A/N - I know, I've already got too many fics going on! But practice makes perfect, and I'm still trying to get this whole White Collar/"unlikely team" thing right. Updates will be slow in coming, but they will come.
She had hold of Christina's hand, and then Christina was gone. A moment's distraction as Nate's daughter, Adelaide, asked permission to join her friends, Nate looking at her helplessly and shrugging, and Christina had slipped away. Nate had run to the visitor's center to alert the fairground's security force, and she had started retracing their steps, the dairy hall, the merry-go-round, the barn. That was Christina's favorite place, especially the area where the lambs and baby goats, all the barnyard young, were available for petting and pictures. Helena looked down at her phone, no text within the last few minutes; the most recent one from Nate had informed her that security was on the lookout for a five-year-old girl, long dark hair, dressed in pink shorts, sandals, and a pink-and-yellow flowered top.
Helena pushed her way through the people filling the fair's midway, which was wider than many city streets. She almost hadn't come today, anticipating the crowds. It was the last day of the fair and the hottest. She felt guilty for blotting the sweat beading on her neck and forehead. Her daughter was missing and she was thinking about how sweaty she was. Helena crushed the damp napkin in her hand before throwing it into one of the trash receptacles that were placed every 20 feet, or so it seemed. She was fighting against the flow of the crowds. It was late in the afternoon, and tomorrow was a workday. Everyone looked tired and sunburned, even babies in strollers were red-faced and crying. A dark head, a flash of pink, and she would spin around, sometimes crying out "Christina!" before realizing that the little girl looked nothing like her daughter. Ahead of her she could see the rounded rooftop of the barn, the size and color of one you would see on a farm, not some fair-sized replica. Earlier this afternoon she had appreciated that touch of reality, a gesture toward the origin of state fairs among the cotton candy and carnival rides. Now she could think only of how big it was, and how long it would take to search when her daughter might be on the other side of the fairgrounds.
The crowds parted, and to her left several feet away, a little girl in pink shorts and a pink-and-yellow top was swinging the hand of a woman walking beside her. Her face was turned up to the woman, and she was smiling. Helena could make out a dark ring around her mouth and she was holding a half-eaten cookie. "Christina." Her daughter didn't hear her, the people around her didn't hear her either. Her throat had been so tight that she had barely been able to croak her name. "Christina!" Helena shouted and began shouldering aside parents and teenagers, couples and senior citizens. "Christina!"
The woman walking with Christina stopped and scanned the people who were shuffling and moving strollers from Helena's path. The woman raised her arm and waved it, shouting "Over here!" and Christina dropped her cookie, jumping up and down, yelling "Mommy! Mommy!" Stumbling as she left the concrete of the midway for the flattened grass and patches of bare earth on the margin, Helena scooped Christina up in her arms, burying her nose in the crook of her daughter's neck, inhaling the smells of chocolate and sun-warmed skin and baby shampoo. It was all the air she needed to breathe. Christina giggled. "You're tickling me, Mommy," she said and wriggled to be put down.
Helena released her but firmly held onto her hand. The other woman was talking, her voice calm and unhurried. "She was at our stand, asking if she had enough money to buy her mommy a cookie. She was about 50 cents short." Amused, she added, "We were doing a pretty good business, so I thought we could weather the loss."
Unsure if she could keep her voice steady, Helena said, "Thank you. I turned around for just a moment and then she was . . . she was . . . ." She faltered and drew a deep breath. "She was gone, and I was frantic."
The woman nodded. "She's safe, possibly on a chocolate overdrive, but safe." The gentle smile turned teasing. "Just in case you decide you have to report me to the police, you better have my name." She offered her hand. "Myka Bering."
Helena recognized that Myka was striving to lighten the moment, and she joined in with relief, shaking Myka's hand firmly. "Helena Wells, in case you decide to report me to child protective services."
Christina turned the sunniest of faces up at them, pleased that she was able to introduce her mother to her new best friend. Helena knew she would have to have yet another talk with her about running off to investigate whatever caught her interest or, this time, running off to carry out whatever idea had crossed her mind, but not right now. Right now she needed to – Nate. She needed to call Nate. She took her phone from the outer pocket of her handbag as Myka was suggesting that they follow her back to a . . . shack?
