A/N: I'm out of rotation with my other fics, but I really did see this chapter as a continuation of the previous one, so I wanted to finish it. Now, with most of the characters introduced, I have to start setting things in motion . . . Hmmmm.
Myka expected a residence less modest than the one they were walking up to. The Houston art theft alone should have netted Helena millions, not to mention the scams she must have worked both before and after it. Doubtless she could have afforded something far grander than the Cape Cod style home in front of them, which didn't even have the virtue of being particularly historic. That siding wasn't from the nineteenth century. It was the Wells' trademark, Gentleman Jim's at any rate, to conspicuously consume, daring law enforcement to trace back the flashy cars, the luxurious homes, the expensive accessories to thefts and forgeries he was suspected of committing. But this was a home at which Gentleman Jim wouldn't have looked twice. Not that it wasn't nice, well out on the island, rubbing boundary lines, if not elbows, with much more expensive properties to its east, but it wasn't splashy. Two-story, with a roof that swept down to overhang a front porch, whose steps they were just now climbing, it was what Myka would expect a moderately successful attorney and his or her moderately successful financial manager of a spouse to own. Maybe Helena viewed her father as a counterexample and banked her money instead of spending it. In countries where banking laws were more lax. The door opened, and Myka was surprised that Jemma Wells was alone, no dark-haired little girl at her side. Myka was even more surprised to realize she was disappointed that Christina wasn't with her grandmother. Losing herself in daydreams about mini-Helenas had ended for her long ago.
Jemma was a little grayer, a little rounder than when Myka had last seen her, but her skin was still remarkably unblemished, her complexion just as fair as Myka remembered. The look she gave her daughter was one Myka remembered too, a mixture of affection and wariness, but Jemma was already enfolding Helena in a hug. Although Helena wasn't especially tall, she stooped over her mother, as if she were trying to study the porch's flooring over Jemma's shoulder. With a decisive pat, Jemma ended the embrace and regarded Myka with an unembarrassed wistfulness. "I've often thought about you," she said, leaning forward so dramatically that Myka thought she might be the next recipient of a hug. But if that had been Jemma's intention, she thought better of it, rocking back on her heels and turning her attention to Steve. "You're her partner, I assume. And what do they call you?"
"Steve Jinks," Steve said, "but my friends call me Agent Jinks." He smiled boyishly and shook her hand.
Myka bit her lip in exasperation. Certain older women brought out a joking, teasing quality in him, not quite flirtatious, not quite filial, but in-between. All she needed was for Steve to take a shine to Helena's mother.
Jemma said, almost as coyly, "Then you can call me Mrs. Wells, Agent Jinks."
Helena gave vent to the groan that Myka had been suppressing. "For God's sake, you haven't been married to the man in decades."
Ignoring her, Jemma said, "Just the two of you bringing her by? I wouldn't have been surprised if a SWAT team had been her escort." She cast another affectionately wary glance at Helena. "You're not insulted that they didn't think you more dangerous than that?"
"It might not appear that way, but they have me effectively bound and gagged." Helena followed her mother into the foyer. Stairs to the second floor were on the right, and Helena drifted toward them, gazing up at the landing. Her voice growing sharper, she asked, "Is Christina down for a nap? And why didn't you tell me that Ben was still trying to cut me off from her?"
"Bound, yes, gagged never," Jemma said with a wry glance in Myka's direction.
The foyer opened into a large living room, which, on one side, was bordered by the kitchen and dining room, and, at the opposite end, by a back porch. She waved a hand toward the sofa and chairs that formed a loose U in the center. One of the chairs, oversized and plushly upholstered was clearly Jemma's; a magazine was splayed over one of its arms and the TV remote teetered on the edge of the cushion. A matching ottoman had been drawn close; if she were to sit in the chair, Myka figured her legs would overhang the ottoman by several inches. Coloring books, markers, and a variety of toy zoo animals, differing in sizes and materials, were strewn across the rug.
"Take a seat where you like. I was just starting to tidy up when I heard you on the porch." As Helena bent to pick up a stuffed elephant, Jemma said apologetically. "She's been so excited about you coming home, love, that she's barely slept the past few days. She just collapsed after lunch, practically fell asleep in the middle of eating her sandwich, so I put her to bed. I can wake her up."
"No," Helena said, slumping into another overstuffed chair across from Jemma's. "Let her sleep. I'll wake her up in a little while."
Jemma hovered near the chair. "As for Christina's father, I've been trying to work on him, make him see reason. That's why I didn't say anything. I've been hoping for better news."
Pulling disconsolately at the elephant's trunk, Helena said, "The Winslows aren't compromisers. They've never had to be." With a resurgence of her waspishness, she darted a hostile look at Myka. "Are there limits to how often I can talk to my daughter on the phone?"
"Not that I'm aware of." Myka said calmly.
"I suppose that you'll be listening in. Who knows what skulduggery a four-year-old can get up to? I'm hardly confident, given the FBI's past performance, that you'll be able to outwit a preschooler."
Myka ignored the sarcasm, wandering restlessly near the end of the sofa where Steve was sitting, examining a plush giraffe. "Feel free to rip it open, Agent Jinks. You don't know, I may have hidden some stolen jewels in it," Helena said, brushing the elephant from her lap.
