll dial 9-1-1 and ask to be put in touch with the police station. She'll tell whoever answers that she needs to talk to Detective Brodowiaz. She has to tell him that Father Joseph wasn't the one who tried to kill her—that whoever it was got away.

“Who do you have to call?” Sissy asks.

“Just . . . it's kind of personal. And I can't get out of bed. My leg is still really messed up.”

“It stinks being in bed, doesn't it?” Sissy asks, bending over to pick up a clutter of tissues Jen haphazardly aimed for the wastepaper basket these last few days. “I was in bed last year for two weeks and I thought I was going to lose my mind.”

“Really?” Jen asks impatiently, watching the cleaning lady straighten the chair in front of Jen's desk.

“Yeah, I had the flu. Did you ever have the flu?”

Jen shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe. Look—”

“I get it every year,” Sissy cuts in, coming closer to the bed. “Every single year. People ask me why I don't just get a flu shot, you know? But I can't. For one thing, I hate needles.”

Needles.

“I hate them too.” Jen closes her eyes, finding herself back in the hospital, being poked and prodded painfully. There's still an angry black and blue scar on her upper wrist from the IV.

“But it isn't just that,” Sissy goes on.

The mattress sinks and Jen opens her eyes to see Sissy perched on the edge of her bed.

“Mmm hmm.” Jen doesn't want to be impolite, but she wishes the cleaning lady would just shut up and go get the goddamned phone already.

“Is that why you don't get your flu shot?” Sissy asks. “Because you're afraid of needles?”

“No, it's because I'm allergic to eggs.”

“That's such a coincidence, Margaret.” Sissy leans in to pierce Jen's eyes with an unexpected glare. “So am I.”

 

 

“Detective Brodowiaz?” A young police officer pokes his head into the room. “You need to take a phone call.”

He gestures at Stella. “Can't you see I'm in the middle of—”

“It's urgent, Detective.”

Brodowiaz mutters a curse and excuses himself from the room, promising he'll be back momentarily.

Stella nods, grateful for the reprieve.

She leans back in the uncomfortable wooden chair and rakes her fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp with her fingertips.

Christ. What is she doing here, really?

Does she honestly believe Kurt has something to do with the murder?

Detective Brodowiaz asked her that very question a short time ago.

Her reply?

But he didn't seem convinced.

As he continued to question her, Stella realized what he was thinking.

That she was a spurned wife looking for vengeance against her cheating husband.

She wanted to tell Detective Brodowiaz that there are easier ways of doing that. She could slash all of his clothes, or . . . or have an affair herself.