When Myka descended from her so-called cave, she found Helena behind the register, closing down for the day. The girl looked up at the creak of the old, wooden stairs and saw Myka standing halfway between the two levels. She hadn't let herself calm down completely before seeking out the comfort of Helena's warmth. But when Helena hesitated at the tears that still rimmed her girlfriend's eyes, Myka found that she wanted to be the one to comfort instead. She rushed the rest of the way down the stairs and enveloped Helena in a tight squeeze, "Thank you for showing me."
Helena didn't say anything back right away, she just returned the hug, running her fingers across Myka's shoulderblades as she let go of the embrace. She grazed her fingers across the lineament of Myka's face, tactilely taking in the dampness of her cheek, the subtle swollenness under her eyes, the all-too-fresh wounds of parental pain.
"It wasn't meant to upset you."
Myka nodded her head, taking Helena's hands in her own. She knew what Helena meant. Especially because "upset" wasn't the word to describe what she was feeling and they both knew that as well. Myka was simultaneously over and under stimulated - abuzz with new information and overwhelmed at the enormity of it. She wanted to talk through everything she had read right this very second. But she also never wanted to talk about it ever again. Ever.
Overwhelming joy at the thought that, yes, maybe she and her father could have a relationship.
Crippling fear that they would never learn how to express themselves to one another.
But now there was a crack. Helena and Jean had each taken a chisel to the stone wall that Myka had erected between herself and Warren. Or maybe Warren had erected it. Who could really say at this point, and who really cared.
Because maybe a crack was all they needed.
"Myka, sometimes I regret leaving him when I did. Now that I know there was nothing I could do..." Helena dropped her gaze and began to pick at the hem of Myka's sweater, her bravado failing her. "Even when he was mean and not himself, I would still have been able to hear his voice. I would still have been able to share space with him…." She laid the sweater flat against Myka's hip and rested her hand there, looking back up, "I know he's not everything you want him to be, but he's what you have. It will never excuse the way he's made you feel, and I doubt it will make you stop wishing he was more, God knows I never did, but it's something."
Myka should have expected that Helena would swoop in and give voice to her feelings. She always knew. She grinned the tiniest of grins, "Yeah, it is."
Jean and Tracy could be heard in the kitchen prepping for dinner and Myka and Helena were just about to join them upstairs, after Myka had given herself a little while longer to erase the clues that she had been crying of course, when they heard Warren walk in the front door, slamming it shut behind him.
He nodded in their direction, giving them a growled, "Hello, girls," before shouting up the stairs "Jean, I left the car with Marty at the garage, he said he'd let me know how much it'll cost!" Jean threw an "All right, dear," down the stairs, but he moved into the office before he heard it. He set a number of bags down on the desk when Myka walked up behind him, having shoo-ed Helena upstairs.
"Hey Dad? Do you think before we go back to school, we could take Helena to Garden of the Gods?"
He didn't look up. "Not on a weekend, but the two of you can have a day off sometime next week when it's not busy."
"No, Dad, I meant the whole family. It's been a really long time since we've gone. I want to go together."
Warren walked past her toward the stairs, a sharp guffaw accompanying him as he went, "Who do you expect to run this place?"
She stayed apace with him, "Stacey, who used to work with me here on Saturdays, do you remember her? She's home visiting her parents for a few weeks. She could cover it. We don't have to spend the whole day there and I could close up for you. And if Stacey can't do it, Harry ran the store when you took me to school last fall, and he's never doing anything else." Harry was one of their too-chipper next-door neighbors and Warren winced when she mentioned him.
"What are you two talking about?" Jean asked pleasantly as they entered the kitchen and she passed dishes to Helena to set the table.
"I want to take a family trip to Garden of the Gods before Helena and I leave for school."
"Oh! I think that sounds lovely!" Jean locked eyes with Myka, who was silently thanking her mother for her enduring patience.
"I told Dad that Stacey or Harry could run the store for the day and I would close up if he wanted me to."
Even Tracy seemed excited by the idea. "Yeah! Oh my gosh, Myka, do remember that time we went there and you insisted on bringing way too many books in your backpack and then halfway through the day you just collapsed because you couldn't carry them anymore?"
"I had books, you had that purple stuffed bear, same difference." She playfully swatted at Tracy's arm and they grinned at one another.
"No, no," Warren insisted, "I don't want to leave the store with someone else, you all can go without me, it's fine." Warren sat down at his seat at the table.