"Helena, keep a civil tongue," Jemma warned. "You don't need to make things more difficult than they are."
Helena shrugged, but as the sounds of someone slowly, very slowly descending the stairs filled the room, she whirled around, her face alight. A little girl, her head barely topping the handrail, was making sure both feet were on the same step before moving down to the next. She uncertainly surveyed the living room. "Nonni?" Her voice quavered.
"Come on, pet," Jemma said briskly. "Your mum came home like I said she would. She just brought some friends with her, that's all." She squeezed her daughter's shoulder as she passed her, continuing to encourage Christina.
Helena got up from the chair to follow Jemma, calling out softly, "Hi, pumpkin. I've missed you so much."
Christina stopped again to take another survey of the room, but Myka and Steve were still there. Steve flashed her a grin and waved hello, but she only stared at him before concentrating on the step below her. She took the last one in a jump, her motion carrying her to her grandmother. She hugged Jemma's knees, burying her head against Jemma's thigh.
"No need to be shy," Jemma gently scolded. "You know your mum, of course, and her friends won't bite you."
Christina turned her face against Jemma's leg just enough so that she could see them, but she didn't move away from her grandmother. She was wearing corduroy overalls over a long-sleeved top patterned in dancing bears. Her hair, as black as Helena's and just as thick, hung past her shoulders, flyaway and pillow-mussed. Jemma's hand, which had automatically started to smooth Christina's hair, stopped and slipped over to her shoulder to give her a tiny push.
"Go say hello to your mum. You were just saying this morning how you were going to give her a hundred kisses when you saw her."
Helena was crouching, arms outstretched. "I'll give you a thousand. And I'll tell you lots and lots of stories just like before."
Myka had never heard Helena sound so indulgent, not without some trace of mockery, and she had never seen her smile with such joy. She hadn't known that the ends of Helena's mouth could climb so high up into her face. But Christina remained at her grandmother's side, and Myka searched for a distraction because as Helena fought to keep her smile wide and bright and relaxed, Myka didn't want to feel sorry for her yet again. On an end table next to Steve, there was a small, fuzzy tiger, seemingly abandoned. It was the kind of cheap toy bought on impulse from a bin in a department store or found inside a Happy Meal. A child would play with it for five minutes and then forget about it. But Myka was no sooner holding it than she heard Christina crying "That's mine!" and running toward her with the apparent intent of ripping it from her hands.
Jemma's disapproving "Christina!" and then her sterner "What have I told you about sharing?" went unheeded; Christina was tugging at Myka's slacks, saying peremptorily "Mine!" and reaching for the tiger.
The color of Christina's eyes was lighter than her mother's, hazel rather than a brown so dark as to be indistinguishable from black, but the look in them, as much challenge as it was demand, was Helena's. Myka knew that one of her big, silly grins was spreading across her face, and she resented it, if only because Helena would see it, but she couldn't help herself, the Wells arrogance, miniaturized, was undeniably cute, and Helena would see that too. Trusting, no, hoping that she was reading Christina right and that what she was going to do wouldn't result in a meltdown, Myka said just as possessively "Mine!" and held the tiger behind her back. Christina's mouth dropped open in surprise, and the brows Myka remembered from the picture of Christina with her father, thicker and more arched than her mother's, dismayingly pulled together, and Myka thought for a moment that she had guessed wrong, that a howl of outrage wouldn't be far behind. Instead, with something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, Christina ran behind her, and Myka switched the toy between her hands and brought it back around as Christina chased it, giggles bubbling and then bursting into shrieks. Holding the toy above Christina's flailing arms, she answered each hiccupped "Mine" with a "Not yet." Just as Christina seemed ready to put an end to the game with a more strident claim of ownership, Myka flipped the tiger across the room to Helena. She hadn't planned to do it, and Helena obviously wasn't expecting to end up with the tiger, knocking it to the rug in a clumsy attempt to catch it. She had been watching the two of them a little enviously, and she met Myka's toss with a puzzled look, unsure whether Myka had meant to throw it to her or at her.
"Go, go get it," Myka urged Christina who, indecisive about what to do next, was almost comically swiveling her head between Myka and Helena. Finally, having made up her mind, she yelled to no one in particular, "Mine," and ran to her mother, ignoring the tiger Helena now held in her hand, burrowing into her chest, as Helena swept her up into her arms.
"All yours." Helena peppered the top of Christina's head with kisses. She looked at Myka and her lips parted as if she were about to say something, but then they closed and she buried them in Christina's hair.
The disciplinarian in Jemma was struggling to maintain a frown, and as Christina tilted her head on Helena's shoulder, smiling smugly at her grandmother, Jemma shook a finger at her, which was enough to start Christina giggling again. Helena's back was turned to the finger-shaking display, but she must have felt the admonition in the air because she turned around, shifting Christina to her hip, and said wearily, "I know she behaved badly, but can we skip the life lesson or time out for once? I have little enough time with her as it is." Summoning a smile for her daughter, she said playfully, "You were encouraged to misbehave, weren't you? Agent Bering doesn't always play by the rules."
