Mummy Said Goodbye

Solemn, she nodded again. “I think I heard Brett putting his bike in the garage.”

“Yeah? Go ask him if the teacher lists were posted yet.”

The intense emotion had passed, leaving bitter resignation in its wake. He dumped charcoal in the kettle, making no effort to be quiet, poured on lighter fluid and flicked a match. To hell with it if he cast a pall on the block party. Let ’em whisper about him. Feel a tiny twinge of guilt, or at least pity, because they had made his innocent children pariahs with him.

Once he was sure the charcoal was burning, Craig went in the house and sought out his eleven-year-old son. Brett had ridden his bike to the school, where rumor had it the lists had been posted showing which classrooms kids would be in and who their teachers would be when school started next week. Abby was the one who’d worried all summer about whether she’d be in the same class with her friends. But Brett, who professed not to care about school at all, had been the one to leap on his bike the minute Abby said she’d heard the lists were up.

Craig headed upstairs when he heard his daughter’s squeal.

“Daddy!” She popped out into the hall from her brother’s bedroom. “I got Mrs. Jensen! She’s super nice!”

“Great.” He gave her a hug and went into Brett’s bedroom. As usual, it looked as if a burglar had ransacked it. “Who’d you get?”

Shoulders slumped, Brett sat on the edge of the bed. “Ms. McKinnon.”

Damn. Some of his earlier anger and tension gripped Craig again. He’d hoped for any other teacher for Brett.

Carefully, he said, “She’s supposed to be good.”

Brett nodded without looking up.

Craig hesitated, then stepped over piles of clothes, a soccer ball and God knew what else so that he could reach the bed and sit down, too, right next to Brett. Abby stood in the doorway and watched, her jubilation gone and her face pinched, as it so often was these days.

“What’s the deal?” Craig asked.

He hadn’t expressed any of his concerns and hadn’t realized Brett had his own. The truth was, Robin McKinnon was said to be the best sixth grade teacher in the district. Right now, Brett needed someone who might be able to inspire him, energize him, discipline him.

Craig just wasn’t sure Robin would even try. She’d been a friend of Julie’s, which meant, in this town, that she would believe heart and soul that Craig had murdered his wife and hidden the body. Or ground it up into bits and fed it to some farmer’s pigs. Who the hell knew? Craig understood there were a dozen or more theories. Every one of them involved him as a crazed killer, a man who couldn’t stand the thought that his wife wanted to leave him. Nobody had considered the theory that maybe Julie Lofgren had just up and walked out on her family. Or that a stranger had abducted her.

If the police had had one grain of proof… But they hadn’t then, a year and a half ago when Julie disappeared, and they didn’t have one now.

Which hadn’t changed a single mind. The community had closed ranks against him. His lovely, innocent wife! they cried. A devoted mother and president of the parent-teacher organization two years running, she was well-known in Klickitat. Craig had never been anything but Julie’s often-absent husband, Brett’s dad who came to games when he could, Abby’s father who had missed her second grade parent-teacher conference because he was flying to Juneau.

Now, every single person in Klickitat knew who he was. He couldn’t go to the grocery store or get gas without feeling eyes on him, without knowing he was being judged.

He’d hoped that Brett would get the man just hired to teach sixth grade. Someone would have told him Brett’s sad story, of course, but at least he might not share the fervor of the people who’d known Julie.

No such luck.

After a long silence, Brett muttered, “Ms. McKinnon used to come to games and stuff.”

“She was a friend of your mom’s.”

Brett didn’t say anything.

“Her boy—what was his name?—was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?” Craig remembered.

“Malcolm.”

“You know, she’s not going to treat you any differently because your mom disappeared.”

“Yeah?” Fury blazed on Brett’s face when he lifted his head. “Everyone does! They either feel sorry for me,” he spat out, “or else they’re wondering if I saw anything. You can see what they’re thinking!”

Yeah. You could.

“Robin knows you.”

“So?”