"Please…" Myka's voice was strained. He had to know that she wanted to spend time with him. She wanted him to finally be a dad. And she wanted to finally be a daughter. "Please, Dad."
He began to protest further "Now, listen…." Warren trailed off when he finally looked at her.
Why does she have to have his eyes? Why do I have to look at her and see my father every time I do? When did it happen? She wasn't born with that sunburst around her pupils… Why don't I know this? Why don't I know when it changed?
… Everyone's staring at you, God damnit Warren, say something.
"You ask Stacey if she's free. If she's not, you can ask Harry." His voice dripped with annoyance just saying the name, "But if they're not available, I have to stay here, got it?"
Myka nodded her head in affirmation, "Got it. Oh!" She remembered something, and cheerfully continued, "While I'm at it, I'll see if Harry can run the shop when you guys take us back to school."
Warren pushed his chair back, "Wait, wait, wait, no. That was a one-time thing. We were trying to get you settled in. No," he shook his head, "no, we're not driving across the country again."
Myka shrugged, "Well, okay, Dad. If you want Helena and me driving an enormous U-Haul full of furniture across the country by ourselves because we have to furnish our new place, then oooookay."
Warren and Jean both suddenly looked very nervous. One car accident this summer was enough.
Myka used their hesitance as silent consent (even though she knew it wasn't.) "Hey Trace? Wanna visit Cleveland?"
"Now, Myka…" It was her mother this time, trying to apply brakes to a vehicle over which she had no control.
"I don't even know what's IN Cleveland, but if it means I don't have to work at the country club, GOD YES."
"The Cleveland Museum of Art is lovely, we'll have to take you," Even though Helena's words were aimed at Tracy, her smirk was entirely for Myka.
They offered a few other suggestions of what they could do in the city and Tracy suggested that she set up a meeting with a counselor at Case since she'd be applying to school this year anyway.
"I have to have interviews scheduled for Mr. Brady's college prep class, anyway."
With all of the chatter, Jean and Warren couldn't get a word in.
"Jeannie?" She looked over at her husband whose shoulders and newly-noticeable jowls sagged as one. "I've lost this one, haven't I?"
"I believe you have, dear."
Much to the entire Bering family's chagrin, Stacey had decided to return to school early, so they were stuck with Harry running the shop during their day-trip.
Myka was sure she'd be beyond agitated if Harry had been directing his attention to her before they left. But he wasn't. And because she and Helena were only passing through the storefront on the way to drop things into the van, she actually found Harry's demeanor hilarious.
He was leaning too closely to her father, even though he was familiar with the instructions he was being given, interrupting for clarifications between every sentence. Myka observed her father scooting over infinitesimally as he spoke in clutched, direct sentences, and yet, Harry continued to be right on top of him. And he continued to try to have a conversation with the unwilling participant next to him. When Harry spoke, right into Warren's ear, of course, Myka could hear him all the way out front.
"No worries, Warren. I won't burn down the bookstore! I'll just make sure to leave the stove on and give matches to all of the kids who come in." He followed up his joke with peals of laughter that went on for an excruciatingly long time. Not that Myka wasn't laughing right along with him from the safety of the van.
"I would assume that Harry is Henry in the book, yes?" Helena asked as they settled into the back seat.
"How could you possibly tell?" She laughed, "He really should work on those character names."
Helena snorted.
"Are you going to tell him that we read it?" Helena asked.
Myka considered it as she checked to make sure the veggie bags she had packed actually made it into the cooler.
"I don't know. Not today. And it's not like my mom doesn't already know..." Myka 'accidentally' swiped the side of Helena's arm with the cooler when she placed it in the trunk behind them.
"Ouch!" Helena started to massage the place Myka had hit.
"Oh, please. A - Like that hurt, B - like you didn't deserve it." Though this was completely true, Myka still pulled Helena's hands back and kissed her arm. "There. All better."
"Your mother is a very perceptive woman, Myka! And if she hadn't just finished telling me that she knew that I was sneaking into your room every night, then maybe I could have…"
"What?! Does my dad know?!" Myka looked like she was seconds away from playing possum in the back seat of her parents' minivan.
"I very much doubt it. But Myka, she was fine. Your mother was fine." Helena's smile was doing a very good job of distracting Myka from her earlier indiscretion.
"Really? Are you sure that's what she meant? Because if she knew, I think she'd have said something or made me share Tracy's room or something equally unfortunate."
"Yes, well," Helena cupped her hand around Myka's neck, her thumb grazing against her cheek, "Sometimes people can surprise you."