Christina understood from the warmth of the tone, if not from the words themselves, that she was in no immediate danger of being punished, and she nodded vigorously. Jemma gave her a kiss on her cheek as she made her way to the kitchen, nudging coloring books and stray markers from her path. "Might as well give her her snack now since she hardly ate anything at lunch." She directed a half-apologetic look at Myka and Steve. "What she has are apple slices and string cheese. Which you're welcome to have as well, if you'd like." Sighing, she rounded the long counter that separated the kitchen from the living room and said over the squeal of the refrigerator door as she opened it, "I gave Helena biscuits and pudding for snacks when she was a child. Apparently I was maltreating her."
Helena laughed easily, lightly, carrying Christina with her into the kitchen. "I always nicked a few candy bars from the store on my way home from school. Didn't you ever wonder why I left the biscuits and pudding untouched?" Stepping around her mother and searching a cupboard for plates, she said, "I'm sure that can't come as a surprise to Agent Bering or Agent Jinks." With Christina still clinging to her, she placed them on the counter and asked Myka and Steve innocently, "Water, milk, or juice?"
"Juice," Christina said, "Juice, please," with special emphasis on the 'please.' She looked at Myka smugly, as if to let her know that she could remember her manners when she wanted to.
Steve caught Myka's eye and wiggled his phone. "We need to check in. I'll do it." He held the giraffe up for Christina to view, and once she focused on it, he made a great display of releasing it on the sofa cushion. "I get it, it's yours." He smiled. "Save some apple slices for me."
Myka couldn't remember what after-school treats her mother would have made for her, probably because there hadn't been any - her father didn't approve of snacks. Maybe as a result, she wasn't much for snacking, and apples, in any event, weren't among her favorite foods, but she was hungry. Helena had offered to split her sandwich with her on the ride over, but Myka had declined the offer. It hadn't made sense because she wasn't going to ask for part of Steve's jalapẽno-loaded sandwich, but she couldn't force herself to accept food from Helena's hand. There would be no intimacy to it, she knew that, one-half of a chicken salad sandwich passed from the back seat to the front. But she couldn't do it. Yet somehow sitting at the counter with Helena, her daughter, and her mother, and eating apple slices and string cheese with them was all right. She concentrated on pulling a string of cheese down and off a perfect factory-cut cylinder. Probably factory-made cheese as well. In fact, Jemma wasn't eating the cheese, claiming that it was like eating rubber bands.
Watching Helena with her daughter, Myka realized that whatever doubts she had about Helena's capacity for loving someone, anyone, were gone. Helena's ability to love someone other than her child might be limited, but she loved Christina whole-heartedly. The anger and anxiety that had added lines to her face and an edge to her voice had vanished. As she giggled with Christina as they made string cheese mustaches that they held to each other's mouth, Helena looked as she had when Myka first met her, confident, relaxed, playful. And Myka felt just as tense and wound up now as she had then.
"You do it," Christina said to her. She flattened a piece of cheese against her upper lip. "Like this, see?"
Myka wasn't sure how much she wanted to, or should, continue to indulge her. There was a boundary that needed to be observed. She wasn't Helena's friend or relative. She was Helena's jailer. On the other hand, she was going to be a part of Helena and Christina's Sunday afternoon visits for God knew how long, and she should establish some rapport with the child. So she smiled and pulled several long, thin strands of cheese and held them above her lips, forming a droopy handlebar mustache that she thought made her look like Yosemite Sam.
Christina laughed. "You're silly," she declared. "Isn't she, Mommy?"
"Right now, very much so," Helena agreed quietly, and Myka saw something in those dark eyes that might have been softer than anger, but she let her own glance slide away.
Myka bent her head and let her mustache drop to her plate. Darting her hand across the counter, Christina stole some cheese from Myka's plate. There was nothing soft in those eyes, only another challenge, and Myka snaked her arm across the counter and stole a piece of Christina's apple. As Christina yelped in mock outrage, Jemma brought the competition to an end by removing Christina's plate.
"When you start playing more with your food than eating it, I know you're done," she said, taking the plate to the sink. Returning to the counter, she suggested to Helena, "Why don't you take Christina upstairs and try to have her lie down? I don't read to her nearly as well as you do. That's what she tells me, anyway."
Helena looked inquiringly at Myka. "Do you trust that I won't try to escape through the bedroom window? Or do you need to be with me every minute?" The mockery had returned, but there was no especial bite to it.
"I'm not going to begrudge you some time alone with your daughter," Myka said. "Besides, where are you going to go with the monitor on you?"
"Good point." As Christina slid off her chair, Helena held out her hand to her. As they walked toward the stairs, Helena would point to the various animals on the floor and ask if Christina wanted to take them to nap with her. By the time they reached the bottom of the steps, Christina had an armful, and Helena looked over her shoulder, not at Jemma but at Myka, and shrugged helplessly.
Myka turned her attention back to her plate and the lone Lincoln Log of mozzarella that remained. She picked at it slowly as Jemma put the few dishes into the dishwasher and swept leftover apple into the disposal.
"I've thought about you over the years," Jemma said, squeezing the excess water out of a sponge and wiping the counters around the sink. "Wondered if you found someone else, if you had children, if you were happy. Are you married? Do you have children?"
Myka appreciated the awkwardness of their situation. When she had been involved with Helena, they had had dinner with Jemma a few times and there had been the occasional visit,when mother or daughter felt a need to check in, pick up an item, drop off a present, but she had seen Jemma no more often than that. Yet she had always sensed that Jemma liked her, approved of their relationship. Still. . . still, did every woman roughly Myka's mother's age assume that her happiness depended on having someone in her life and/or children?
