A/N: Some sexual content, infrequent use of strong language. It's a long chapter, but I needed to get some things done in it. More of the actual plot in the next chapter - I've not forgotten it, although it's basically just a hook to hang Bering and Wells on.
Wednesday morning Myka called to ask if Helena minded having lunch in; she was expecting a call from Homeland Security. Since Helena would have been just as happy had they planned to have lunch on two upended pails in a construction site - in the middle of a rainstorm - she raised no objection. When she asked Myka what she could bring if they were having lunch in, and Myka casually said, "Whatever looks good to you," Helena almost replied that what looked good to her was already at Myka's house. But she didn't say it, it would have sounded, not crass or smarmy but dopey, and she thought it was too soon to let her guard down and give way to the kind of lovestruck rejoinders that, when said by others, had always made her eyes cross. So instead she teased, "Usually something decadent, darling," which, in the end, she wasn't sure was much of an improvement.
She ended up buying nearly everything on display in the miniscule deli section of Univille's grocery mart, crackers and cheese and something shrink-wrapped with a faded label that said it was a specialty sausage. She also bought grapes and plums and apples. Surveying the items, she had to admit they didn't look decadent, a little sad actually, the box of crackers showing some dust on the top and the fruit sporting blemishes. And, of course, there was the mystery sausage. Next time, if there was a next time, they would go out for lunch. Her last purchases were a tape measure and notebook. While Myka was on her call with Homeland Security, she would take the tape measure and the notebook with her out to the tree. She wanted to do some basic measurements and re-sketch the design, identifying the number and height of the supports for the treehouse's platform and calculating the size of the platform itself. This wouldn't be a slapdash job; she had a boy's mother to impress. If this was wooing - and she wasn't sure because it had been a very long time since she had wooed anyone in earnest - it seemed so paltry, the lunch from the grocery, the treehouse. Shouldn't she be whisking Myka off for a weekend in Paris or showering her with . . . something? At other times, with other people, the gifts and the impulsive trips to resorts or other so-called romantic places, they had all been part of the game, the chase, but she could picture the knot forming between Myka's eyebrows were she to suggest a weekend jaunt to Paris, the checklist Myka would start going through - Drew, dog, mail hold - visible in her eyes. Not jewelry either, Myka had never been terribly interested in that. Books were something she loved, but you couldn't discreetly take a book from a pocket and place it on the table during a romantic dinner or clasp it around her neck. Flowers. She could at least bring flowers. But would that be too much? Helena spun back toward the grocery mart and then just as indecisively spun back toward her car. Maybe the only wooing Myka wanted from her, if Myka wanted to be wooed by her at all, was her showing up, her being where she was expected to be. Such as arriving at Myka's for lunch, and she was running late as it was.
Helena didn't speed all the way, but she didn't start slowing down until she made the turn onto the lane to Myka's house. She went through the garage, Shep greeting her noisily in the hallway, and Myka stopped writing on a pad long enough to smile a greeting from the table as she entered the kitchen. The everpresent phone was present but not attached to Myka's ear, and there was a bonelessness in how Myka was sitting, head nearly resting on her opposite arm as she wrote, that Helena hoped was a sign that the call had been canceled. As Helena took her purchases from the bag and placed them on the counter, Myka said, "My call was early," her eyes half-closed as she lazily tracked Helena's progress in the kitchen.
"We could go out, if you wanted," Helena suggested. "The Univille grocery store offers no decadence, only disappointment." With a mocking smile, she drew her fingers along the sausage, modeling it like a prize on a game show.
Myka just as lazily shook her head, and as Helena searched for kitchen shears to open the sausage's shrink-wrap, she felt that heavy-lidded gaze burn down her back. "I think I can count on one hand the times I've seen you in a pair of jeans," Myka said.
"I wear them quite frequently on an appraisal. Often I'm in the back of an antique shop or at an estate sale trying to evaluate a piece that hasn't seen the light of day since the Great War. Very dusty." She was prattling. When she was nervous, she prattled. Helena jabbed ineffectively at the shrink-wrap with the scissors. There was no need to be this nervous, it was just lunch. Lunch without air quotes. She set the sausage and scissors down before she could accidentally stab herself.
"They look tight on you."
Myka was so near that Helena thought her breath was stirring the hair at the back of her neck. Looking down at her jeans, an older pair that she had chosen with climbing trees in mind, Helena conceded, "I may have put on a few pounds since I've come back. Haven't reestablished my exercise routine, darling."