"Go on," Myka was saying, "make your call and have your friends or family join us at the Cookie Shack. The shade's almost as good as the cookies. And it's free." The voice was still easy, still warm, and the playful smile, which disarmingly crooked her lips, seemed to have increased its wattage. "Heck, we'll throw in the cookies for free, too."
For the first time since she had seen Christina at Myka's side, Helena truly looked at the woman who had rescued her daughter. A baseball cap sat lightly on wavy brown hair gathered into a ponytail. Her features matched the warm, unhurried quality of her voice, inviting Helena's gaze to linger on curious hazel eyes and a firm chin softened by a mouth that had already demonstrated its willingness to curve into a smile. Her jeans and polo shirt, which Helena noticed only now had "Cookie Shack" embroidered on the breast, looked smothering but Myka looked cool. By contrast, Helena felt there wasn't an inch of her sundress that wasn't plastered to her skin. She tried to console herself with the thought that she was a frazzled mother – panic and a heat index near 100 were the ingredients for a perfect sweat storm – but it didn't feel very consoling next to Myka's unblemished composure.
She called Nate on the way to the Cookie Shack, Christina having deserted her to dance around Myka's leggy strides and list everything she had seen at the fair. She mentioned ponies (miniature horses, Helena silently amended) several times, but at each "I saw ponies," Myka would exclaim with the same note of wonder, "Wow, ponies, really?" or "That must've been exciting" and Christina would giggle and enthusiastically nod her head. When they arrived at the stand, a brightly colored structure with plates of cookies and glasses of milk painted on its walls, people were standing three and four deep at the counter and the picnic tables nearby were already claimed. Myka didn't break stride, leading Helena and Christina toward a picnic table invitingly placed under a shade tree. A man in cargo shorts and a faded tee was sitting on the table top, hunched over a paper plate full of cookies. His cheeks bulging, he waved at Myka, motioning her over. "Hey, did you find her?" His question came out in a spray of cookie crumbs. Christina peeked around Myka's legs and then ran back to her mother, theatrically shrieking in alarm. "I guess you did. Welcome back, little girl lost." His gaze traveled past Christina to Helena. He straightened and leaped from the table, brushing crumbs from his shirt. With a flourish of his napkin, he swept the bench with more gallantry than efficiency. "Right this way, milady. Pete Lattimer at your service."
"It's hard enough stomaching the heat without a display of the so-called Lattimer charm," Myka growled, perching on the end of the bench and inviting Helena and Christina to join her. "We want customers to enjoy their cookies, not throw them up."
Clearly not her boyfriend, Helena thought, as she sat down and settled Christina next to her. She wasn't sure why it mattered, what Pete was to Myka, but he seemed too boyishly clumsy, too boyish for her period, the design on his tee a peeling screen print of Spiderman swinging between skyscrapers. But their affection for each other was also clear, Myka's gibe as fondly mocking as one that Helena would lob at her brother.
"Just because you're, you know, imper - . . . um . . . impre- . . . immune, immune," Pete landed on the word with relief, "to the magic doesn't mean she is." He scowled at Myka and then at his tee, sadly fingering a mustard stain just above Spiderman's head. He extended the hand to Helena to shake. "Women, they want to keep the magic to themselves, but it can't be contained." He wagged his head dolefully. "You know I'm Pete, but you are?"
The shirt might have been designed for a ten-year-old boy and Pete's flirting bordered on the clownish, but the appraising look he gave her as they shook hands was sharp and surprisingly serious. He might act the frat boy but an adult was at the controls. Helena's estimation of him rose, but she still wouldn't put him with Myka. Nor was she on the market for his particular brand of magic. "Helena," she said, and as Christina burrowed into her, she responded by holding her tighter, "and Christina."
"We're having a celebration now that the lost have been found," Myka said, grinning up at Pete. "Cookies and lemonade for everyone. Or iced tea or water or whatever people want to drink instead." Her expression turned wry. "Unfortunately the menu is pretty much limited to cookies."
