Kiss Her Goodbye by Wendy Corsi Staub Page A

lighten up.”
    â€œOh, Jen, I don’t want to poke my nose into—”
    â€œBut it’s true, right? You need me to watch the girls, right? They’ll be upset if I can’t come anymore, won’t they?”
    Stella glances at her daughters, happily munching french fries at their little table in the corner. That they’d be bitterly disappointed if Jen doesn’t come back goes without saying, but. . .
    â€œPlease, Mrs. Gattinski . . .” Jen lifts her blond head at last, her expression beseeching, “Can’t you just tell my mom you really need me? It’s really important to me to keep this job.”
    It isn’t about the money, Stella realizes, looking into Jen’s troubled brown eyes, and it isn’t about the girls. Both undoubtedly matter to Jen—but this goes deeper. This is a power struggle between mother and daughter; one Jen is desperate to win.
    Remembering her own sheltered adolescence, Stella is half-tempted to agree to talk to Kathleen on Jen’s behalf. But another part of her—the protective, maternal part—feels compelled to tell Jen that her mother is right to keep a watchful eye. That the world can be a dangerous place; that every mother fears the worst that can happen and must do everything in her power to see that it doesn’t.
    â€œNever mind.” Jen bows her head again, scuffing the toe of her sneaker along a line of grout in the ceramic kitchen floor. “You don’t have to talk to my mom. That would probably be weird for you, huh?”
    â€œA little,” Stella admits. “But, Jen, if you feel that strongly, why don’t you talk to her yourself? Explain how much the babysitting job means to you. Maybe if you have a rational conversation when you’re both calm, she’ll understand.”
    â€œYeah,” Jen says in a whatever tone typical of a teenaged girl convinced that all adults are clueless.
    Stella isn’t clueless. She remembers what it was like to be a kid. But things are different now. Thirteen-year-old girls want to grow up too fast. They dabble in things Stella didn’t even discover existed until college. And even if they don’t get into trouble on their own, they’re prey for predators. They vanish from neighborhoods like this.
    â€œJen . . .” Stella begins, but trails off when Jen looks up expectantly—too expectantly. Stella doesn’t know what she was going to say, but she’s certain that Jen wouldn’t want to hear it. She settles for, “I’ll call your mom if you want me to.”
    â€œYou will? Thank you!” Jen takes a pen and a spiral-bound notebook from her backpack. “Can I give you her cell phone number? If you call our house my dad might answer, and you don’t have to talk to him.”
    Stella sighs. “Sure.” She takes the number Jen scribbles on the sheet of paper, and tucks it into the drawer by the phone. “I’ll call her as soon as I have time, okay?”
    â€œNo rush. I really appreciate it.”
    â€œCome on, Jen. I’ll drive you home.”
    â€œI can walk.”
    â€œI’ll drive you,” Stella repeats firmly. Now that the line has been drawn, she’ll stay on the maternal side of it, if only for consistency’s sake.
    She doesn’t blame Kathleen Carmody for wanting to keep Jen close.
    She’s willing to bet April Lukoviak’s mother wishes she had done the same.
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    Mollie Gallagher’s grave sits in a remote corner of the sprawling Saint Brigid’s cemetery, sheltered beneath the spreading branches of an enormous red maple tree whose trunk is several yards away.
    As Kathleen shuffles through the fallen red leaves toward the familiar gray stone, she finds herself noting that the tree’s roots have likely snaked as far underground as the boughs have above. She wonders whether they’ve twined their way around her mother’s coffin,