"And I'm supposed to be the literal-minded one." Myka laughed softly, close enough that Helena could feel Myka's lips in her hair. Myka's arms were circling her waist, and her fingers were unbuttoning Helena's jeans and pulling down the zipper.
"I offered to understand this lunch euphemistically, but you refused," Helena said more breathily than she liked. What was it about this woman that such a standard step in the dance - she could almost hear Pete jibing "Who hasn't unzipped your pants, H.G.?" - had her trembling and clutching the counter for support?
"I didn't refuse, I wasn't ready to make a decision then," Myka countered, moving her hands from Helena's jeans to the collar of Helena's shirt and pushing it away from her neck. "I'm not accustomed to seeing you in tank tops either." She slipped a strap off Helena's shoulder and gently sucked at the skin.
"I forgot what the summers were like here, the forges of hell, you know." Helena leaned back against Myka and reached for her hand, pushing it down deep into her jeans."I'm going to be baking in that bloody tree this afternoon."
"But not right away," Myka murmured, her fingers tenting the panel of Helena's panties as they sought access.
"Yes," Helena groaned in agreement, "not right away."
At the last minute they retreated to Myka's room, really, the last minute because she had been on the verge of coming in the kitchen, half-on the counter, half-off because standing had been too awkward and she had needed Myka deeper. She had been crying out, her head pressing back against a cupboard, when Myka had stopped, her breathing and her voice ragged, saying something about the windows or perhaps it had been a hygienic consideration because she had also muttered, "We eat here," and Helena had been able to muster the thought or, rather, plea, 'Yes, yes, we do.' Then Myka was pulling her off the counter, and Helena clumsily yanked up her jeans so she could stagger back to Myka's bedroom without tripping over them. Though she felt a flicker of irritation that Myka couldn't just lose herself, forget where they were - how likely was it that someone, a meter reader, would be crossing the patio as Myka was burying herself between Helena's thighs - the irritation died when Myka did that very thing in the privacy of her bedroom. As her orgasm crested and broke over her, Helena was forced to admit, nearly deafened by the loudness of her own cries, that Myka had more than made up for the wait.
They lunched in bed, and while Helena had been the one to suggest it, Myka hadn't raised an objection, going out to the kitchen to bring back the crackers and cheese. It seemed such an unlikely departure for her, Helena mused, especially since Myka had been too embarrassed to dart out of the bedroom naked, flushing and mumbling, again, about the windows before throwing on a top and shorts. It led her to wonder how Myka had learned to unbend enough to allow food in bed, and Helena thought of Pete, a master snacker if there ever was one, which caused her to cut her wondering short. She had no desire to imagine Pete, Myka, and a plate of cookies or bag of Doritos in any kind of sexual combination.
If Helena was honest with herself, she didn't want to imagine Myka in sexual combinations with anyone, unless she was the only other participant. It had been fine before to tease Myka about her refusal to kiss and tell. But that was before, before . . . more. There was more now, whatever it was, and thinking about Myka with someone else made less of it. It was ridiculous to think she had any claim on Myka's fidelity and even more ridiculous to admit that she wanted to lay claim to it. She hadn't expected it of anyone before now, except perhaps Nate, but that was more because she wanted to present a unified front for Adelaide than because she needed a sign of his commitment to her. Not that she had had much cause to worry about Nate, he was hardly a player. Nor was Myka, but she was still seeing Jeff. She'd had lunch with him yesterday. Lunch like they had just had "lunch"?
Helena discontentedly readjusted her pillows. Myka was free to sleep with whomever she wanted and to call it whatever she wanted, lunch, dessert, tea. "Tea" was what one of her own amours had called it to excuse her absence for several hours in the afternoon, back when teas weren't something that primarily existed on period dramas and jealous husbands never gave a second thought to a young woman who spoke of rockets and time travel to their wives, except to pity her her eccentricity and the man who would be mad enough to marry her. She couldn't remember most of their names now, the bored wives she had met at readings and lectures (always on subjects suitable for the more delicate sensibilities) and the meetings of missionary societies; she had attended them in association with artefact retrievals, and it got so that pursuing one became inextricable from pursuing the other. The excitement was the same as was the inevitable letdown once the capture was assured.
