"Momma...Mom..." The girl had cried out..."Remember me." Myka woke up in a panic, the same panic that had gripped her two years ago when she had woken up from what she now referred to privately as 'the impossibly long night.'
July 24, 2012
That date was marked indelibly in her mind. It was the morning her daughter was born. It was the morning her daughter had disappeared. Their daughter. It hadn't been a dream, of that much she was sure. The different realities lay heavy in her heart since then.
July 23, 2012
They had stopped Sykes from destroying the Warehouse. After sure disaster had somehow been narrowly averted and the others were momentarily distracted by jittery artifacts, Helena had pulled her into a kiss between the stacks without warning.
Later that night Helena had sneaked into her bedroom after everyone was fast asleep in the B&B. Myka had been wide awake, her bedside lamp still on although she had ceased trying to read after attempting the same paragraph from the beginning of James Joyce's epic Ulysses 32 times.
"Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood..."
Myka had been sitting up in bed, head resting against the wall with her knees drawn up. She had been staring at the same spot on the ceiling. Trying to focus all her attention on that one tiny crack so that her mind wouldn't wander any further than it. So her mind wouldn't wander further to her door, to the hallway, to the bedroom across from hers.
Helena, in the meantime, had lost the battle with herself and having done so thoroughly surrendered to the one thought on her mind. When she entered Myka's room, she looked wild-eyed and lost for the briefest moment before their eyes locked. Myka had stared at her in disbelief. Had she willed this to happen? Had she concentrated on that tiny spot of chipped paint for so long, focussed on not thinking about the woman before her, that she had somehow drawn her here?
Helena was wearing a navy blue paisely robe, its belt tied loosely around her waist. When she moved towards the bed it was clear that she had nothing on besides a pale blue camisole and bikini briefs.
They said nothing. Neither of them broke eye contact. Myka pulled her bedspread aside and made room for the English woman to sit beside her. Helena slipped her robe off before she accepted the invitation.