"Married briefly, no children," she said politely but not encouragingly.
"I know, you're thinking I'm from the dark ages to ask you that, but, clearly, you're still with the FBI. Yet I can hardly believe you're happy with your job right now, having to babysit my daughter. Asking about significant others and babies seemed safer." She smiled ruefully at Myka. Her expression altered, growing serious, intent. "I sent her upstairs, you know, to have a moment alone with you. She doesn't want anyone to plead her case for her, and you're not going to be easy to convince, but she's not the same person she was. She's changed, Myka, she really has. Whatever she's agreed to do for you, she'll do it. There's nothing up her sleeve this time."
Myka resume picking at the cheese, but it had become warm and soft and stuck to her fingers. She bit back a sigh and wiped her hands on her napkin. Bringing her plate over to Jemma and looking for a wastebasket in which to dump the string cheese, Myka said, "You're right, I'm not going to be easy to convince, nor is anyone else at the agency. She has a lot to make up for, and there's no margin for her, Jemma, none at all."
Jemma nodded, betraying no disappointment. With a slight hitch of her shoulders, as if she were resettling a weight that she had been carrying for a while, which Myka supposed she had been, Helena's betrayal of the agency and subsequent flight a shock to her as much as to the agents, she took Myka's plate and set it in the sink. She popped the cheese into a wastebasket underneath the sink muttering, "Oh, that's nasty when it's warm." Washing her hands, she said over the stream of water, "She has reason now, to be a better person, than she did then."
Pete was asking the questions. They hadn't talked about who was going to take the lead when the doorman or the security guard or whoever it was behind the desk had buzzed Jemma's apartment to let her know that the FBI were here to see her, but when the security locks released and she and Pete were riding the elevator to an upper level, Pete had taken one look at her and said, "I've got this, Mykes."
Jemma recovered from the news quickly, the closed eyes rapidly fluttering open and the slackness that had entered her face gone, her jaw setting like stone and her mouth compressing into a bloodless line. Within seconds, she had gone from fearing that the two FBI agents in her home were there to tell her that something terrible had happened to her only child to realizing that they were there to tell her that her only child had done something terrible. It wasn't resistance that Myka sensed in her as much as retreat. This wasn't the first time that the authorities had come calling on Jemma Wells about a member of her family. She may not have had the longest marriage to Jim Wells, but it had been an eventful one.
Pete had sensed it too, probably more readily because he hadn't even bothered to take out his notepad. He knew what her answers would be.
No, she didn't know where Helena was. She hadn't spoken to her daughter in over a week.
No, she didn't know anything about the Marston Gallery in Houston, other than what was in the papers, and she didn't know any members of the Marston family.
No, Helena had never mentioned the Marston family to her.
No, she didn't know if Helena had been in contact with her father or brother.
No, she hadn't been in contact with Jim Wells and she had even less reason to be in contact with his son.
And so it went on, all morning it seemed to Myka, although when she checked her watch, she was surprised to learn that she and Pete had been in Jemma's apartment for less than an hour. Pete asked some questions more than once, rephrasing them to see if he could elicit a different response, but Jemma's No's were nails being pounded into Myka's head, long, blunt nails being pounded by a sledgehammer. Eventually Pete stopped, but Myka had had to ask Jemma for a glass of water so she could down enough ibuprofen to stop the throbbing - and to shred her stomach lining. As Jemma led them to the door, registering no emotion when Pete said that they would want to talk with her again, she held Myka back, clutching her elbow. After giving Myka a twitch of his mouth that Myka knew meant he would wait for her in the hallway, Pete thanked Jemma for her time.
"She'll regret this. I know how much she cares for you, even if she's too blind to see it herself."
With a harshness, a rudeness, that sounded very strange and very good to her at the same time, Myka said, "If you're being honest with me, then you obviously don't know a damn thing about her. And if you're not, keep your lies to yourself. No one is going to regret any of this more than I do." But the pleasure of being rude faded almost immediately, Jemma had been offering her the only comfort she could. "I'm sorry," Myka said, lurching out of the apartment in her hurry to get away. "I'm sorry."
In the car, Pete suggested, in all seriousness, that her headaches might disappear if she just let herself fucking cry about the whole thing. As he handed her a Wendy's napkin from the dashboard to use as a tissue, she stared at him and then punched him in the shoulder. Hard.
Or, he said, she could go on inappropriately directing all that rage at others. Her choice. But he had only two shoulders.
"She has Christina, yes," Myka said impatiently. She sucked in a long breath, offering an apologetic smile of her own to Jemma. "But having her didn't stop Helena from pulling a securities scam. Which seems all the more ridiculous when she had. . . this." Myka waved her arm at the living room, trying to suggest the financial resources that made the home - modest only in comparison with the immodest homes surrounding it - possible. "Why would she be so greedy or so cocky as to risk her freedom on a con that was outside her field of expertise?"
"It's complicated," Jemma said hesitantly. "It's not what you think it is. But it's Helena's story to tell, if she wants to tell it."