She might not remember their names, but they must have lingered, collectively, as a memory in the back of her mind, their frustration with the tedium of their days, their yearning for someone to expect more of them than an ability to manage a household, to produce accomplished needlework, and in their unruffled presiding over servants and children, to reflect - but never to own for themselves - the rightful authority of their husbands, so that when she encountered Myka, first in London and then in Tamalpais, she recognized how different she was from them. But that wouldn't have been enough. Even then, when the world had been so new to her that, although the language was the same, the frames of reference were foreign, Helena would have given the attraction only enough consideration to figure out how to ease this woman, bewitchingly confident in her pants and shoulder-holsters and yet strangely unsure outside her role as an agent, into her bed. And had Myka not been a necessary part of her plan, Helena would have done exactly that, seduced her and moved on. But earning Myka's trust, earning the trust of all of them, required that she stay and develop some semblance of a relationship. So she had discovered, to her initial disappointment, that Myka really wasn't all that different from other women she met, some of whom were just as bright and driven and high-achieving. What made her different was, oddly enough, a quality that made her more, not less, like the women Helena had known over a hundred years ago.
She characterized it, wrongly, as innocence, but she had never known what else to call it, the quality that, while it had nothing in common with the naivete, and certainly not the ignorance, of those Victorian wives and daughters as they listened raptly to a lecture on the evils of drink or the fate of their "darker brethren not yet brought to Christ," shared in the wonder that there was so much of the world yet to learn and in the hunger to learn it. But Myka's peculiar innocence was that she believed, despite all that her experience had taught her to the contrary, that even the worst humanity could offer was ameliorated by the knowing of it. Myka would look at her as if she could see, not around or over, but through Yellowstone and Warehouse 2 and, beyond, to when Helena had entered the bronzer, when she had frantically, ruthlessly attempted to change time, when she had hunted down and then tortured Christina's killers and, still farther back, to the day when she had first become a Warehouse agent, buoyed by a confidence that had never been tested and convinced that humility in the presence of an artefact would be a weakness.
The question in Myka's eyes had never been the horrified "What are you?" that Helena had seen, at times, in the eyes of others but an almost-chiding "Is this all you think you are?"
Myka reentered the bedroom with a plate full of crackers and cubes of cheese (of course she would have taken the time to cut and slice and arrange whereas Helena would have decided that they could break off chunks of cheese with their fingers and eat crackers straight from the box). As she climbed awkwardly onto the bed, holding the plate high and walking on her knees toward Helena, Helena, still remembering the vainglorious young Warehouse agent she had been, blurted, "I think even then I would have loved you, when I was an insufferable fool and everything that was to happen hadn't yet."
Myka's eyes widened, but she didn't drop the plate, saying only, "Now that's a conversation starter."
"Or ender," Helena said, taking the plate from her and setting it between them. It wasn't how she would have chosen to say it, or where, or when, but she had said it, it was out, now, between them, and although Myka looked neither overwhelmed nor overjoyed, Helena was too relieved to have finally said it to carp to herself that Myka could at least look less wary. "I know it's absurd, we've been together only little more than a week after ten years' of silence, but the feelings, they've been there a long time."
"And still you left," Myka said quietly, turning a cube of cheese over and over. "I can't get all misty-eyed, Helena, when I know you could leave tomorrow. I know you, you could do that."
Helena nodded, meditatively biting off the end of a cracker. "It wasn't easy, but I did, and I understand why you think I would do that now, and I wish I could promise you that I won't. . . ." She shrugged. She could tell her about Boone, about Adelaide, about why she had left after making such a point to Myka all those years ago about her intention to stay, but she had probably said too much already. She was never going to get the hang of this. Both too little too late and too much too soon.
She was surprised then when Myka wriggled closer to her, putting the plate on her stomach, and resting her head on Helena's breast. Popping a piece of cheese into her mouth, she said, "I'm not going to hold you to it, but don't go retracting it either. Let's let it rest for awhile."
Helena fell asleep somewhere between her fifth and twelfth cracker, Myka's breathing having become suspiciously even sometime earlier, the plate gently going up and down. Helena managed to lift herself up just enough to lean over to deposit it on the empty side of the bed without disturbing Myka, whose only response was to anchor herself by wrapping an arm around Helena's chest. Helena nibbled from her small pile of crackers on the nightstand, occasionally brushing the crumbs off the sheet and stroking Myka's hair. She didn't think she would go to sleep with Myka sleeping on top of her, she'd even had difficulty falling sleeping when Christina was small and would climb onto her to nap; she was in the middle of telling herself that she wasn't going to fall asleep when, in fact, she fell asleep.
