Kiss Her Goodbye

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Maybe he couldn’t sleep and went out to get something to eat. Or a pack of cigarettes if he ran out.

  Lucy turns onto her side, hoping he won’t come back to bed for a long time. If he does, she’ll fake sleep, just as she always does.

  She learned that trick years ago.

  Sometimes, she can feel him standing over her, watching her, as though he suspects that she isn’t really deep in slumber.

  Other times, he’ll wake her. But that’s only when he’s in the mood for sex. Mercifully, that happens with less frequency as the years go on.

  It’s torture to lie with him naked and grunting on top of her, inside of her. Torture. It always has been.

  How different it is to be with somebody you love, somebody who loves you. How lovely to lie encircled by a lover’s tender embrace, rather than ensnared in a jealous husband’s smothering grasp.

  If only . . .

  If only.

  Lucy’s life has consisted of if onlys, ever since the day she first locked eyes with him in Saint Brigid’s. She’ll never forget how her spirit soared when she spotted the flicker of interest in his gaze . . . or how it plummeted when she realized he was off-limits.

  Their lust—their love—blossomed passionately anyway, despite—or perhaps, because of—the fact that it was forbidden.

  She was so caught up in their affair that she became careless.

  And she knows she will pay the price for that carelessness for the rest of her life.

  Kathleen’s hand is on the door handle before the police car screeches to a stop in front of the hospital.

  “It won’t open!” she shrieks, pulling the handle in futile desperation. “It won’t open! Help me!”

  One of the uniformed police officers is already jumping out of the front seat and hurrying around to open the back door from the outside.

  The moment he does, Kathleen hurtles herself out and dashes toward the double doors to the ER. She can hear Matt running after her, calling her name, but she can’t wait; she won’t stop. She has to see her baby.

  “My daughter!” she screams at the nurse on duty. “I need to see my daughter. She’s hurt. They just brought her in.”

  “What’s her name, ma’am?”

  “Genevieve Carmody.”

  “Was she on the bus that crashed?”

  Bus? Crash?

  “I don’t know . . . Please . . . I need to see my daughter!”

  Matt is beside her now, his steadying hands on her shoulders. Kathleen shrugs them off impatiently, not wanting to be touched. She has to focus. She has to find Jen.

  “My daughter,” she repeats on a sob. “Please. I need to see her!”

  It seems like an eternity before anybody responds.

  The nurse says something she can’t understand over the wild pounding of her heart, the roar of blood in her ears, the tumultuous thoughts tumbling through her brain.

  She’s been in this state of panic from the moment she received that shattering call on her cell phone.

  She was barely coherent then, and she isn’t now.

  Christ, she doesn’t even remember the terrifying high-speed drive from Niagara Falls to the Woodsbridge police station. She and Matt knew only that their daughter had been in some sort of accident.

  That they weren’t asked to go to a hospital was an ominous sign, and Kathleen knew it. As Matt grimly sped along the thruway toward the police station and the boys whimpered, frightened, in the backseat, she prayed over and over for a miracle . . .

  And then, just as it did once before, a miracle happened.

  When they arrived at the police station, they were informed that their injured daughter was being rushed to the hospital. Curran and Riley were whisked away by a kind female officer, and two officers volunteered to drive them to the ER, and here they are . . . still with no clue to what happened.

  Another nurse appears, wearing scrubs, her manner briskly efficient. “Come with me, Mr. and Mrs. Carmody. I’m afraid you can’t see her yet, but—”

  “What? Why can’t we see her?” Kathleen moans, doubled over in physical pain. “Is she alive? Oh, please, God, is Jen alive?”

  She can feel Matt pulling her along, realizes he’s virtually holding her up as the nurse leads the way down a long corridor. Doctors, nurses, orderlies rush by, rumbling carts of equipment.

  Are they all trying to help Jen?

  Is it too late?

  They’re in a small office. Matt is helping Kathleen sink into a chair.