Helena tipped her daughter's chin up, inspecting the smears of melted chocolate around her mouth. "I think Christina may have already had more than her share." She opened her handbag, took out a Wet Wipe, and despite Christina's efforts to bat it away, began to scrub at the chocolate. "How many cookies did you have?" While Helena critically evaluated her work, Christina unfolded three fingers and firmly said, "Two."
"But you held three fingers up," Helena pointed out.
"I like her math," Pete said. "It's a lot like we see from guys with a whole lot of letters after their names."
A cynical flicker of her eyelids was Myka's only comment. She turned her attention back to Helena's hasty clean-up of Christina, which included a thorough wiping of her daughter's hands. "I gave her one cookie, but I can't answer for how many my mother might have sneaked her."
Clean fingers didn't aid Christina in her counting. "I had three cookies," she amended, spreading wide all four fingers and her thumb.
"Maybe we should stay away from the cookies," Helena suggested, "but lemonade would be lovely."
"I'll go put the order in." Myka smiled at Christina, her gaze lifting from her and resting on Helena. "Child- or intrepid-explorer-size?"
"Do you have a mischief-maker size?" Making light of Christina's disappearance didn't stop a shiver of fear from running through her as she remembered turning around and not seeing her daughter beside her.
"It's our largest, called the Lattimer," Myka laughed, "and I don't think Christina's grown into it yet." Helena felt the gentleness in Myka's eyes like a steadying touch on her shoulder, as if Myka knew where her thoughts had gone and was reminding her that Christina was with her now, safe, if growing a little restless.
Leaving them in the dubious pleasure of Pete's company, Myka disappeared through the back door of the Cookie Shack. While Pete entertained Christina with his imitation of a squirrel, mainly limited to his tucking into both cheeks the masticated remains of the awe-inspiring number of cookies he had crammed into his mouth, Helena scanned the crowds for Nate. He would be one more middle-aged man in a golf shirt among thousands strolling between vendors selling everything from giant bratwurst to framed paintings of past state fairs. She hadn't known him long – she and Christina were recent transplants to the city – but she knew he was hoping that their "just friends" date at the fair would turn into something more. She could honestly say that the day had been more eventful than she had expected, but not in the way he wanted.
The back door opened and Myka emerged with a tray of paper cups, a stray wave of lemonade occasionally breaking over a rim. Behind her was a man carrying a tray holding a pitcher of lemonade and a pile of cookies of various colors and sizes. His age suggested to Helena that he could be Myka's father, but it was the similarity in their strides, relaxed yet swiftly covering ground, and the long legs powering the strides that confirmed the relationship. The resemblance was less marked when he glanced at her and Christina and she saw that his features, which were otherwise much like his daughter's, were set in a chilly reserve. His greeting was similarly cool, and Myka, as she passed out the cups of lemonade, sent him an unmistakable glare.
"And that's why they keep Mr. Giggles there in the back. He'd scare off the customers," Pete muttered under his breath, hooking a leg over the bench and sitting down next to Helena.
"It had to have been scary, losing your daughter like that," Myka's father said, and Helena wasn't sure if he had offered it as a comment or as an accusation. His next words made clear which it was. "When they're little like that and looking for trouble, you have to keep them close. Especially when there are so many strangers around. Never know what one of them might take it into his head to do."
"Dad," Myka said sharply, her glare intensifying.
Helena reddened but lifted her chin and looked at him steadily. She had been subject to worse criticism by old men even more disgruntled, old disgruntled men in bespoke suits who had had the power to -. She needed to concentrate on the here and now, and in this here and this now, she and Christina were the guests of the owners of the Cookie Shack, one of whom – whether it was because he was cranky from the heat, disliked children, or, based on Pete's muttered assessment, was always out of sorts, was determined to underscore her failings as a parent. Not that she needed to be reminded. Summoning what she hoped he would find a sufficiently grateful smile, Helena said, "I was terrified, and I'm very thankful that it was your daughter Christina found."
Myka's father had placed the pitcher and cookies in the center of the table with a faintly begrudging air, as if to suggest that being reunited with her child should be reward enough. Free cookies and lemonade only condoned her lapse. She must have sounded conciliatory enough because he said with gruff pride, "Your little girl couldn't have found anyone safer or better able to help her. Myka's FBI."
