Before I Say Goodbye

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “I’m Quinn Hunter. I work with your mom. Think we can get this couch in?”

  I liked the way he talked to me, as though I were an adult. “Yeah. I think so.”

  We did manage, though it wasn’t easy, and James got in the way more than he helped. My mom acted a little giddy, laughing too much and too easily. I could see she liked the man, and I could tell he felt even more strongly about her. I’d seen it many, many times. My mother might not be as beautiful as Allia and her mother were with their dark hair, but men always fell for her. They seemed fascinated by everything she did.

  Quinn was nice. If allowing James to sit on the couch while we moved it around the living room wasn’t enough, when he returned to his car for the take-out burgers he’d stopped to buy on the way over, he completely won my brother’s admiration. I wasn’t above eating the fries or the shakes myself, since the best thing after a hard workout was to load up on carbs. Only Mom picked at her food. I wondered if that was because she had butterflies in her stomach the way I did when I talked to Travis.

  I thought so.

  At the same time, she didn’t invite him to stay or ask me to watch James while she left with him. That made me both happy and uneasy. I didn’t want to see my mom hurt again, and mostly that’s what boyfriends meant, sooner or later. At least for her. And James was getting to the point where a man leaving might really mess him up.

  Mom didn’t kiss Quinn when he left, which meant they were only beginning their relationship or that she considered him a friend. There’d been plenty of that kind of man, too. Those who appeared to do something to the car or apartment and just as soon disappeared. Those who took James to fly a kite or to Disneyland and didn’t return after they brought James home. I’d learned those guys were safer for all of us because they were never around long enough for us to really care.

  “Nice guy,” I commented as we watched him drive away.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. Her face was too still, and I had the feeling she was fighting tears. Man, we were all a bunch of hormones. Did being a woman always mean so much emotion? Or did most women only feel this way where men were concerned? I for one was thinking way too much about Travis, and I still wasn’t sure he even realized I existed.

  Mom kept staring down the road, not into the dark or at a sunset, and it made me feel jittery rather than romantic. “So,” I said. “Are you going to date him?”

  “No.” Nothing more. No explanation or shaking her head but a simple and final no.

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “He’s a co-worker, that’s all.”

  “Married?”

  She finally took her eyes from the road and looked at me, a smile growing on her face. “No, silly. It’s just that a man is the last thing I need right now.”

  Actually, a man to earn a bit of money, fix things, help out with James, and take us out to dinner every now and then was exactly what I thought we needed, especially in light of my yearning for dance lessons, but, hey, you couldn’t force these things. Maybe Mom had finally gotten wise to the result of having a boyfriend.

  Yet maybe it didn’t have to end that way. Maybe she kept picking the wrong kind. Take the bishop, for example. If she’d married him, it might have been me living in Allia’s beautiful, clean house, taking all the lessons I wanted. So many lessons I might even get sick of them, and Mom would have to make me go.

  “What?” Mom said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Anything happen today?”

  “School was boring, as usual.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. She went into the house, smiling, and sat on one of our hand-me-down couches. They were a pale floral but not too ugly.

  James cuddled up to Mom, and she started tickling him. “Maybe we should sleep right here tonight,” she said. “You know, have a campout on our new couches.”

  “Yay!” shouted James, bouncing so hard he would have fallen off the couch if Mom hadn’t caught him. They collapsed on the couch again, tickling each other and laughing, and for a minute I felt that strange sort of happiness I sometimes felt when we were together. The world could fall away and it wouldn’t matter because we had everything we needed right in this very room.

  Even without dancing.

  My stomach started to ache. “I have homework,” I said.

  “You didn’t do it already? You had all afternoon.”

  “She was dancing,” James said. I glared at him, hoping he wouldn’t say where I’d been dancing.

  Mom frowned. “Kyle, I told you. Homework first.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. My mom the homework police. That was still weird. So many years without really saying anything, and now she was always on my case.

  Mom rubbed her temple. I knew that meant a headache coming on, maybe a migraine. I followed her into the kitchen and watched her down a pill, replacing the bottle in her purse where she always kept it. I took the discarded bowls of mac and cheese and put them in the sink filled with water to soak off the mess, a little bit amazed and proud at my actions.

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “Come on, Mom!” James yelled. “Let’s get the blankets!”

  I went downstairs and really did my homework, practiced dance for a bit, and then read a book until late so maybe I would be too tired to dream about dancing when I finally slept. Too tired to wake up worrying with tears on my face or feel the need to climb into my mother’s bed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Becca

  Tuesdays were usually good days. I had the house in order after Sunday’s activities, and I often made time to go to the temple after I’d finished teaching Cory his lessons for the day. Afterward, he’d come with me to do errands. I was really enjoying the one-on-one time with my little boy, who usually wasn’t as demanding as the rest of the children and who I sometimes suspected I overlooked.