Myka raised an eyebrow in disbelief but didn't press her. She glanced toward the porch, which was where Steve had gone to call the office. Usually calls to Pete didn't last this long. She wondered if something had gone wrong already, and while part of her anticipated the relief she would feel at having this devil's bargain they had struck with Helena scuttled, she couldn't help but look up toward the second floor, where Helena was trying to settle Christina down for a nap. It was always possible that Helena was trying to remove her ankle monitor or estimating the jump from a second floor window to the ground, but Myka believed she was reading to her daughter or talking to her about her day. Christina was a handful, but she was a cute handful, and Myka didn't like the image that flashed through her mind of a four-year-old sobbing because her mother had been taken away from her yet again.
"Christina wouldn't have been possible without you," Jemma said suddenly.
The sound of Jemma's voice breaking the quiet, the fact that they had both been thinking about Christina startled Myka, and she stared at Jemma blankly, unable to decipher her logic. "I can't work that one out," she said after a long pause.
Myka felt pinned by how intently Jemma was looking at her. "I think you can, if you want to."
The front door opened, and Steve was pocketing his phone, his expression vaguely inquiring as he glanced at Myka. She shook her head. As he came closer, he murmured, "Sorry, I took so long. We're going to have provide blow-by-blows of our time with her apparently." Letting his tone become more casual, he said, "And there was a message from Paul I had to respond to." Slipping onto one of the chairs at the counter, he smiled brightly at Jemma. "Am I too late for a snack?"
Myka tuned out the easy chatter Steve and Jemma fell into as she checked her phone and found herself, more than once, running her eyes up the stairs. She didn't need to look in on Helena, and they weren't short on time. Helena could squeeze in a few more fairy tales if that was what Christina liked. But despite the reasons she had marshaled against going upstairs, she was soon going up the stairs, feeling foolish and intrusive and defensive all at once. A playroom was on the right and bedrooms were farther down the hall. The door to one was open, and she could hear Helena talking softly to her daughter. She had forgotten that Helena could sound like that, low and intimate and smiling even when she wasn't smiling. She spun around, ready to leap the stairs, if need be, to the first floor, when Helena called out, "You can quit lurking, Myka, she's not asleep."
It was the kind of room her sister Tracy had always wanted for herself when they were growing up. From the design magazines that never sold in their father's bookstore, she would tear out pictures of bedrooms that displayed "the perfect look for your little princess's room," canopy beds with frilly bedspreads, dressers in candy cotton pink or lilac, miniature make-up tables, murals of kittens and puppies and ponies painted on the walls. Christina's little-girl furniture was pale blue and yellow and pink. While she had no canopy bed, her comforter and sheets displayed Disney princesses, and in a corner of the room was a large doll house, a painstakingly detailed replica of a turn-of-the-century Victorian home. A far cry from what Tracy had had to make do with, a narrow room in which were crammed two twin beds and a second-hand dresser shared with Myka.
Christina was barely visible among the stuffed animals that crowded her pillows. But as Helena had said, she wasn't asleep, giggling as Myka surveyed the room. "You again," she said gaily.
"Myka," Myka said, leaning against the dresser and jostling a music box that started playing "Let It Go" until she promptly opened and closed the lid.
"Myka," Christina repeated. "My-KA!"
"Shshsh." Helena was stretched on the bed beside her daughter. "Nonni thinks you're napping." She fussed with one of the animals, a stuffed elephant, placing it closer within reach of Christina's arm.
"Naps are boring," Christina declared, although she yawned widely in the middle of her objection.
"Most things that are good for us are boring, pumpkin. It's a fact of life that you'll have to get used to." Helena slanted Myka a sardonic look.
Christina didn't miss it, following the direction of her mother's gaze. "Is My-ka good?" She whisper-stressed the 'ka.' "Is Myka boring?"
"Yes, she's a good thing. . . but not boring." Helena's smile was all the more wicked for being just the faintest upturn of her lips.
Myka ignored it. "We need to keep an eye on the time."
Helena sighed theatrically. "Not boring but occasionally irritating." At Christina's sleepy frown, she said, "But still very, very good."
Christina turned on her side and drew the sheet up to her chin. "Just a while longer, Mommy."
"I'll be down soon," Helena said quietly to Myka. "No need to patrol the hallway." She gestured to the windows on either side of the bed. "See? They're both locked." As Myka's mouth thinned in exasperation, she added in mock complaint, "I can never please you. If I try to escape, you're unhappy, and if I don't try to escape, you're unhappy."
"Four o'clock, Helena."
Helena tilted her head toward the Disney clock on the nightstand. "Belle will let me know when it's time."
Myka left her humming softly to Christina. At the bottom of the stairs, close to the door, were two large suitcases. Steve hopped down from his chair at the counter with what looked like a peanut butter sandwich in his hand. He had scored peanut butter. And jelly. "Jemma had me bring these from Helena's bedroom." Pointing toward the far corner of the living room where there was a truncated hallway that suggested another room, he said, "You ought to check it out. Pretty nice, opens onto the back porch." He took a bite of his sandwich. "The suitcases have some of her clothes,the ones Jemma thought she'd wear to the office." He had graduated to peanut butter and jelly and calling her Jemma, in what, fifteen minutes? Myka resisted the temptation to look at her watch. "Better you than me going through her underwear." Steve took another bite, pushing it to the side of his mouth. In a stage whisper, he said, "On second thought, she seems the type to go commando."
