Kiss Her Goodbye Read Online Free PDF

“They like to copy each other and try to fit in.”
    â€œSo it’s just about looks?”
    â€œAnd gossiping about their friends. And discussing boys they like. You know . . . the usual female stuff. At least she’s here where we can keep an eye on her.”
    Matt sighs, aiming the remote control at the television. The college football game gives way to a home improvement show.
    â€œRemember when we used to have family game night on Saturdays last winter?”
    Kathleen laughs. “We did that once. Maybe twice. And it was total chaos. Did you forget how Riley insisted on moving his own piece and knocked over the entire board? And Curran kept accusing Jen of cheating . . . you really miss that, Matt?”
    â€œI miss having all of our kids home with us on a Saturday night. Next thing you know, Jen is going to be going out on dates. And then away at college . . .” He shakes his head, reaching down to pull the lever that reclines his leather arm chair with a jerk.
    â€œThen she’ll be married . . . having babies . . . asking us to babysit her kids on Saturday nights . . .” Kathleen licks her forefinger and turns a page. J-Lo beams up at her, wearing a low-cut beaded evening gown. Kathleen shakes her head, imagining what she herself would look like in that outfit.
    This tired thirty-two-year-old body has carried three babies and has the sagging stomach muscles—and breasts—to vouch for it. It isn’t that Kathleen’s overweight—she wears the same size as Jen, who has taken to “borrowing” her clothes and shoes lately, much to her frustration.
    But Jen is taller and longer limbed, and she looks different in Kathleen’s wardrobe. Her body is taut and lean; Kathleen’s is flabby. She isn’t motivated to get rid of the flab at the gym, as Maeve is. Nor is she motivated to give up fat grams or calories or carbs, or whatever it is that Maeve and the others are counting these days.
    Banishing J-Lo—and thoughts of dieting—with a swift turn of the page, she asks Matt, “You hungry?”
    â€œAre you?”
    She shrugs. “I could eat.” A few hours ago, after a late lunch of leftover beef stew and egg noodles reheated in the microwave, she swore she wouldn’t be hungry again until tomorrow. Now, however . . .
    â€œWant me to order some Buffalo Wings?” Matt asks.
    She makes a face. “If you promise to stop calling them that. Only out of towners say Buffalo Wings. Around here, you just say—”
    â€œWings. Just wings. I know. Okay, I promise I’ll make more of an effort to sound like a local.”
    â€œAnd I promise I’ll get some groceries into the house and start cooking again tomorrow.”
    â€œI never said you had to cook dinner every night, Kathleen. And I keep telling you that you can hire help around the house if you want. This place is bigger than you’re used to. You don’t have to do all the cleaning yourself.”
    â€œI know, but I want to. I want the kids—and you—to have . . .”
    She trails off. She’s said it enough times for Matt to finish her thought promptly.
    â€œWhat you didn’t.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œThey have a mother, Kathleen,” Matt points out gently.
    â€œI know they do.”
    So did she, long ago.
    She closes her eyes and inhales, imagining the hauntingly familiar scent of tea rose perfume wafting in the air; glimpsing a pair of green eyes, twinkling, coke-bottle-green eyes—her own eyes, set in the face of a woman who died three decades ago.
    Dad has green eyes, too. A murkier, mossier shade of green, and his have never twinkled. Not, for as long as she can remember, at Kathleen; not at his grandchildren; not at the few attractive nurses at the Erasmus Home for the Aged.
    The twinkle, if ever there was one in his eyes, was snuffed out on the blustery November night that a tractor trailer jackknifed into