  After school, Kyle dropped off James for his lesson and asked to use Allia’s bike. Allia came out and talked with her for a few moments, but she had no more luck finding out where Kyle was headed than I had last week. Except for Saturday, Kyle hadn’t asked to borrow the bike on the days James didn’t come here. I wondered if she was heading to the same place she’d taken him and if she was still going with him on days he didn’t come here. I made a mental note to ask James about it. I still hadn’t told Rikki that both times James had come last week, Kyle had picked him up late. I hadn’t really minded because James was such a sweetheart, but if Kyle wasn’t on time today, I’d get to the bottom of it one way or another.

  “Don’t forget about Young Women tonight,” Allia said as Kyle got on the bike. “Remember we’re making chili and bread sticks.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Kyle couldn’t have looked less thrilled. “Not sure I can go. Depends if my mom gets home.”

  “It’s not until six-thirty. Usually it’s seven, but we’re doing it early because it’s dinner.”

  “Okay.” Kyle nodded without smiling and rode away.

  Allia sighed. “That is just weird.”

  “Yeah, she’s been really cranky lately,” James said, bouncing as he talked. “Hey, are we doing more letters with that dough?” His glasses still hadn’t arrived, but he was making progress. The bigger we wrote the words, the better he could read them. Better still if he could feel them with his hands.

  I rumpled his blond head. “Maybe later if there’s time. I have something else planned today. Come on, let’s go out back.” I led them to the sandbox where we scratched letters in the sand with the small end of my old wooden spoons. We spelled all the words on James’s spelling list and then anything else we could see in the backyard, including the names of a few flowers.

  An hour and a half later as I was reading a Magic Tree House book to Lauren and James on the living room couch, the phone rang with the tone I’d programmed fo
r Dante.

  “Hi, honey,” I said. “I hope this call doesn’t mean you’re going to be late. I have a roast in the oven.” Roast was one of the easiest things to make as I sat and did homework with the children, but he didn’t need to know that. And why wasn’t Kyle back, anyway? This was beginning to be a bad habit. On the other hand, James was making beautiful progress, and I’d enjoyed myself, too. At least here he wasn’t being exposed to any of Kyle’s questionable friends.

  “I just got a call,” he said. “From the police station.”

  “The police station?” A knot of fear formed in my stomach before I remembered that all my children were home and safe. Cory was downstairs playing his half-hour of Nintendo with Sean from next door, Travis had come home and gone straight to the computer in the family room, muttering something about another essay for English, and Allia was washing her hair for Young Women’s tonight since she hadn’t had time for a shower that morning. Now that I’d stopped reading, Lauren had taken out my homemade dough from last week and was making bird nests with James at the table.

  “It’s Rikki’s daughter, Kyle. The police caught her shoplifting at K-mart.”

  “Ah, that would explain why she hasn’t come back to pick up James. I told her an hour.”

  “Look, I can’t leave for at least a half hour more, and that means I won’t get there for another forty-five minutes. But she needs someone there now, and they can’t get hold of Rikki. She’s not answering her cell. I could call Steve or Paul, but Kyle doesn’t know them. Same for any of the other leaders. But she knows you, and you have a way with kids. What do you say?”

  I turned off the oven. “Okay, I’ll go.” On Tuesdays the younger kids and I often spent time in the yard after dinner, with me in the flower beds and them on the play set, while the older kids were in Mutual and Dante in interviews, but tonight didn’t look promising for any of that.

  “Thanks, hon. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “You, too.”

  Part of being the bishop’s wife was pitching in when needed, and that meant a lot of late dinners and unexpected opportunities to serve. I had never really minded. I’d grown up seeing my parents give their all to the Church, and I loved our ward members. However, Kyle and Rikki were hitting too close to home. It was hard knowing that Rikki and Dante shared a past that didn’t include me, and I suspected she at least wished things had turned out differently between them. For my part, I wished she’d chosen any place but Spanish Fork to live. Yet she’d been at church again last Sunday, with both children, and Kyle had been decently dressed. Mostly. They appeared to be making an effort, and I knew I should befriend her like any sister in the gospel, not wish her away.

  “Why don’t you two go outside and play in the fort?” I said to Lauren and James.

  “Okay.” Lauren jumped up. “I get to be Spiderman this time.”

  “You mean Spidergirl.”

  “Yeah.”

  I shoved the dough back into the bags, noting that they were drying up a bit. Nothing a little water wouldn’t help. I dribbled some in and stored the bags in the fridge. If I remembered, I’d give one to James so he could practice forming letters at home.

  “Travis, I have to go to the police station,” I called down the stairs. “Tell Cory to tell Sean he has to go home now.” I didn’t allow neighbor children over when I wasn’t there to supervise. We’d have to make an exception for James, of course, as he had nowhere else to go. I certainly wasn’t going to take that innocent little boy to the police station. “You and Allia will have to keep an eye on Lauren and James. They’re in the backyard.”

  Travis appeared at the bottom of the stairs and started up them, two at a time. “Did you say the police station?”

  “Kyle’s been picked up for shoplifting, and they can’t find her mother.”

  He shook his head. “Poor thing.”