When Helena came down from Christina's room, the wicked smile and the mocking edge had disappeared. She was subdued, listless, and her eyes were red-rimmed. She wanly cautioned Jemma not to let Christina sleep too long, but Jemma brushed the advice aside and hugged her, telling her, as if Helena were one more four-year-old she had to comfort, that Sunday wasn't far off and, in the meantime, there was always the telephone. "Cell phone, smart phone, whatever they call it these days," she amended. "Doesn't matter, Christina takes to it like she was sixteen years old."
Jemma's smile was the too wide kind, having to be big and bright enough to drag all those with her to a happy place without dimming. Helena didn't resist when her mother tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, as she hadn't resisted the hug, but her "Thank you, Jemma" was cool, and Myka was reminded when she heard Helena say her mother's name that it was always Jemma with her, as though her mother was no different from anyone else, just another mark for the fleecing.
Myka wondered how much Christina had changed Helena's perception of how the world worked. The only law, written or unwritten, was that everyone would be played. Your only hope was to con as many people as you could before someone bigger, shrewder, and more ruthless conned you. How would Christina survive in such a world, with her doting nonnie and Disney princesses for whom everything turned out all right in the end? Maybe Helena was no more immune than most (but not all) parents to the conviction that their children were different from the rest, that they were special. There were marks and there was Christina. If Helena could conceive of one person who wouldn't be a victim or a fool, maybe she had changed. All Myka knew was that growing up thinking you weren't special didn't make you any less vulnerable. It made you only the more incautious. . . .
Helena just as listlessly followed her and Steve to the car, sliding over on the backseat and mechanically buckling her seatbelt as Steve put her suitcases in the trunk. Myka looked at Christina's bedroom windows thinking she might see her looking down at them, but the windows stared back blankly at her. She risked a glance at Helena and saw that her head was bent, her eyes fixed on the hands in her lap, the same posture she had adopted when they left the prison. Worrying her lip because she knew she would probably regret what she was about to say, she said it anyway. "I know it's tough to leave her and the Sunday visits aren't what you hoped for, but if you want to set up outings for Christina on those days, we're flexible -"
Helena lifted her head to glare at Myka. "You have no idea what I'm feeling, and unless this is some incredibly inept beginning to an interrogation, I'd prefer not to talk."
Yup, she shouldn't have said anything. Myka heard the door to the trunk slam, and then Steve settled in next to her. After looking at the two of them, he said with forced cheerfulness, "Anybody object to listening to NPR?" The drive back to the city seemed longer than normal, Helena's brooding presence in the back seat a weight that kept the car to a crawl, although repeated checks of the speed dial told Myka that she was driving faster than the speed limit. Before they veered north to take a circuitous route of expressways and multi-lane streets, which were expressways in all but name, to Mrs. Frederic's home, Myka dropped Steve off at a subway station to catch a train to the office. "Have fun," he said, sending Myka a wryly sympathetic glance before darting to the stairs.
She expected to pass the rest of the drive in silence, relative silence since the host of some NPR program continued to murmur soothingly from the radio, so she started going over the list of all that she needed to do before she could go home. . . or to Sam's. It was always a last-minute decision to go to Sam's, or for him to come to her place. It was what saved them from having to label whatever it was they were to each other now, but she sensed that he wouldn't mind labeling it or if she showed up at his apartment before 11:00 p.m. He wouldn't mind, but that was the problem -
"Most us in the prison were mothers," Helena said, as weary as if she had been subjected to an interrogation the entire time she had been in the car. "We had that in common, if nothing else, and we lived for the days when our kids visited. The prison didn't scare Christina, the prisoners didn't frighten her either. They were always telling her what a pretty girl she was, and she ate it up. The waiting, the endless rules, the guards, it was part of the game of Find Mommy. She always won because she always found me, no matter how long it took." Her voice altered, still weary but rueful, too. "I knew Ben had learned that he was her father, but it never occurred to me. . . . It had been one night, one drunken night, and we hadn't liked each other all that much in the first place. I never told him, in part because I thought he would believe it was only another scam but mainly because he wasn't someone I wanted to share her with. . . . He wasn't the one I imagined I could, that Christina and I could. . . ." She trailed off, and though she had briefly met Myka's gaze in the rear view mirror, she dropped her eyes once more to her lap. "Six months into my sentence, Christina wasn't coming to the prison with Jemma any longer, and Ben was suing for custody. He had managed to scrape up enough therapists saying that visiting me was a traumatic experience for Christina that he had persuaded a judge to prohibit any further visits. I was allowed to talk with her on the phone, but it was far from ideal. When I could call, she was usually asleep." She blew out her breath in one long aggravated exhalation. "Why should I be grateful that I was able to be with her for a couple of hours today and have Sunday afternoons with her? I'm her mother, I shouldn't have to beg for time with her." The head shot up again and the eyes were bright with resentment. "So, if you and Agent Sunshine expect me to fall all over myself with gratitude that I'm able to see her in the little time that Ben has grudgingly carved out for me, sorry to disappoint you."