Craig groped for an answer to the unanswerable. So she’d known Brett, known Julie, even, casually known Craig. She, too, had shunned the entire family after police cars with flashing lights were seen in front of the Lofgren home. She hadn’t called to find out why Brett quit the Little League team. Malcolm hadn’t called to invite Brett over to hang at his house.

Brett bowed his head again, but tension still ran through him. “She’ll think you killed Mom.”

“I’m not the one in her class,” Craig said. “Brett.” He waited until his son met his eyes. “I can ask for a change of teacher if you want.” No response. “Otherwise, we’ll give Ms. McKinnon a try. If you’re not happy, then I’ll have you changed to a different room.”

“Why can’t we move?” his thin, dark-haired son cried. “Where no one knows us?”

Because this is purgatory, Craig thought, and we’ve been consigned to it.

“You know why.” He wrapped an arm around Brett’s shoulders and squeezed. “We’re outta here the minute the police find out what happened to your mom.”

“But they think you killed her.” Brett searched his face. “Don’t they? So, are they even looking for Mom?”

“Sure they are.” Craig hated his falsely hearty voice, never mind the fact that he was lying to his kids despite his vows never to do so. No, the cops weren’t looking for Julie, because they were sure she was dead. Fish bait. What they were doing was waiting for him to screw up. Head out furtively some Tuesday afternoon for that storage space, rented under another name, where he’d hidden the bloodstained tarps. Or maybe even the body. The cops were probably listening to this conversation. Craig was willing to bet the house was wiretapped. He was the suspect, and the cops were dogging his every footstep.

Abby, still in the doorway, let out a sniff. “I miss Mommy.”

Craig held out his hand to her and lied yet again. “Me, too, Punkin. Come here.”

She plopped onto the bed on his other side and wept a few tears onto his T-shirt. Brett continued to sit stiffly, saying nothing.

“Daddy?” Abby said after a moment. “Did you light the coals?”

“Light the…” He swore and leaped up. “I forgot all about them.”

They’d burned down to fiery embers, perfect for barbecuing. Abby brought him the plate of steaks, which he laid on the grill. Juice sizzled as it hit the coals. Soon, the scent of their meat cooking mingled in the air with the smells from across the fence.

And finally, he and his children ate, near to the laughter and conversation in the next yard but not part of it, isolated as they always were now.

Because one day Julie had vanished, leaving behind her car keys and purse. Who would befriend even the children of a man who must have murdered his wife?

ROBIN MCKINNON sat in her classroom and waited for the bell that would bring students rushing in. Hands flat on her desk, she took one last survey of her newly hung decorations, the welcome she’d written on the blackboard, the arrangement of the desks, the names she’d stenciled onto cards and taped below each wooden cubby where her sixth-graders would park their backpacks and lunches.

Her gaze paused halfway, on one name: Brett Lofgren. She both dreaded and anticipated seeing him walk in the door. Notes from Brett’s fourth grade and fifth grade teachers made it clear that he had become a troubled boy since Robin had known him. And no wonder! How horrifying for him, to be torn between fear that his mother had abandoned him and his sister and the more frightening possibility that his father had killed his mother.

The Tribune had reported that Brett claimed his mother had said goodbye to him; his story was one of the major reasons Craig Lofgren hadn’t been arrested. But what if he’d made up that story to protect his father? Imagine as the weeks and months went by and his mother wasn’t found. Would he start wondering if his father had murdered her?

She shivered, thinking about it, remembering Julie Lofgren. Robin had met Julie through circumstance, just…oh, two mothers who often sat together at sporting events, rooting for each other’s kid, talking in that idle way you did when a Little League game dragged on for hours. After several years, she’d have sworn she knew Julie, the bubbly, pretty woman with dimples and an irresistibly childish delight in the triumphs of her children. Robin had talked about her husband, then their marital troubles and finally the divorce. Just before Julie disappeared, a year after Robin’s divorce—when she and Glenn had become embroiled in an ugly custody battle because Glenn was trying to impress his new girlfriend—Julie had listened sympathetically.