"Dad!" It came out as a bark. "We've talked about -"
But Helena wasn't listening. The awful turn her day was taking had just grown worse. She had lost her daughter only to find her walking on the other side of the fairgrounds and holding the hand of an FBI agent. The last time she had sat down with an FBI agent, it hadn't been over cookies and lemonade, and the conversation hadn't been friendly. Pete nudged her in the ribs. "We're not the scary type with guns." Reaching across the table, he picked out what looked like a peanut butter cookie with a jelly center. "I mean, we carry guns," he qualified, breaking the cookie in half and eating the center first. "Mmmm, strawberry jam, I keep telling them to get serious and go with grape, but this'll have to do." He stuffed the two halves into his mouth, Christina watching him in fascination. "We carry guns," he repeated, "but the most danger we face is a paper cut. Myka and me, we work financial crimes."
Helena tried to imagine Pete unwinding spurious trading accounts and couldn't get beyond the picture of him laboriously counting on his fingers. Myka, on the other hand, it didn't seem unbelievable to imagine her meticulously taking apart the financial statements of a dummy corporation. She was walking her father back to the cookie stand, her face still marked with annoyance. Helena suddenly could see that face, grim and suspicious, across from her at a conference table, stacks of financial reports like walls between them, and it cut at her more sharply than she expected. Shutting out the image – it wasn't real, couldn't ever be real, not anymore – Helena concentrated on the breeze stirring her hair, the cool feel of the cup in her hand. She acknowledged that this had been a lovely reprieve from the terror of losing Christina and the barrage of emotions that had followed upon finding her: relief, gratitude, joy, dismay, guilt, anger. She had been overwhelmed, so she had gladly let Myka with her quiet assurance take charge, take her in hand as she had literally taken Christina in hand, but the reprieve was over.
When Myka returned, Helena decided, she would make some excuse to leave and, with any luck, intercept Nate before he arrived at the Cookie Shack. Christina, however, seemed happy to sneak a cookie when she thought her mother wasn't looking and to match Pete's funny faces. Of all the times when her daughter should be impatient to go somewhere new or cranky and needing a nap, she was both alert and content to stay where she was. Adding to the poor timing of her escape was Nate's sun-flushed face as a gap in the crowds appeared. He gave her a vigorous wave and, Adelaide in tow, wound his way among the scattered picnic tables. After tousling Christina's hair and greeting her with a mildly scolding "You gave us a scare, kiddo," he and Adelaide sat on the opposite bench. She slumped with obvious boredom. She no sooner took her phone from a pocket of her shorts than her father's stern look had her stuffing it back in.
Pete had left to bring more glasses, and in a few minutes, he and Myka returned with extra glasses, lemonade, and cookies. Myka's father wasn't with them. Helena made the introductions, and she noticed how Myka glanced from her to Nate, trying, discreetly, to pinpoint their relationship to one another. Conversation stumbled from one inoffensive topic to the next, the heat, the size of the crowds, the city's traffic. Nate ate several of the cookies, appreciating in particular the chocolate cherry black walnut ones. Adelaide sipped at her lemonade, her eyes darting from the fairgoers trampling the grounds to the rides in the arcades area and back to the table; she was imprisoned between adults and a five-year-old girl, her boredom, like a bird in a cage, fluttering uselessly, futilely in glances seeking escape. There was no mention of Pete's and Myka's jobs, and Nate vaguely acknowledged that he and Helena worked together without saying where they worked or what they did. Nor did Myka or Pete ask. There was no reason for asking – she and Myka would never see each other again. Helena was surprised that she felt almost as disappointed as she did relieved. Take away what she did for a living, and Myka could be . . . . That didn't matter either. Christina had become a warm leaden weight against Helena's side, her eyes closed. Time to go.
Among her repeated expressions of gratitude, Pete's jokes about weighting Christina down with cookies so she couldn't go running off, and Christina's whines of protest at being nudged awake, Helena never lost the sense that Myka continued to observe her with interest. Every time she looked at Myka she encountered a gaze that was more searching than their coincidental meeting justified. Yet although its grip was firm as they shook hands before she and Nate and the girls started their long trek back to the main gates, Myka's hand gave hers no meaningful squeeze nor did it try to extend the contact. Myka's good-bye was equally as brief and natural, "I'm glad I was there to help."
