Badbye

Goodbye. / Then I don’t know what’s so good about it. / Then badbye or just bye. / Yes, that’s probably just a goodbye. / Bye, then? / I wish we didn’t have to say bye. / We didn’t say bye. / We said “badbye” and “just bye” and “then bye.”

The distant thump of the front door. Gone. She didn’t even go to the window to watch him walk away. / And I cannot let you in. / What kind of a woman falls for a grieving man? / Badbye.

Once, when she was little, she was angry at Jason because he was going away and she refused to say goodbye to him. Instead she ran to a window and shouted after him, “Badbye, Daddy, badbye!”

She walked to the railing where airport people, who waited to wave goodbyes (and even badbyes) to their loved (and hated) ones, leaned.

I remember saying goodbye to all of my friends. But, I was telling lies, it wasn’t a goodbye at all, it was a badbye.

Her last words to him: Don’t hurt anyone else. But did she mean: Don’t hurt me. / That wasn’t a goodbye. It was a badbye.