Kiss Her Goodbye (23 page)

The way Jen sees it, she has two choices with what she might do with those precious unsupervised hours. She can either go over to Robby's to talk to him in person, or she can go to find her birth father.

The latter option wins, hands down.

After all, Robby didn't even bother to answer all her pages, much less wish her a happy birthday. Why should she knock herself out trying to see him?

Your father didn't wish you a happy birthday, either,
that nagging voice has been reminding her all day.
Why knock yourself out trying to see
him
?

Because she can't help it. Because curiosity has gotten the best of her. Because, quite simply, she
needs
to do this, in spite of her mother . . . or, perhaps, just to spite her mother?

No. She's doing this for herself. Really, she is.

Maybe Quint Matteson will turn out to be a great guy. Maybe he spent his whole life regretting that he gave her up. Maybe he's been trying to find her, and couldn't. Maybe he'll want Jen to go live with him.

So, on Wednesday afternoon, as her fellow detainees head for the late bus waiting out in front of the school, Jen ducks down the deserted corridor that leads to the science building. Two minutes later, she's making her way out the back exit.

All she has to do is cross the football field and cut through a narrow strip of woods, and she's on the busy highway that runs parallel to the street the school is on.

She's never taken the public transportation system in Buffalo, but she did it once or twice in Chicago, and that's a much bigger city. How difficult can this be?

She looked up the local transit routes in the Media Center during study hall this afternoon. From the shopping center across the street, she can catch a bus downtown, and from there, she can connect to one that will take her to Quint Matteson's neighborhood.

If everything goes according to schedule, she'll have an hour's worth of round-trip travel, including the final connection to the bus that will drop her on Cuttington Road. That means she'll be left with a whole hour for . . .

Well, for whatever happens when she comes face to face with her father.

If he's even at home.

Maybe she should have called first, to make sure.

But what could she say?

Yeah.

Something like that would go over much better in person.

Riding the bus into the heart of the city, Jen stares out the window at the rows of two-story frame houses broken up by the occasional school, gas station, strip mall, or church. Jen has never seen so many churches in her life, many of them Roman Catholic. There seems to be a neighborhood tavern every couple of corners, too, many with
Friday Fish Fry
or
Ten Cent Wing Night
signs in the window. There are election campaign billboards in front of countless houses, and red-and-blue Buffalo Bills flags galore.

Who would have guessed back when they moved here in April that Jen was returning to her hometown? How odd that her roots are here.

She always knew Mom grew up here, but Jen was led to believe that she had moved to the Midwest before Jen was conceived. The Carmody family is all back in Indiana, and most of Mom's family is in Chicago. Jen assumed that Grandpa Gallagher was the family's only tie to Buffalo. Now it turns out she's a native.

She doesn't feel like a native. As she boards the connecting bus on Main Street, surrounded by senior citizens and college students and strangers, some of them men who give her disconcerting stares, she feels like a little girl lost in a foreign city.

No. It's too late to back out now. She'd have to wait here for the next bus back to the suburbs anyway. She's come this far; she might as well go through with her plan. If she doesn't, she'll just go home and wonder what might have happened.

As the bus heads toward Quint Matteson's neighborhood, Jen goes over various scenarios in her head. They all start out pretty much the same—with Jen ringing the doorbell and the door being opened by a man who looks exactly like her.

That's where the fantasies branch off in different directions.

In some versions, her father gathers her into his arms, holds her close, and tells her he never wanted to let her go. From there, he either asks her to live with him on the spot, or insists on driving her home and confronting Mom and Dad angrily.

Those are the happy endings—at least, as far as Jen is concerned. In all the other variations, her birth father either denies that he's ever heard of her, or he tells her to get lost and slams the door in her face.

What will she do if that happens?

What
can
she do? You can't make somebody want you, and you can't make somebody love you.

Her mother's words come back to haunt her. Rather, to taunt her.

Whatever. Blood is thicker than water, and Quint Matteson's is flowing through her veins. For all Jen knows, her mother lied about his not wanting her. For all she knows, her mother never even told him she exists.

If he really didn't want her back then—if he still doesn't want her now—she needs to hear it from his own lips.

She'll never take her mother's word for anything again.

“Katie Gallagher! It's so nice to see you again!”

Kathleen forces a polite smile at Dr. Deare's receptionist, the one with whom she attended Saint Brigid's years ago. She should remember her name; maybe she would, if she weren't so damned exhausted.

As Curran shuffles off toward the seating area, Kathleen says, “It's so nice to see you again, too . . .”

“Deb. Deb Mahalski,” the woman supplies after an uncomfortable pause, the name provided not quite as warmly as it was the first time around. “I used to be Deb Duffy, remember?”

Doing her best to summon an expression of recognition, Kathleen says brightly, “Of course I remember. Saint Brigid's.”