Without a backward look, Helena joined Nate, lacing Christina's fingers between her own. He held Christina's other hand. There would be no more disappearances. They had gone only a short distance before Adelaide wandered over to a booth displaying jewelry on velvet-covered stands. She tried on bracelets and rings while Christina pouted and hugged Helena's hips. As she tried to disentangle herself without provoking a temper tantrum, she heard a vaguely familiar voice saying, "Hey, hey, Helena, hey." She turned around to see Pete jogging toward her. He pulled at her to draw her away from the jeweler's booth where Nate was limiting how much he would contribute toward Adelaide's purchase. Helena, making sure she had hold of Christina, reluctantly followed him.
"I know this may sound weird but just hear me out." He linked his hands and rubbed them against the back of his head. "When my gut tells me stuff, it's never wrong, okay, and my gut's telling me there was some sort of, I dunno, spark between you and Myka." He gave his head one more vigorous rub before he dropped his arms and leaned in closer to her. "Maybe you're going to tell me you're with Nate or you don't play that way, but that's not what I sense, and Mykes," he exhaled noisily, as if he were about to break a confidence, "she's a lady-lover. She doesn't announce it or anything like that 'cause it's not her style, but she is and she likes you. Likes you as a person and as, you know, someone she might want to ask out." He paused, giving her a significant look as he dug into a side pocket of his cargo shorts. "If she got a little encouragement." He retrieved a crumpled piece of paper and tucked into the palm of her hand, which was uncurling to receive it.
Helena stared at her hand, mystified, as Pete said, with obvious satisfaction, "I thought so." Glancing behind her, which suggested that Nate and Adelaide were done buying jewelry, he lowered his voice. "She'd kill me if she knew I was doing this, but she's the best. Don't let the law enforcement thing scare you off. Mykes always treats people straight up. Even if you're on the fence about the dating thing, you look like someone who might want another friend, and you can't find a better one. I ought to know." He lifted his arm in a half-wave at Nate and Adelaide before spinning in the opposite direction – almost taking out a family of four – and jogging back toward the Cookie Shack.
"What was that about?" Nate stared after Pete's retreating form.
Helena automatically slid the piece of paper into her handbag. She would throw it away later. "Nothing. He thought we might have forgotten something." She waited for Christina, who had a small child's impeccable sense of timing, to contradict her, but she was too busy yawning and knuckling her eyes to correct her mother.
Outside the gates, about to go their separate ways to find their cars, Nate suggested they have an early dinner at a pizza parlor close by the fairgrounds. Helena begged off, saying that she wanted to get Christina home and take care of a few chores before she had to prepare for the work week. Nate was disappointed but he nodded in understanding. She fobbed him off with a "Maybe, if I have time" when he brought up seeing a movie together next weekend. Deciding not to press any harder, he and Adelaide began drifting toward one of the far parking lots, Adelaide too busy thumbing texts to her friends to do more than mutter a tardy "Yeah, see you." Nate's smile was broad and he winked at Christina before wishing them a good evening. With a reminder of "Coffee run tomorrow, don't forget," he backstepped before clapping his daughter on the shoulder and guiding her across the pavement.
A spark. Was that what it was, what she had felt looking into that attractively friendly face? Not that Myka wasn't also physically attractive, lovely really, but it was her helpfulness, her casual taking charge to which Helena had first responded. As any terrified mother who thought she had lost her child would. Had Myka truly felt a spark dealing with a perspiring, overwrought woman who had managed to misplace her daughter? A brief exchange with a stranger at the counter of the Cookie Shack would have held more promise than their meeting. Helena suspected that the only reliable communication Pete could expect from his gut was on the order of "When's our next meal?"