  “Your daughter is in critical condition, Mr. and Mrs. Carmody.” The nurse thrusts a clipboard at Matt. “We need your permission to—”

  “Just save her. Do whatever you have to do. Save her!” Kathleen orders in a shrill voice. “What happened to her?”

  “Was she in a bus crash?” Matt is asking incredulously. “The nurse said something about—”

  “No, your daughter wasn’t in the bus crash. That was a tour bus heading to the casino over the border, and the victims were brought here around the same time. Your daughter was injured at a neighbor’s house.”

  “What?” Kathleen shakes her head. There has to be some mistake. Hope surges within her. “Jen is home. She’s not at a neighbor’s house. We left her home.”

  “The neighbor identified her as your daughter.”

  “Which neighbor?” Matt demands.

  The nurse flips sheets of paper. “Her name was Stella Gattinski. Please, you need to listen to me, Mr. and Mrs. Carmody. Your daughter’s condition is very critical.”

  “What happened to her?” Kathleen shrieks. “Tell us what happened!”

  “She was attacked with a knife. I’m afraid that’s all the information I have.”

  This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

  The nurse is still speaking, but her voice seems to be fading. It’s as though she’s talking to somebody else, talking about somebody else. Not Jen. This can’t be Jen.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood. We need to do a transfusion but with the bus accident our supply is running low. We’ve got more coming in, but if either of you wants to donate, we need you to do so right away. She’s type O, which means she can only receive type O blood. Which of you—”

  “I’m AB,” Matt cuts in, shaking his head.

  “You can only donate to type AB recipients,” the nurse replies. “You must be O, Mrs. Carmody. Come with me, Mrs. Carmody.”

  Kathleen attempts to obey, but her legs wobble as she tries to put weight on them.

  “Hurry, Kathleen,” Matt urges. “She needs your blood.”

  She needs my blood.

  The world is spinning.

  “Kathleen! Hurry! Go with her!”

  “Mrs. Carmody?” The nurse is hovering over her.

  “I . . . I can’t.”

  “What?” Matt’s hands are on her upper arms. “What are you talking about? Jen needs your blood. You have to.”

  “Jen can’t receive my blood either. I’m AB.”

  “Mrs. Carmody,” the nurse says gently but urgently, “Your daughter is type O and your husband is type AB. You must be type O.”

  “I’m not!”

  Beside her, she feels Matt stiffen. “I’m Jen’s adoptive father,” he tells the nurse. “If my wife is type AB, then Jen’s birth father must have been O. But that doesn’t matter. Just get type O blood into her from wherever you can.”

  The nurse murmurs something and rushes out of the room.

  Kathleen’s life has careened out of control.

  She hears herself apologizing to Matt, over and over.

  “It’s okay, Kathleen. It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m so, so sorry, Matt. I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop it! Why are you sorry? You can’t help it. You can’t help any of this. This isn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s all my fault.”

  “What are you talking about, Kathleen?”

  She rakes her hands through her hair, panic welli
ng inside of her.

  She screams for release, “I want my baby. Oh, God, I want my baby.”

  Her husband gathers her into his arms, cradles her against his chest.

  “It’s going to be all right, Kathleen. Everything’s going to be all right. Our baby is going to be fine.”

  “My baby is dead, Matt. My baby is dead.” Her voice dissolves into a heartbroken wail.

  “No, she isn’t. Kathleen, pull yourself together. You heard the nurse. They’re doing everything they can to save Jen. She’s still alive.”

  “Jen isn’t my baby, Matt.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  At long last, the truth spills out of her in a rush.

  “My baby is dead. She died fourteen years ago.”

  PART III

  DECEMBER

  FOURTEEN

  If Thanksgiving was a hard day to get through—a day spent alone in bed with two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey—the first of December is worse.

  Milestones are always going to be hard, according to Maeve’s therapist.

  Fridays. Holidays. The first time for anything since Erin died.

  Maeve woke earlier to find that it’s snowing out, the first heavy snow of the season.

