Kiss Her Goodbye (22 page)

He wanders barefoot and shivering in a tattered blanket down toward the waterfront. With any luck, he'll find an unlocked parked car, or even a couple of packing crates in a deserted alleyway—anything to block the wind so he can get a few hours' sleep. It's well past midnight and he's been up almost twenty-four hours now.

He turns a corner and makes his way down another block, past a couple of restaurant-tavern type places. The dank air blowing off the lake mingles with the smell of greasy food, cigarette smoke, stale beer.

Hearing a banging noise, he spots a restaurant employee closing the lid on a Dumpster on the far end of a restaurant parking lot. He waits for the man to retreat through the restaurant's back door again before approaching the Dumpster.

Gary isn't foolish enough to consider spending the night inside it. The streets are rife with legends of the poor unfortunate who crawled into Dumpsters to sleep off their liquor and wound up crushed to death in a garbage truck.

However, the Dumpster is worth a temporary visit. There's likely to be something edible in whatever the busboy just tossed. Not just uneaten food scraps, either; at this time of night, restaurant kitchens are closing down and discarding whatever can't be salvaged for tomorrow's menu.

His mouth watering, Gary picks his way around broken glass in the parking lot, wishing he knew what happened to the sneakers he had until yesterday. They were a size too small and hurt his feet, but better than nothing. Too bad he made the mistake of taking them off while he was sleeping in a doorway. He woke to find them gone, along with the half-loaf of bread he'd saved for breakfast.

He scuttles across the remaining stretch of glass-free pavement to the Dumpster. After opening the lid, he eagerly hoists his small, wiry frame over the edge.

Amidst the sickening stench of rotting food, his nose detects the appetizing scent of some type of seafood, and something deep fried. Once, Gary found an entire cooked lobster discarded in the trash here, and other times, he's come across perfectly good fried chicken.

He pokes around the top layer of the Dumpster, aided by the light of an overhead streetlight, until he figures out which bag was most recently tossed.

As he takes a step forward to pull it toward him, his bare toes encounter some kind of cloth. With any luck, it will prove to be an old coat. Wouldn't that be something?

The food bag momentarily forgotten, Gary bends to move several pieces of cardboard away from his ankle, uncovering whatever he's standing on.

It
is
a coat!

A coat, and . . .

And jeans, and—

Oh.

Wrinkling his nose, Gary bolts back a few steps, realizing the clothing is still occupied by its owner.

He shakes his head. Apparently, this guy hasn't heard the horror stories about sleeping in Dumpsters.

“Hey, Buddy.” He leans forward to poke the guy, who is lying facedown, motionless. “Wake up.”

Whoever it is refuses to stir.

It takes a few moments for Gary to understand why.

He's dead, Gary realizes when he spots dried clumps of blood matting the dark hair around an entry wound at the back of the skull.

Well, that's a damned shame. But this isn't the first murdered corpse Gary's stumbled across on the street, and he doubts it will be his last. In no time, he overcomes his squeamish hesitation and gets down to business.

First, he bends and slips his hands into the guy's pants pockets, front and back, looking for a wallet—and, with any luck, cash. Nothing. He checks his coat pockets, too. Empty. Damn.

Well, there's always the coat itself, Gary thinks shrewdly. He tugs at the sleeves, trying to remove it. But he quickly gives up; the body's arms are bent in a way that makes it impossible. Rigor mortis has long since set in.

Gary gingerly kicks more trash away from the body, wondering if it's worth trying to get the jeans off. The legs are straight out, so maybe—

Well, look at that.

A slow smile crosses Gary's face.

This cowboy died with his boots on.

Brand-new boots, from the looks of things, and just about the right size. The thick soles are barely worn, the black leather is shiny, and the polished silver buckles glint in the streetlight's glow.

A rapping sound startles Jen out of a dead sleep.

Is somebody knocking on her door? Did she forget to set her alarm and oversleep?

Aside from the glow coming from the overhead bulb beyond the open closet door, the room is barely light. She lifts her head to glance at the clock—sees that it isn't even six yet. She must have been dreaming.

She's about to snuggle back into the blankets when she hears the rapping sound again.

Who would be knocking on her door at this hour?

“Jen?” her mother calls softly. “I need to talk to you.”

“Come in.” She sits up, rubs the sleep from her eyes as the door opens and her mother slips into the room.

Even in this dim light, Mom looks horrible. She's wearing pajamas beneath a flannel robe, but she doesn't seem to have slept a wink.

“What's wrong?” Jen is too worried not to ask, too dazed to remember to keep her voice—and her emotions—detached.

Maybe something happened to Grandpa. He didn't look very good last night. Jen wonders, with remorse, if he died. She could have been nicer to him. He gave her fifty bucks, even if he did address the card to
Jenny,
which bugs her. She could have spent some time talking to him during dinner, instead of selfishly—

“Did you ask the boys about that gift?” Mom's voice cuts in abruptly.

