Kiss Her Goodbye Read online

  Nothing could be further from the truth. Erin tells her everything.

  No. Not everything. Not anymore.

  The truth is, she found out through the grapevine at the gym about her daughter going out with that pothead character, Robby Warren.

  “Mom, God! Nobody says pothead,” Erin laughed when Maeve met her with that accusation.

  “I don’t care what they say. And you’re not dating him,” Maeve retorted.

  Actually, she does care. She likes to think of herself as more hip than the average mom—if hip is a word “they” say these days. She’s certainly younger than most of Erin’s friends’ parents, who are in their forties. Only Kathleen is Maeve’s age—but these days, she’s about as cool as Sister Margaret, their old sixth-grade teacher at St. Brigid’s.

  The phone rings again.

  Still holding it, Maeve presses the talk button. “Hello?”

  “I’ve got it, Mom,” Erin’s voice says from the upstairs extension.

  “Already?” That was fast.

  Maeve hangs up—then wonders, belatedly, who is on the other end of the line. Erin must have been right on top of the receiver, expecting a call. For a second, remembering what Kathleen said about the girls lying about biology tutoring, Maeve is tempted to eavesdrop.

  But Erin would hear her pick up. And even if she didn’t . . .

  Well, it just isn’t right.

  Teenaged girls are going to tell the occasional lie. That’s just the way it is. They’re going to lie, and sneak around with their friends, and with boys. With any luck, they’ll survive and become upstanding citizens, like Maeve. And Kathleen. With any luck, they won’t hurt themselves—or anybody else—in the process.

  Yup. That’s the way it is. It doesn’t give their mothers—or anyone else—the right to eavesdrop or snoop. If her own mother wasn’t always checking up on her, Maeve might not have felt such a fierce need to grow up so fast. She’s determined not to make the same mistake with Erin.

  Still, she has a feeling she’s going to have her hands full for the next few years.

  Damn Gregory for walking out on her, making her a single parent when that was the last thing she ever wanted to be. Hell, that’s why she married him in the first place—because she wanted her baby to have a daddy. A daddy with a lucrative profession.

  Not that she’d welcome Gregory back now, the selfish SOB—but when it comes to child support, it would be nice to get something other than the financial kind. Not that the money that she does get is enough. Not by a long shot.

  Maeve sets the phone on the end table again, then—with a sigh of resignation—reaches into the drawer for her pack of cigarettes.

  Taking a deep drag of filtered menthol, Lucy remembers a film strip shown in her seventh-grade health class more than three decades ago. She visualizes the smoke filling her lungs, turning them hard and black, snuffing out healthy pink tissue.

  They say smoking will kill you.

  So why hasn’t it?

  Why is she still here, still breathing in and out, day after dismal day?

  Gazing down at the faint pink scars that criss-cross the blue veins of her wrists, she tugs the sleeves of her green sweater so that they reach almost to her palms.

  What was she thinking that day? Suicide, like divorce, goes against everything she was raised to believe. No matter what kind of life you’ve lived, killing yourself means being condemned to eternity in hell. Father Joseph said so.

  Lung cancer isn’t suicide. Emphysema isn’t suicide. If you’ve lived a good life and you confess your sins, then get sick and die, you’ll go to heaven.

  Father Joseph said so.

  Lucy started smoking the morning she was released from the psych ward.

  If Henry noticed that his cigarettes were dwindling after she returned from the hospital, he didn’t say a word. He was just damned glad to have her back home, where she belonged, the whole ordeal behind them. As long as she was under his roof, making his meals, doing his laundry, all was right in Henry’s world.

  He did complain when she started buying her own brand. He claimed they didn’t have the money for that. But she persisted, with uncharacteristic obstinacy, and he relented.

  That was years ago. Thirteen years; no, almost fourteen.

  Fourteen years ago.

  Sometimes, it seems like yesterday.

  Other times, it was a lifetime ago.

  The very eternity in hell she’s forbidden by the church to escape through suicide or divorce.

  Lucy taps her the ashen tip of her Newport against the rim of the ashtray on the kitchen table, then pushes her chair back. Time to start Henry’s dinner and pack his “lunch”—a sandwich he’ll eat at two in the morning in the break room at the plant.

  She glances at the clock. In ten minutes, the alarm will go off in the bedroom upstairs, and he’ll get up for work.

  One more week of third shift, and then he’ll be back on days.

  And so it goes, the familiar rhythm of their existence.

  As far as she knows, Henry has no idea that something has changed. That her life was altered forever with the shocking phrase whispered over the telephone, confirming what she already suspected—or perhaps, deep in her heart, already knew.

  It’s her.

  It’s her.

  It’s her.

  The words have echoed in her mind ever since, seeping into her every waking moment, into her dreams, into her nightmares. The nightmares never subsided, but they’re back now, far more ferocious than they were fourteen years ago.

  That’s why she’s thankful Henry’s working third shift. She’s had the bed to herself; there’s nobody to witness her fitful sleep; nobody to hear her screams when she wakes in a cold sweat in the dead of night.

  If Henry were here, he might guess. He might look at her—really look at her, for the first time in years—and read it in her eyes. He’s perceptive—rather, he can be. He was, in that other lifetime.

  And if Henry knew . . .

  She shudders. He won’t know. He can’t know. She’ll make sure he doesn’t find out.

  It’s her.

  Yet how can it be? It doesn’t make sense.

  She’s not supposed to be here, nearby, living in Woodsbridge. Orchard Hollow, of all places.

  No, she’s supposed to be dead. Dead fourteen years . . .

  And she didn’t go to heaven, as Lucy always believed she did.

  Then again . . .

  Orchard Hollow isn’t heaven—but it’s pretty damned close.

  “Everyone asleep?” Matt asks from his recliner, looking up from the television as Kathleen sinks into the couch, her hair damp from the long, hot shower she just took.

  “Riley and Curran are. Jen is finishing her homework. I told her lights have to be out at ten.”

  “Good.” Matt turns his attention back to the episode of Third Watch.

  “Matt?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We’ve got to talk.”

  “About what?” His gaze is fixed on the television, where a screaming ambulance is rushing to an accident scene.

  “Jen. She lied to me today about where she went after school.”

  “What?”

  She has his full attention now. Taking a deep breath, she fills him in on this afternoon’s drama.

  “So what did you say when she came home?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to accuse her until I was sure.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Kathleen shrugs. “Why wouldn’t her friend’s mother drop her off in our driveway? I think she’s sneaking around with older kids who drive. And she smelled like cigarette smoke when she came home.”

  “Maybe her friend’s mother smokes in the car.”

  “Maybe Jen is smoking.”

  Matt, the militant antismoker, cringes. “Get her down here. We’re going to ask her about all of—”

  “No. Not like that. She’ll just get defensive.”

  “All r
ight . . . then let’s just hope you’re wrong. Or that if you’re right, it won’t happen again.”

  “We can’t ignore it.”

  Matt squeezes his eyes closed, rubs his temples. “What do you want from me, Kathleen?”

  “Some helpful input would be good.”

  “I gave you my input. You didn’t agree with either thing I suggested. So . . . I don’t know, do you want me to . . . what? Go up and talk to her? Leave you out of it?”

  “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.”