When you come right down to it, she doesn't remember a Deb Duffy, and she can't recall ever having seen her anywhere other than right here. Which isn't unusual, given the school's size and the fact that so many years have gone by . . .

Or is it?

Paranoia steals over Kathleen.

Who is this woman, really?

There's no reason at all for Kathleen to suspect her of being anything other than an old school chum and an orthodontist's receptionist. No reason to look her over with a wary eye, wondering if she could possibly have been looking into the kitchen window last night . . .

Realizing the woman is watching her with an expectant expression and must have said something, Kathleen asks apologetically, “I'm sorry, what was that?”

“Your insurance card?” Deb's manner is growing less cheery by the moment. “I need to see it so that I can make a copy.”

“Oh. Right.” Kathleen fumbles in her bag. “But I think you must already have it on file . . .”

“We need it each time you come in.”

Have they always asked for it?

Kathleen can't remember. It just seems odd, that's all. Do they ask the other patients for their cards, too?

She glances around the waiting room and realizes that it's less jammed than usual. There are only two other patients, and they're both adults—a middle-aged woman and an elderly man. They might be here to see the chiropractor who shares the office space. Or they might be posing as patients, but they're really . . .

What?

Contract killers?

Undercover police officers?

Kathleen swallows hard, her heart beating like crazy.

“Um, did you find it?” Deb asks.

“Oh, sorry . . . here it is.”

As Kathleen hands the laminated card cross the desk, she tells herself that there's no connection between the phone calls, the pink bootee, the face out the window, and this woman having access to her personal information. No connection at all. It's not as though an insurance card would grant her access to a locked house.

Except that it wasn't always locked, Kathleen reminds herself yet again.

Damn it. How could she have been so stupid? All day, she's been thinking about the many times she left the door unlocked, running out on an errand, or to get the kids at the bus stop, or whenever Sissy comes to clean.

Anyone could have slipped into the house.

Well, she won't do that this week. She'll never do it again.

“Here's your card back.” Deb hands it to Kathleen, along with a clipboard with the insurance paperwork on it. “I'll just need you to fill this out.”

“I think you have our information on file?” Kathleen can't help saying.

“We need you to fill out a new set of papers each visit.” The woman nods at Curran, who's taken a seat on the opposite end of the room. “Is he ready? Because we're running ahead today, so he can go right in.”

“Oh, that's . . . that's great.”

It's also highly unusual. In fact, Dr. Deare has never even been on time, much less ahead.

Again, she fights a flicker of paranoia. What if this whole thing is some kind of elaborate plot? What if Dr. Deare isn't an orthodontist at all, and Deb isn't a receptionist? What if Curran walks through that door and she never sees him again?

“Curran? Sweetie? The doctor's waiting for you,” she says, pushing back panic.

“Okay.”

She bends to kiss his head as he passes, and he looks up at her in embarrassment and disgust. “Mom!”

“Sorry.”

Catching Deb looking at her strangely, she falters, then says, “You know how boys are. They don't like their moms kissing them goodbye in public.”

“Actually, I have daughters,” Deb reminds her. Another detail Kathleen couldn't be bothered to remember.

Then Deb adds, almost sympathetically, “But they don't like me to kiss them in public, either. And anyway, your son will be back soon, so . . .”

Feeling foolish, Kathleen says quickly, “Oh, I know he will be.”

Of course he will be.

As her son disappears down the corridor behind the desk, Kathleen forces herself to settle into a chair halfway between the two strangers. Neither of them appears to notice her.

The frantic worry subsides a bit.

She turns her attention to the clipboard, filling out half the first page before it slips out of her jittery hand and clatters to the floor.

Both the strangers look up from their magazines.

Deb, who is standing at the copy machine, calls, “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Just clumsy.”

This has to stop. She can't get through another sleepless night, or another day wondering who knows her secret . . . and how they found out.

She has to do something.

But what?

She has to tell somebody.

But whom?

The police are out of the question.

And Matt . . . well, he'll be shattered if she tells him the truth. Their family is already hanging in the balance, the tension in the house becoming unbearable.

If Matt finds out what she did . . .

Well, he might leave.

Would she even blame him?

But if he left, he might take the boys with him. Jen, too. Oh, God, he might take Kathleen's children away, and she wouldn't have a chance of getting them back. Not if anyone knew . . .

No.

Nobody can know.

Not even Matt.

There's nothing for her to do but hang on a little longer.

Hang on . . . and pray.

 

 

Quint Matteson's neighborhood isn't at all what Jen expected.

Then again, she reminds herself, she really had no idea what to expect. She only hoped—and this stretch of run-down two-and-three family houses on a treeless block bordering an industrial park is hardly what she hoped for.

As she makes her way along the uneven, litter-strewn sidewalk, she suddenly has the oddest sensation that she's being followed.

She turns her head and catches a glimpse of a figure in a long coat walking along half a block behind her.