  “Poor thing? She’s obviously stolen something.”

  “Yeah, I know, but why?”

  “Maybe she wanted something new.”

  “I guess.” One shoulder lifted in a shrug.

  I didn’t have time for this. “Tell Allia I’m going, okay? When she gets out of the shower.”

  “All right.”

  I left him staring after me thoughtfully.

  Poor thing, I scoffed as I backed out the driveway. Little weasel, more like. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want Kyle anywhere near Allia, possible conversion or not, unless they were at church around the other ward youth. A mother had to draw the line somewhere, and Allia had already proven more susceptible than I’d expected. At least they hadn’t had much contact that I’d seen, except for this constant borrowing of Allia’s bicycle.

  Not that I entirely blamed Kyle. Rikki was ultimately responsible for her daughter.

  Like I was responsible for Travis breaking the law by driving his friends? Would I have been responsible if he’d become distracted and caused an accident?

  That’s different, I thought.

  Why? Because he doesn’t wear a nose ring?

  Most intelligent people talked to themselves, I’d heard, but I bet only geniuses argued with themselves. My IQ was probably off the charts. I rubbed my temple, feeling the beginnings of a headache.

  At the police station, I wasted no time in stating my business to the female officer the receptionist called to the front desk. “Are you her mother?” she asked.

  “A friend of her mother. A neighbor.”

  “We can release her only to a parent or guardian.”

  “From what I understand, you haven’t been able to contact her mother, which was why she called us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, can you release her to her bishop? That’s my husband. He’ll be here in a while.”

  “I’ll check, but we’ll probably need verbal approval from a parent, who will have to come down sometime tonight and sign some papers, anyway.”

  I nodded. “Can I see her?”

  “Sure. Come this way.”

  I could see our night dwindling away, and I tried not to be resentful. Boy, that girl was going to get an earful. She’d better be repentant.

  “Was there a bike?” I asked. “She borrowed my daughter’s.”

  “We have it outside. It’s locked up.”

  “Thanks.”

  The officer led me down the hall to an open door. Inside, Kyle made a tiny, tragic figure, her hands folded on the table in front of her as she stared blankly at the wall. Two officers passed us in the hall, talking loudly. Kyle didn’t flinch or look toward the door, which told me she’d been here long enough to stop hoping someone was coming for her any time soon.

  As we approached, she turned her heart-shaped face toward me and something flared in her eyes and was gone before I could tell what it was, but it certainly didn’t look like remorse.

  “I’ll try her mother again,” the officer said. “And talk to the chief about releasing her. But, like I said, I’m sure we’ll need at least an oral approval from a parent.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kyle was no longer looking in my direction, but as I regarded her, the sharp words I’d been practicing in my head fled. Her lips were pursed, the makeup on her eyes smeared from crying, though she was dry-eyed now, and her hair was a wild mess like her mother’s always was, which was actually an improvement over the way it normally fell lank over much of her face.

  Father, I prayed. What am I supposed to do now? At least I no longer wanted to slap her silly. Well, mostly I didn’t.

  I took the seat opposite her. “My husband couldn’t get away from work, so he gave me a call. He didn’t want you to be here alone. He’ll be here as soon as he can.”

  That got her attention, but she
didn’t speak. One of her eyes had almost no makeup, and without it she looked about eleven instead of thirteen trying to be thirty.

  “So?” I said. “James spelled out some words today. I think once he gets his glasses, he’ll be reading in no time. He’s a smart kid to have come so far on his own.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “I hear you guys have been going on some long walks lately.”

  Her eyes widened. “What’d James say?”

  “Something about a place you’ve taken him several times. He stays outside to play while you go in the house.” I waited several seconds before adding, “You didn’t take him someplace dangerous, did you?”

  “I wouldn’t take him anywhere like that!” she shot back. “I wouldn’t even take him to some of the places my mom would.”

  Righteous indignation. So where had she taken him? An inkling of an idea appeared in the corner of my mind, trying to work its way into my consciousness, but even as I tried to pinpoint it, the feeling disappeared.

  Anyway, I wasn’t getting anywhere with this indirect approach. “Kyle, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “Because it doesn’t make any difference.”

  “It makes a difference to me.”

  “Why? Because my mom was your husband’s friend?”

  “No, because you’re a neighbor, and you’re in my ward.”

  She snorted. “I don’t care. Besides, you wouldn’t understand.”

  I sighed. Father, I have no idea what I’m doing here. She obviously doesn’t want or need me.

  Still I stayed, because as defiantly as she stared at me now, I remembered the shrunken figure I’d seen upon entering the room.

  “I understand one thing,” I said. “No. Two things. One, your day has been a lot worse than mine. Two, if we don’t get out of here soon, you may never learn the secret of Sister Flemming’s chili. Now that would be a major tragedy.”

  Kyle stared at me as though trying to determine if I was serious.

  “Maybe we can steal the recipe from Allia,” I added. “That is, if I get home in time for her to go. She’s babysitting Lauren and James.”