Though to be fair to Pete, Helena wouldn't trust herself to recognize a spark, let alone act on it. The last time she had let an attraction overrule her common sense, it had turned out to be a disaster. Not a complete disaster. Christina had been born in the middle of that disaster, and while her daughter could cause crises without even trying, she was also what redeemed a time Helena would otherwise to choose to forget. With her elbow, Helena nudged opened the door from the garage into the townhome's hallway. They had stopped at a grocery store on the way home; not only were they practically out of milk but she also had had nothing to take for lunch during the week. She peered into the paper bag, which held a half-gallon of 2% milk, assorted TV dinners of 250 calories or less, and deli meat and bread for sandwiches. Humble lunches, but then this was a humble townhome, even for a rental, and the car, whose engine was ticking like a clock behind her as it cooled, was an economy sedan bought used. From the life she once led, this didn't represent a step down, it was a free fall. But just as she divorced Christina from all the mistakes and poor decisions that had, first, resulted in her conception and, second, in their retreat to this city where she knew hardly anyone, Helena tried to separate what was then from what was now. 'Then' didn't matter anymore, 'now' did, and 'now' was the modest home, the modest job, the modest life.
Christina had run ahead of her into the kitchen, clambering up one of the stools set at the center island to watch her unload their groceries. More from exhaustion than a passionate attachment to the package of cheap Princess Elsa hair accessories (a flimsy brush, a comb that could easily snap in two, and a handful of barrettes) that she had hugged to her chest, Christina had thrown a tantrum when Helena wouldn't allow her to put it in their grocery cart. Finally Helena had picked her up, her legs fiercely kicking, and plopped her into the cart, too tired to think of a better way of coping with her daughter's demands. The tantrum had ended by the time they wheeled into line at the cash register, although Helena could have sworn that Christina's shrieking had shattered the glass doors in the refrigerated section. The only evidence that remained of the storm were the dirty tracks that Christina's tears had left on her cheeks. Dirt, dried chocolate, tiny wispy threads of the cotton candy that Nate had shared with her; their day at the fair was written on her face. Helena wondered what story about the fair her own face might tell. Oh, yes, she knew – "Mother Abandons Five-Year-Old Child at Fair." Not the kind of story that would generate a romantic spark in the breast of an FBI agent.
But the last thing Helena wanted, would ever want, was an FBI agent with love in her eyes. She had seen many things in the eyes of the agents who had "interviewed" her countless times about her relationship with Stuart McKnight but love or any feeling remotely warm or human hadn't been among them. At the beginning, there had been no flame, no spark with Stuart. She had just emerged from a long, painful ending to a relationship that had been neither long nor particularly drama-filled. All these years later, Helena still wasn't sure why it had ended so badly, not badly in the my-life-is-forever-changed way that her relationship with Stuart later ended, but as badly as she thought she would ever experience at the time. She hadn't been unfaithful to Giselle or treated her poorly, but she had been absent, a lot, and when she had been available, she hadn't always been as attentive as she should have been. When Giselle had literally thrown out of her apartment a small shopping bag with Helena's few personal items (toothbrush, make-up, a sleep shirt she hardly ever wore) and followed it with a stream of invective that confirmed every insecurity Helena had about her looks, character, hygiene, mastery of etiquette, fashion sense, hobbies, and, last but not least, sexual performance, she decided it would be a cold day in hell before she ever went out on more than a date for coffee.
Then Stuart, with his unflappable charm, invited her to dinner. It had been an extraordinarily cool day for early August, and she had turtled her head into the neckline of her suit coat. The chill breeze that had accompanied his invitation should have been her first warning that hell might be freezing over. He was the CEO of a rival investment firm, a boutique firm like the one she and Charles managed, and they had met when one of her clients wanted to see how the gilded customer service that Wells Financial Management Services provided him (courtesy of the assiduous attentions of Charles Wells, President and CEO, and Helena Wells, Executive Vice President and CFO) stacked up against what McKnight Investments had to offer. Had he not been one of their most important clients, Helena wouldn't have lowered herself to bidding for his accounts in front of a competitor (or she would have demanded that Charles give the presentation if he felt so strongly about keeping the old curmudgeon). But Stuart had treated it as a game, even pulling off some hoary magic tricks like "finding" a quarter behind Walter's ear, and though Helena had groaned at the cheesy showmanship ("Where does your money disappear?" Stuart had asked him with a wink and then answered his own question by passing his hand over Walter's ear and displaying the coin. "It doesn't, not with McKnight. It's always your money, we never lose sight of that fact.") Walter had eaten it up, but, in the end, he didn't change investment advisors, especially when Helena sweetened the deal by knocking off 75 basis points off their usual fee. She and Stuart had ridden down to the lobby together in Walter's private elevator and, giving her a tiny paper flower that, thankfully, he didn't "find" behind her ear but plucked from the air to all appearances, he said casually, "Have dinner with me. It'll be fun."