It was on the tip of Myka's tongue to tell her that gratitude was the last thing she expected from her, but she didn't want them snarling at each other - at least any more than they had been - before Helena had to witness her going through her boxes and suitcases. One of them needed to be the adult, and she was the professional. She was expected to weather the bad temper, the sullenness, the outrageous denials, and the self-pitying excuses of the criminals the agency apprehended - and those they worked with. If, over eight years ago, she had tolerated the Helena who could be arrogant rather than confident, reckless rather than relaxed, and cutting rather than playful, she could endure the Helena she was forced to reckon with now, one alternately hostile and withdrawn. Much of Helena's anger she could attribute to the vise that the FBI, Justice, and Ben Winslow held her in, but there was something behind the anger, as if there were some wound she was trying to hide or protect. It was that Helena who worried her in a way that the con artist and trickster didn't. It wasn't Helena's playfulness or confidence, the improvisational air about her that suggested she had just pulled everything together moments before, which had caught Myka off guard so long ago but the vulnerability underneath it. It was that Helena who had nearly done her in, who had seduced her, not through some prowess, sexual or professional, but the ability to make her believe, despite what her father had told her, that she was special, different from all the rest. Myka wasn't sure she could survive being lied to like that again.
She was rough with the suitcases, yanking them out of the trunk and slamming them on the pavement. She handed one to Helena, without saying anything, and then strode up the walk to Mrs. Frederic's brownstone. The house seemed empty when they entered it, but Myka wouldn't have been surprised to see Mrs. Frederic quietly emerge from one of the shadowed hallways that led away from the living room. She suspected that Mrs. Frederic did many things quietly, watchfully, but as she followed Helena up the two flights of stairs, she caught no glimpse of artfully braided hair or the vented back of a suit jacket.
"Another day, another prison cell," Helena said as she unlocked the apartment door and, with a mocking flourish, indicated that Myka should precede her. On the dining table was a cellophane wrapped plate of cookies and a card. Helena dropped her suitcase by the sofa and, with only a mildly interested glance at the cookies, opened the card and read it. She smiled and then disappeared into the small kitchen. Myka heard the popping of the seal as Helena opened the refrigerator door, and when she came into the kitchen, big enough to hold the refrigerator, a combination stove/microwave, and a few cabinets above and below the sink, she saw Tupperware containers and a half-gallon of milk on the refrigerator's shelves. In the freezer were more Tupperware containers, neatly labeled.
"She calls them apartment-warming gifts. Is the FBI going to make me give them back or repay her, from what I expect is my very slender stipend, for fear that I've unduly influenced her?"
"I doubt she's that easily influenced." Curious, Myka pulled out one of the Tupperware containers from the freezer. Spaghetti and meatballs.
Her stomach growled, and Helena grinned, not completely maliciously. "I'd invite you to stay for dinner, but I'm not in the mood for company. Certainly not that of my guard. But you're welcome to take one with you, unless you've learned to cook. Did you have to, for the Neanderthal?"
Myka ignored her, putting the container back. She retrieved the suitcases and, with them banging not so gently against her legs, took them into the larger of the two bedrooms. It was plainly furnished, a double bed, a nightstand, a dresser. Someone had already made the bed, and one of the boxes on the floor had been opened. On the nightstand were a clock and a framed picture of Christina. There were other pictures of Christina, some with Helena and Jemma, on the dresser. She checked the dresser drawers, empty except for a few blocks of cedar, and the closet, which revealed only hangers on a rod. Feeling stupid, she got down on her hands and knees and checked under the bed, nothing there. She pulled the already-open box closer to her and began to remove its contents. Books and sketchpads and drawing pencils. She flipped through the books and pads, shook them briefly, before setting them aside. Sensing that she was being observed, she looked over her shoulder and saw Helena in the doorway. Helena was watching her, but her expression was impassive, and Myka wondered just how many cell checks she had been subjected to.
Myka moved on to the next box, which contained a few towels and washcloths, bottles of shampoo and conditioner, toothpaste, a make-up case, and, very well wrapped, a vibrator. Helena laughed when she saw it, although Myka knew that her own face was burning. "I can always count on Claudia to provide the necessities. You can put that in the nightstand drawer, Agent Bering."
Myka tossed it on the bed. "I'm only searching your things, not putting them away for you." She knew that Helena had said it simply to provoke her, and she had let her embarrassment push her into the most flat-footed of responses. She sorted through the rest of the items in the box quickly and leaned over to the tug the last box closer to her.
"Can you go through the suitcases instead? I'd like to start hanging up a few things."
Helena squatted next to her as Myka laid one of the suitcases on the floor and unzipped it. Great, this was the one that had her underwear and bras. Knowing that her face was still red, Myka ran her hand underneath the clothing, feeling through the compartment's lining and discovering nothing. After a quick search of the pockets, she stood up and let Helena empty the suitcase, swiftly but messily pushing the clothing into the dresser drawers. The second suitcase held an assortment of slacks and blazers and blouses, and Myka religiously ran her hand in every pocket, her skin shrinking under Helena's mocking gaze. As Helena shook out the slacks and jackets, Myka nudged the third box across the floor to join the other two. She pried off the tape and pulled back the flaps and then stared at the single item the box contained. It was nestled deep within the packing. It had been damaged, but not by its transport in this box. Instructions in handwriting that wasn't Helena's had noted that the box was to be carried "This Side Up!" and that nothing was to be placed on top of it. It had likely been damaged years ago when she had left Helena's loft for the last time, not taking anything with her, not her books, not her clothes, and certainly not this, and left all to be searched, and ultimately disposed of, by the agency.