  Erin loved snow. When she was a tiny girl, she would beg to go out and play in it until Maeve reluctantly gave in. She’d bundle her daughter in a snowsuit and pull her around the neighborhood on the little wooden sled Santa brought her for her first Christmas.

  What ever happened to that sled? Is it somewhere in the garage, buried with the piles of junk Gregory never bothered to sort through when he moved out?

  I’ll look for it, Maeve tells herself, staring out the window at the gentle snowfall, exhaling a stream of smoke through her nostrils. I’ll look for it today.

  Suddenly, finding the sled seems urgent.

  She has no idea why, or what she’ll do with it if she finds it. She only knows that she needs to look for the goddamned sled.

  She spent the better part of the weekend in the attic, hunting for Erin’s christening gown for no good reason. She still hasn’t found it, but she needs it. She just needs it desperately.

  She makes a mental note to ask the shrink if this is normal. If, when you lose somebody, you are driven to find bits and pieces they left behind.

  Then again, who cares if it’s normal?

  Who cares if—

  A rattling of keys reaches her ears and the front door opens with a sudden swirl of wind, then closes.

  Maeve hears somebody stomping their boots on the mat. It might be Gregory. He’s taken to stopping over during the day. He claims he’s checking in on her, making sure she’s all right, but Maeve suspects that he’s the one who needs to be here. He always finds an excuse to go up to Erin’s room before he leaves, and sometimes, she can hear him sobbing in there.

  She knows he’s finally feeling guilty for giving up on their family, for abandoning her and Erin. He’s thinking that if he had stayed—if the divorce had never happened—Erin would still be here.

  Maeve is thinking that, too. A thousand times a day, she thinks about how things could have been different, if only—

  “Mrs. Hudson?”

  Oh. It’s Sissy.

  Cleaning day. Well, it’s about time. It seems like ages since she was here last, though it’s only been a week.

  Time drags by now that Erin is gone. It’s been almost four weeks. Four weeks since Erin was murdered, since Maeve became a . . .

  A what?

  Odd that there’s no word to describe what a woman becomes when she’s no longer a mother. There’s no identifying term for the person Maeve has become, no readily labeled group of survivors to which she suddenly belongs.

  There are widows.

  There are widowers.

  There are orphans.

  But this—the worst kind of loss a human being can face—this has no name.

  Tears trickle down Maeve’s cheeks.

  “Um . . . Mrs. Hudson?”

  She turns slowly to find Sissy standing behind her. Her thin frame is bundled into baggy sweat pants and an old flannel shirt, and there are snowflakes clinging to her dark hair and eyebrows.

  “Hi, Sissy.” She wipes the sleeve of her terry cloth robe across her eyes, feeling impatient. Can’t Sissy see that she doesn’t want to be disturbed?

  “Are you okay?”

  What a question. But what does she expect from a dim-witted cleaning lady?

  “I’m fine, Sissy.” Her tone is brittle. She turns back to the window, back to the falling snow. “Can you start with the upstairs today?”

  “Sure.” Sissy hesitates. “Do you want me to—”

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to check.”

  “Don’t touch her room. Don’t even go in there! Ever!”

  “I won’t, Mrs. Hudson. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” Sissy sounds like a little girl who just got caught telling her kid sister there’s no such thing as Santa.

  Maeve doesn’t reply, just stands watching the fat flakes drift lazily toward the ground.

  Her baby is in the ground. Snow is falling on Erin’s grave, shrouding it in an icy blanket. Maeve shudders.

  My baby.

  They buried her in Saint Brigid’s cemetery on a rainy Monday morning. Hundreds of people came. Maybe even a thousand.

  The high school bused teachers and students over to the funeral; all those kids milling around wearing their grief as awkwardly as their black dress clothes.

  All the neighbors came, including Stella and Kurt Gattinski. Maeve refused to look at them. There were other neighbors she only vaguely recognized: women she’d seen pushing strollers around the neighborhood or waiting at bus stops, men who mowed lawns and clipped hedges. They would leave the funeral and go home to their children, and Maeve hated them for it.