Fun. It had been. Hot dogs and beer at a Yankees game. She happened to like baseball and the box was good, if not spectacular. What was spectacular was his introducing her to the Yankees, all of them, after the game and then his taking her to one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city for dessert. He had reserved a private dining room and better than the dessert was not having to change out her jeans and t-shirt to meet the restaurant's dress code.
Nothing fazed Stuart, not even when she bluntly told him a year later that her birth control had failed and she, they, were pregnant. He cocked his head, surveying the Michelin 5 star-equipped kitchen in which they were standing and in which he only ever used the $50 microwave on the counter, and said, "I guess we'll need to make room for the baby food and a high chair." She hadn't moved in with him, they had never discussed marriage; in fact, Helena wasn't sure she was in love with him. But just as she had accepted his invitation to dinner, she didn't object to his assumption now that she was carrying his child, she would move in. His place was (much) bigger and (much) nicer, and, coincidentally, it was closer to the office of her ob-gyn. Similarly, when she developed problems during her pregnancy that necessitated virtual bedrest, she didn't object to his suggestion that she take more than a leave of absence from Wells Financial, she resign altogether. If she wanted to do all the hand-holding and reassuring that had become her job, she could work at McKnight. If she decided she wanted to return to her computer science roots and develop the perfect algorithm, the one that guaranteed above-market rates of return in the most bear-like of markets, he definitely wanted her at McKnight.
So she moved in, she resigned, and for the next 18 months, which saw Christina turn one, she was happy. They still didn't talk marriage, she still wasn't sure she loved him, but Giselle hardly figured in her thoughts. If she needed confirmation that she was capable of the deepest devotion, she had only to look at her daughter. Then shortly after Christina's birthday, which Stuart had celebrated in his usual over-the-top fashion, staging it as an all-day event complete with a petting zoo, magicians, and acrobats, his real life, the one that underpinned the fairy tale in which Helena had been living, erupted into it. Except that she hadn't known she was living in a fairy tale. Though she had begun working, in fact, on the "perfect algorithm," imperfect approximations of which she had given to Stuart to test with small, proprietary investments made by McKnight, she knew very little about the inner workings of his company. She had met his senior officers at dinners and parties they hosted, and Stuart talked to her, always in general terms, about his clients and his frustrations and successes, but when she thought about McKnight Investments, which wasn't often, she invariably thought of it as "Stuart's business."
It was a fundamental error, because when federal agents arrived at their home with a search warrant and subjected her to numerous "interviews" over the ensuing months, his business became her business. She came to deeply regret the iterations of the "perfect algorithm" she had given to him. Agents found copies on practically every computer in the office and its viral ability to manifest itself everywhere undercut her claims that she had no connection to the company.
It had been fraud on a grand scale, not Madoff-large but as pervasive. There was virtually no investor who hadn't been misled and whose funds hadn't been funneled into a series of shell companies owned by Stuart McKnight, who then used them to support his lifestyle. If you want to see where the money went, the agents told her, you don't have to look very far. The penthouse they lived in, the vacation homes in Spain and Greece and St. Thomas (she had only ever been to the one in the Caribbean, she hadn't known of the other two), the luxury cars, the artwork. Even Christina's birthday party had been paid for by someone's nest egg. Everyone thought she had been in on it with him, including Charles. Stuart may have been defrauding his clients long before she met him, but she must have figured out what he was doing at some point. She wasn't stupid, she knew this business. For God's sake, hadn't she ever read a McKnight investment prospectus? Hadn't she wondered about his relationship with his stepfather, Vincent Crowley, who had been convicted of insider trading in the late 1980s? Had she lost her mind when she had had her baby?