She carefully lifted it out and placed it on the floor. It was smaller than she remembered it being, and several of the more delicate metal pieces had been bent. Helena was a painter, not a sculptor, but she had made it for her.
"It's more of a study for a work than a completed work, but once I had the idea in my head, I couldn't get rid of it. And then you're always complaining about how I never tell you that I love you, and I thought what better than a Helena Wells original, although the critics would say that it's a contradiction in terms. I'll have you know that I don't create things for just anyone, it's not like I'm making macramé plant holders, for Christ's sake, but you're different. Don't you know that by now?" Her voice, teasing, filled with mock exasperation, but anxious, too, seeking her approval.
"It showed up on an auction site, a little worse for wear. I don't even remember what I was looking for, but I saw it and knew I had to put in a bid." Her voice now flat, threaded through with something like anger because it was hard and corrosive like anger but not hot like anger, not anything like the rage that was consuming Myka the longer she stared at the sculpture.
"I remembered you telling me that you used to fence, and I thought it was such the perfect sport for you because it's all about defending yourself, isn't it? Not letting anything get through. . . ." Her voice was becoming silky, suggestive, but holding onto a faint, uncertain note. "But I got through, didn't I? And you think I'm the one who gives nothing away. So, anyway, I was reading up on fencing. Yes I was, don't look so surprised, and the word 'dérobement' got my attention because it sounds similar to disrobing, and we do plenty of that. . . and everything fell into place."
"I paid more than I expected to, more than I wanted to, really, because it is pretty beat up. But, after Houston, 'Helena Wells' developed a bit of a cachet to it, nothing like owning an artwork produced by someone suspected of a major crime. Even the critics were nicer. Suddenly I didn't seem so derivative or one-note or superficial. I had no illusions that you would keep it, not after everything that had happened, but I expected you to burn it or weight it with stones and throw it into the ocean, something more dramatic than selling it for whatever you could get at the time." Her words were tumbling out faster, she was expecting a response but not getting one. Unbelievably, her last words sounded injured, as if it pained her to think that Myka had been so mercenary as to sell the piece.
"See the different colors and textures of the metal? I wanted to suggest two figures and swords and clothing being shredded without being too representational because, well, it's boring, for one thing, and far beyond my metal-working skills for another. But they're us, we're both fighting off and seducing the other, because that's what we did for so long, what we still sometimes do. I think I'd like to present this on a much bigger scale, get some canvas and paint in there, maybe an actual robe - that would get the critics all vomiting, I'm sure - I'm still trying to work through the idea." The voice excited, absorbed by the vision, and Myka listening and watching Helena point out various parts of the work, liking the play of light on the metal and how it did suggest the glinting of foils as well as the shimmering of Helena's lingerie. She didn't know if it was good, she didn't care, Helena had made it for her. That was all that mattered.
"Now that I'm a felon, I imagine my prices will keep appreciating. Christina's college education is assured. Who knows what I may get for this if I hang onto it long enough?" The pace of Helena's voice had slowed, and the hard edge to it was no longer corrosive but mocking.
Myka dragged her eyes away from the sculpture and she pushed her hands through the packing in the box, sifting it, rubbing it, turning it over. Nothing. She needed to see what was in the other bedroom. She needed to get out of this one before she murdered Helena. Helena was standing by the dresser and she was smiling, an odd, crumpled twist of a smile but a smile. Her eyes were too bright, as if she were on the verge of crying, but Myka didn't care about what was prompting the tears. Shame, regret, it didn't matter.
"I couldn't touch it," she said evenly. "After Houston, I couldn't touch anything you had touched. Other agents searched your place, and after they didn't find anything, they probably left it to a property management firm to come in and take care of everything. My guess is a mover took it and sold it."
The other bedroom was empty, but Myka stood in it for a long time. Until she could no longer see the sculpture or see her hands around Helena's neck. She could hear Helena moving around in her bedroom, but she didn't go back in. She completed a cursory inventory of the bathroom and then she waited in the living room for Helena to join her. She didn't even look into the bedroom as she passed it.
She hadn't sat down, and she moved closer to the door when Helena entered the room. "I suppose now is the time I should tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you, but I don't think you want to hear it." There was no remorse, no contrition in her tone, just more of that hard, angry flatness.
"You're right, I don't want to hear it. If you're truly sorry, Helena, just do the work we've released you to do." Myka fumbled for the door knob behind her, not sure why she didn't turn around, turn her back on Helena. Did she really believe that Helena would grab a steak knife from the kitchen and attack her?
"That's it? Then all will be forgiven?" Still hard, still flat but more derisive than angry.
"I would hear you at night, when you thought I was asleep, whispering that you loved me." Helena blinked, confusion and surprise overtaking her expression. "I knew then that something was going on, something wasn't right, but I couldn't stop myself. I wanted to believe that you meant it, so I did." Myka shrugged. "You're not the one I can't forgive." As Helena struggled to say something, Myka waved her attempts away. It didn't matter, whatever it was Helena thought she wanted to say. "We'll be expecting you at eight tomorrow morning."
Softly, she shut the door behind her.