For a moment, Jen is confused. Then she remembers. The pink bootee.

“They said they had no idea where it came from,” she tells her mother, relieved that this isn't about her grandfather, or anything earth shattering.

“You asked both of your brothers?

“Yes.” Jen pulls the covers up to her chin in the early morning chill. “And they both said they didn't put it there. Why?”

“What about Daddy? Did you ask him?”

“No. Did you?”

“No.” Her mother's expression is impossible to read. “I didn't mention it to him at all.”

Jen wonders why not—especially since Mom's making this into such a big deal.

A chill slips down her spine, just as it did last night when her brothers denied leaving the odd present on her pillow.

At the time, she chose to conclude that they were lying . . . or that her so-called father did it, for whatever reason. But she still isn't speaking to him unless it isn't absolutely necessary, so she isn't about to ask.

Now, realizing that her mother is rattled enough to be in here at dawn asking questions, Jen can't help feeling uneasy.

Somewhere in the bowels of the house, the furnace rumbles to life.

Jen burrows deeper under the white eyelet bedspread. “What's going on, Mom?”

“Just tell me . . . where exactly did you find that bootee? And tell me the truth, Jen.”

The phrase
this time
remains unspoken, but her tone blatantly implies that Jen wasn't telling the truth before.

It's infuriating enough to shut down Jen's emotions once again.

“I told you where I found it,” she says icily. “It was in a gift-wrapped box on my bed. On my pillow, to be ‘exact.' ”

“Where is it now?”

“What difference does that make?”

“I just . . . I need to see it again.”

“For what?”

“Just give it back to me, Jen, okay?”

“Back to you?” she echoes incredulously. She should have known. “So you
were
the one who gave it to me.”

Her voice rising unnaturally, Mom protests, “That's not what I meant. I didn't give it to you; I'm just trying to figure out who did.”

Jen watches her mother hug herself, shivering, and suspects she isn't just trying to ward off the early morning chill. Why is she so worked up about a baby bootee? You'd think it was a gun or drugs or something.

Whatever. This is her mother's peculiar game, and Jen's willing to play. Especially when she realizes she's the one who's in control, for a change.

“I'll give it to you on one condition,” she hears herself saying.

“What's that?”

She takes a deep breath, then plunges in. “You have to tell me about my father. My real father.”

“Oh, Jen . . .” Mom sighs, falters.

“Tell me about him, Mom.”

“You don't want to know. Trust me.”

“I do want to know. Trust
me.”

Mom is silent.

Jen clenches her hands beneath the sheet, willing her to talk.

Finally, her mother sits on the edge of the bed, facing the window instead of Jen. “There's not much to tell. His name was Quint. Quint Matteson.”

“Madison?” Jen echoes, wanting to make sure she knows how to spell it. “Or Madsen?”

“It's Matteson,” her mother replies with obvious reluctance. “With two t's.”

Matteson.

Quint Matteson. Two
t
's. She memorizes that detail.

“I always thought it was ironic,” Mom is saying, a faraway expression in her eyes. “Your father's first name is so similar to his last. Matt, Matteson.”

What's ironic, Jen thinks, is that she's chosen to phrase it that way. Shouldn't she say “your father's
last
name is so similar to his
first”?
The
his
, of course, referring to Matt Carmody, who isn't her father.

“What else?” she prods, still disgusted with her mother's deception, yet unwilling to alienate her further. Not when she needs to know more about Quint Matteson.

“He was a musician,” Mom continues with a shrug. “And I didn't know him for very long. I was young, and naive, and, what can I say? The whole thing was a big mistake, Jen.”

Jen's eyes fill with tears. She can't help herself.

Mom turns to look at her then, and cries out, “Oh, sweetheart, not you. You weren't the mistake. I meant getting involved with him, thinking he was . . . But you, you were . . . I wanted you more than anything.”

She reaches for Jen.

Jen allows herself to be pulled, sobbing, up into her mother's arms.

“I'm so sorry.” Mom is weeping, too, her tears soaking Jen's hair. “I'm so sorry, for everything. I never wanted to hurt you. I always meant to tell you the truth.”

“You should have.”

“The older you got, the more I knew it would hurt you.”

“You were right.”

The floodgate opened, Jen is crying uncontrollably now.

“I know. Jen, please forgive me. Please, sweetheart.”

“I'm trying.”

The familiar scent of herbal soap and fabric softener wraps around her, as comforting as her mother's embrace.

“It's okay, Jen.” Her mother heaves a shuddering sigh, stroking Jen's hair. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“I just don't feel like it is.” She pulls back to look up at Mom's face, seeking reassurance, finding only uncertainty.

“It will be,” Mom says unconvincingly, sniffling, digging in the pockets of her robe for tissues and handing a clean one to Jen. “It just takes time, that's all. We have to get used to this. We all do.”

Jen nods, doubting she ever will.