Charles had literally screamed these questions and more at her. Wells Financial was under a cloud too, thanks to her. Agents had shown up at his office with a warrant for any records the firm had of her employment. They had unearthed her old computer from a storeroom and carted out every document with her name on it. His reputation might never recover, he might never recover. Helena let his denunciations and his near-hysteria wash over her without responding. It was all water, all roar – the investigation, the agents, the lawyer she had to retain, Stuart's lawyers – and she let it carry her where it would. Nothing mattered except protecting Christina, who comprehended nothing of what was going on but sensed everything. Whenever Stuart tried to hold her, she cried, and whenever he disappeared from view, she cried. Helena felt much the same way but she didn't need to add her wailing to Christina's; she sobbed and howled enough for the both of them. Helena couldn't recall much from those two years, which had begun when Stuart offhandedly told her that McKnight was being investigated and ended when he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. She remembered only that it rained, every day. Impossible, of course, but how else to explain the ocean floor she walked on, the surface of the water so far above her that she couldn't see a glimmer of light?
When the water retreated, when the sun finally shone, she was without a home, a job, a bank account with a positive balance, or friends on whose support she could depend. She had Christina and Charles's begrudging offers of assistance. She would never work for Wells Financial again She hadn't been charged with any crime, her sins had been complaisance and willed ignorance, but no securities firm would hire her, not even the one she (partially) owned. She made an unreliable living for the next year and a half by taking one short-term position after another and covering the inevitable shortfalls with the money she had received from selling part of her interest in Wells to Charles. When the last of the temporary positions ended, she still owed money to the law firm that had represented her and to the creditors Stuart had left hanging that didn't care that her name wasn't on the agreements or that she and Stuart had never married. Selling what remained of her investment in Wells didn't solve her problems, although it took care of most of her debts. She needed a job, something steady and on the books. Helena hadn't had a true stroke of luck in almost four years, but she got one then. An old friend of the family called her. He owned a mid-sized investment company in the Midwest. He wasn't looking for an investment specialist or a financial analyst, he had plenty of those; he needed someone who knew both computers and finance, who could build systems and the reports that could be run off them. His company was growing, and he needed to upgrade his IT to facilitate and promote the growth. He needed her . . . if she were interested.
Helena had nothing to keep her in the East. Hers had always been a somewhat rootless life. She and Charles had lived in seven different countries growing up, and though she had lived in New York for the past several years, she had never considered it any more a home than London or Hong Kong or San Francisco or Sydney. Stuart was in a federal prison over a thousand miles away, but their relationship had ended long before he was sentenced. As for Charles, he had decided he would fare better if he relocated to Wells's new London office. Christina was of a portable age, only four and a half. She would adjust quickly to a new place. Hers wasn't just the plasticity of the very young, it had something of her father's adaptability, which, Helena reminded herself on those days when Christina reminded her most strongly of Stuart, was not a bad thing –in small doses. What kind of fraud could she get up to in pre-school, after all?
Not a very convincing one if her best effort to get out of a bath before bed involved thrusting her hands, palms out, and declaring "I'm clean, I'm clean" while her day at the fair could still be read on her face. Helena ran the bath water and filled the tub with a cherry-scented foaming soap; Christina would emerge smelling like a throat lozenge. As both the bubbles and the cherry scent multiplied, Helena was reminded, oddly, of Myka. Maybe she was reminded of the cookies with the jelly center that Pete had avidly eaten. The jelly had been strawberry, not cherry, but they were both berries. The association was logical enough. Or maybe, unconsciously, she had been wanting an excuse to think about her, and she would have recalled Myka looking relaxed and attractively athletic in her polo shirt and jeans even if the soap had smelled like citrus or pine trees instead.
She hadn't been on anything remotely resembling a date in a long time. She had disposed of her sex drive when she had disposed of everything else that would bring Stuart to mind. For years she had been comfortable with a sexuality that had no fixed point, that didn't rely on types or looks or gender. More recently she thought she had gotten comfortable with a sexuality that, far from floating or roaming, hibernated in a cave. If, after all this time, it was blinking awake, well, that was what the marvel – and privacy – of online shopping was for. Helena turned the faucet off and tested the water one more time. Not too hot, not too cold. She went to the head of the stairs and called for Christina to come up and take her bath. She had work to do yet, clothes to iron for tomorrow, and a child to put to bed. This was her life, and for now, she was content with it. She wasn't looking to change a thing, not a single thing.