Read Online Kiss Her Goodbye by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online Page A

you! ’Kenzie is making her sky all dark.”
    â€œIt’s nighttime,” MacKenzie says with a logical shrug.
    â€œThen it should be black. Not brown. Tell her, Mommy.”
    â€œIt’s her picture. The sky can be brown if she wants.” Stella brushes the Goldfish cracker crumbs off her jeans and glances at her watch, wondering how many hours stretch ahead between now and bedtime. Too many.
    â€œI want Jen to come,” Michaela declares.
    Breaking news, she isn’t.
    Stifling a primal scream, Stella repeats her mantra through clenched teeth. “Not today. Jen isn’t coming today.”
    â€œBut Mommy—”
    â€œNot today! Now finish coloring or I’ll put the crayons away and make you . . .”
    Make them what? Sit in time out? She doesn’t have the patience to enforce the punishment and the squirming and whining that inevitably go with it. She doesn’t have patience for much of anything today.
    â€œI’m hungry,” Michaela announces.
    â€œI’m making dinner right now, so—”
    â€œI’m starving,” Mackenzie chimes in.
    â€œYou’ll have to wait. I just said I’m making—”
    â€œCan’t we have a snack, Mommy?”
    â€œA healthy snack.”
    Stella sighs. It’s easier to comply than argue. “Fine,” she says. “You can have an apple.” God knows they have plenty of those. Kurt’s mother brought them a bushel last week, suggesting that Stella make Kurt his favorite homemade strudel. She even brought the recipe, neatly copied on an index card, as a major hint.
    Stella takes two apples from the crisper and hunts in a drawer until she finds the red-handled corer and a paring knife. The girls used to eat apples whole and unpeeled until her mother-in-law started babysitting. She does everything for them, just as she did everything for her son when he was young. Hell, she still coddles and waits on Kurt hand and foot, and she’s made no secret of the fact that she thinks Stella should follow suit.
    She holds an apple steady on a wooden cutting board and centers the corer over the stem, then pushes it down into the crisp flesh.
    To think that Kurt frequently complains that the girls are spoiled rotten, implying that it’s Stella’s fault. If anyone is spoiled rotten, it’s Kurt.
    After coring, peeling, and slicing both apples into a plastic bowl, Stella plunks it down in front of the girls. Luckily, their whining tapers off fairly quickly and they go back to their coloring books, munching happily on apple slices.
    Stella pads back to the kitchen in her socks, rubbing a knot in her lower back.
    Other than the cutting board, the counters are spotless, and so is the sink. The entire house is, actually. Sissy was here while she was at work.
    When school started again in September, Kurt finally agreed to let her get some help around the house. She knew just where to find it, having received Sissy’s flyer in the mailbox, complete with neighborhood references and a special offer for 50 percent off the first few cleanings.
    Kurt couldn’t argue with a bargain like that, though he still grumbles about paying a cleaning lady once a week. Still, he grudgingly agrees that it’s worth it. Stella was never much of a housekeeper in the first place—another sore point with her mother-in-law.
    It’s not even four yet, she notices on the microwave clock. The apple will hold the girls over for a while. Still, she might as well see what she can throw together for dinner. It’s going to be just the three of them again tonight. Kurt told her when he left this morning that he has another late meeting.
    It’s just as well. Things have been chilly around here ever since Saturday night when he had to catch a ride home from the Chamber dinner with a colleague.
    She can’t understand why he didn’t feel compelled to rush home with her after Jen called to tell them about