  Mo was there, and her personal trainer, and women from her Pilates class. Quite a few of Gregory’s patients showed up. His receptionist Nora, the one who hates Maeve, sobbed loudly throughout the service.

  There were police officers in the crowd, including Detective Brodowiaz, who has been here to question Maeve a few times.

  And there were reporters. Maeve saw the satellite trucks lining the curb, saw the cameras aimed in her direction as she and Greg got out of the limousine in front of the church, and again at the grave site. She wore sunglasses throughout the day, despite the rain. She couldn’t bear to meet anybody’s gaze.

  At the cemetery Kathleen stood beside her, with Matt standing solemnly at her side. Kathleen held Maeve’s hand the whole time, clinging so tenaciously at times that Maeve almost felt as though she herself were the one offering support.

  Survivor’s guilt, maybe.

  Jen Carmody came home from the hospital a few days ago. She’s going to be okay.

  Yes, she’s going to be okay, but Maeve’s baby is in the cold, hard ground . . . buried in the same cemetery as the man who supposedly murdered her.

  Father Joseph was found outside the house that night. On the ground beside him was the knife that was used to slit Erin’s throat and ferociously stab Jen. He, too, was mortally wounded by its blade.

  The police think that the elderly priest broke into the Gattinksis’ home, killed Erin in the living room, and chased Jen out of the house. He and Jen struggled over the knife; she managed to get it away from him and stab him before he wounded her.

  Or so Detective Brodowiaz believes.

  The press has had a field day with the idea of a retired, well-known local priest as a cold-blooded killer. Most people feel that it doesn’t make sense; others cite his fire-and-brimstone sermons as evidence of religious fanaticism and perhaps something much darker. The diocese issued a statement saying they were stunned and shocked, and had no record of any complaints or criminal allegations against the priest.

  In the end, there was no logical explanation for why Erin and Jen were targeted. The priest’s o
nly link to the girls is that both their mothers attended Saint Brigid’s School when he was the pastor there.

  The detective has asked countless questions about that, but Maeve couldn’t offer him anything that might help to pinpoint a motive.

  Why her daughter died doesn’t really matter to Maeve.

  What matters is that she’s gone.

  What matters is that Maeve is alone. More alone than she’s ever been in her life. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat, she can’t speak.

  All she can do is stare out the window at the falling snow.

  After the funeral, Kathleen hugged her fiercely and said, “You know I’m here for you, Maeve. If there’s anything I can do . . . anything you need . . . well, just ask. I can bring you meals, or run errands, or whatever. I’m here, and so is Matt,” she added, glancing at her husband, who nodded.

  “If you need anything, I’ll be glad to help you, Maeve,” he agreed, with the awkward hesitation of one who isn’t quite sure what to offer. “If there’s anything that needs fixing at your house, or . . . or if you need help with the yard or something . . .”

  Meals. Errands. The house. The yard. Who cares about any of it?

  But she murmured her thanks to both of them, knowing there’s nothing that the Carmodys, or anybody else who offered, can do for her.

  Nothing that matters.

  “Jen?”

  It’s her mother, outside her bedroom door.

  She sighs and turns her head toward the wall beside her bed, knowing her mother will knock again, call her name again. She won’t go away.

  She won’t leave Jen alone.

  All she wanted, all those weeks in the hospital, was to be left alone. But there were doctors, nurses, visitors. There was the police detective who came a few times, asking her questions she couldn’t answer. Her parents hovered by her bed all day, every day, and her mother stayed there every night, too.

  Some of the kids from school came. Amber and Rachel. They both wanted to talk about Erin—and about Robby. It was Rachel who told Jen that he had been stabbed, too. Just like her, and just like Erin.

  But the police don’t think there’s any link. For one thing, Rachel said, his body was found in a Dumpster in a neighborhood frequented by drug dealers. Nobody seems very surprised about what happened to him. Not even Robby’s father. According to Rachel, Mr. Warren told the police his son had promised to stop dealing.