“I still want to know more about my real father,” she says, when she can speak again without her voice breaking.

Mom's eyes cloud over. “I know you do, Jen, and I can understand that. But just . . . not yet, okay? Promise me you'll give it some time. You're not ready for that. I don't even know where he is.”

She's lying. Staring at her mother's face, Jen senses it. For whatever reason, Mom is unwilling to tell her the truth.

And in that moment, she makes up her mind.

“Do you promise, Jen?” Mom asks. “Promise you'll wait awhile before you want to meet him?”

“I promise.”

Her mother nods. Pats her on the arm. Inhales, exhales, looks around the room expectantly.

That's when Jen remembers. The pink bootee.

“You can take it,” she says, sinking back against the pillows, finding that she doesn't have to work very hard to feign physical and emotional exhaustion. “It's in the top drawer of my desk.”

Mom wastes no time in crossing the room, opening the drawer, and taking out the white box. She pauses again by the bed to lean over and plant a kiss on Jen's forehead. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“I know,” Jen murmurs, unable—unwilling—to say it back.

“Daddy loves you, too. You know that, don't you?”

Jen shrugs.

Her mother's gaze is shadowed. “Just remember one thing, Jen. Love is thicker than blood.”

She says nothing, just turns her head into her pillow and yawns, as though she's about to doze off again.

Her mother leaves the room and closes the door behind her.

Jen waits until she hears her footsteps retreating down the hall.

Then she bolts from the bed, pulls on a robe, and hurriedly slips downstairs to the kitchen.

Taking the weighty volume of Buffalo white pages from the bottom drawer, she hides it inside the fold of her robe, just in case.

Back in her room, she sits in the chair and turns on the lamp.

She blinks impatiently as her eyes grow accustomed to the light, her fingers already blindly flipping pages. She holds her breath in anticipation as she zeroes in on the
M
's, then the
Ma
's, then finally, the
Mattesons.

She scans down the list, telling herself that even if there's just a
Matteson, Q,
she'll call the number.

That sounds ridiculous.

Well, then, what
will
she say?

It doesn't matter, because she's in luck.

She stares at the listing for a long time.

He's my father,
she tells herself.
My father.

It doesn't feel real. It won't until she speaks to him . . . or maybe, until she actually lays eyes on him.

There's an address, too.

With trembling fingers, Jen copies it carefully onto a scrap of paper.

 

 

Back in the master bedroom, Matt lies snoring peacefully beside the rumpled spot where Kathleen tossed restlessly throughout the night. Her ears were trained on the stillness, her body tense in anticipation of the phantom baby's cries.

They never came. Not this time.

Clutching the white box in one hand, Kathleen steals across the room to her dresser. She slides the drawer open quietly and feels around inside. It takes her a few heart-stopping moments to locate the bundle she hurriedly jammed back inside when she heard Matt coming to bed last night.

There it is.

She slips out of the room carrying the pink crocheted blanket, stealthily making her way along the dim hallway and down the stairs.

The heat hissing from the baseboard vents does little yet to warm the house; the lights she turns on along the way fail to dispel the gloom of a stormy November dawn. In the kitchen, Kathleen flips the overhead light switch, then sets the pink bundle and cardboard box on the table, resisting the urge to examine their contents right away.

Instead, she first measures coffee into a filter. She's running on empty, desperately needing an artificial energy boost. Fueled by caffeine, she might be able to make it through another day without collapsing. The cleaning lady is coming so she'll have to clear out of here for at least a few hours, and Curran has an orthodontist appointment late this afternoon.

As she runs cold water at the sink, she stares intently out the window at the backyard. Her eyes scan the clumps of shrubbery, search the blue shadowed nooks beside the boys' wooden swing set and Matt's shed at the back of the property.

Was somebody really out there in the night, looking in at her?

Or, God help her, is she finally cracking beneath the burden of the secret she's kept all these years?

With a trembling hand, she sets the automatic drip pot to brew and returns to the table.

Carefully, she lays out the blanket on the table, then takes the single bootee from it.

Then she removes the lid from the box and lays the other bootee on the table.

No doubt about it.

They're identical.

Everything about them matches: the size, the shape, the shade of pink yarn, the intricate scroll work in the white lace edging.

Either the bootee that turned up on Jen's bed yesterday is the long-missing partner of the one Kathleen has kept all these years . . .

Or somebody went to a tremendous amount of trouble to duplicate the original.

It would make sense that only the person who made it in the first place would be capable of doing so.

It's precisely that knowledge that makes Kathleen's blood run cold.

 

 

Robby wasn't in school again today.

He's definitely been suspended—Jen found that out this morning when she worked up the nerve to ask one of his friends leaning on the radiator in the hallway.

She figures she has at least a couple hours of freedom after detention this afternoon. She overheard Mom mentioning to Dad that she's taking Curran to the orthodontist and won't be home until at least five o'clock. Knowing Dr. Deare's reputation for being late, it will most likely be after six.