When she woke, Myka was gone, and a glance at the clock on the nightstand showed that it was five to 3:00. Drew would be done with soccer camp. Feeling her forehead, half-expecting that Myka might have left a Post-it note attached saying "Please vacuum," Helena rose from the bed and gathered her clothes, taking them into the bathroom. On the one hand it seemed silly to take a shower when she would only be going outside to sweat in a tree, on the other hand, she didn't feel that she should leave any evidence suggesting to Drew that she had stayed, even briefly, in his mother's bedroom. She made the bed and located the vacuum to sweep up the crumbs, just in case Drew would wander in. She was in the tree, straddling a branch that was too small for her weight and visualizing the placement of the platform by the time they came home, the grinding of the garage door as it lifted alerting her first and then the barking of a maniacally happy Shep. It had only been once she was up in the tree that she realized she really should be working with someone, just in case she needed some help measuring or a caution about venturing out on a branch too small for her. Studying her position and noticing how perilously the limb was bending, she was reminded of the look on Myka's face when she had said she loved her, and she realized that this was yet another time that she had left herself without an exit plan.
In the end, she didn't fall. She had crouch-stepped her way back to the trunk and then, moving very carefully and very slowly because she was still shaking, she climbed down to the ground. Perhaps she should sketch from this vantage point. She had brought a ladder from the garage out with her; she could make sure her estimates about the height of the support posts were correct. As she picked up the ladder and opened it, she saw Drew crossing the yard toward her, Shep bounding and barking and, sometimes, running around him in circles. He was wearing the kind of moisture-wicking shirt and shorts she was used to seeing professional soccer players wear, and he had on the long socks as well. He watched her settle the ladder and test its steadiness; silently he gripped it with his thin, little-boy arms, his expression determined, and his child's smell of warm skin and sun and grass could have been Christina's in those summers before Paris when the two of them would chase each other in the parks, and Helena would grab her daughter and hold her close at the end of their games. Without thinking, she tousled his hair as she climbed the ladder, but he didn't seem to mind.
"Mom said she needed to do some work, but she's asleep," he volunteered, looking up at her.
Unable to keep from smiling, Helena said, "She must have had a tiring afternoon." She held the lip of the tape measure on the branch and pushed at the housing until it dangled just above Drew's head. "Can you grab that and pull down on it? I'm fine on the ladder."
He did as she asked, shouting out the measurement. They moved to another spot under the tree and repeated the same process, with Drew asking at the end, "Have you built lots of treehouses?"
"I built one for my daughter," Helena said, thinking that like, any other child, once he had received an answer to his question, he would be thinking of another one, completely unrelated.
"Is she here with you? I mean, does she live with you?" He frowned thoughtfully. "She could help us with this one, and I would let her play in it."
Which wasn't at all what she had expected him to say. At a loss for how to answer him, she looked up through the branches, thinking hazily that Christina, who always loved to "help" her mother, would have been eager to assist with building a treehouse, even if it wasn't for her. "She died a long time ago," she said as gently as she could. He screwed his face up in his father's grimace, and Helena wanted to pound her head against the tree trunk. Why hadn't she simply lied? Had she been so afraid of an eight-year-old's grueling interrogation that she hadn't been able to take refuge in something convenient, like telling Drew her daughter lived with her father or attended boarding school in Europe? But she knew why she hadn't deflected his questions with a response other adults would have considered kinder, if not honest. She had started her relationship with Myka with lies, and whatever happened with that, she didn't want to do the same with Myka's son.
The muscles in Drew's face relaxed, and he tentatively touched Helena's hand. "You must be sad," he said.
She had felt many things about Christina's death over the years, but sadness had only infrequently been among them. Rage had been the predominant emotion. It had carried her through the funeral and the packet across the Channel to Dover, and it had compelled her to return to the Warehouse far earlier than Caturanga had expected or felt was advised, as he had bluntly told her. But the Warehouse was always in need of experienced agents, and after several long, doubting looks at her and a brief conversation during which she remained dry-eyed and adamant that the work would help her far more than an enforced leave, he had relented. And the work did temper her rage, removing its heat and instability without lessening its intensity. She could feel the transformation, its darkness and heaviness, which, during those first few days after Christina's death when she thought it might shatter her because bone and muscle couldn't be expected to stand up to its pressure, being hammered through the unrelenting pace of retrievals and her own obsessive investigations into something lighter and colder, but no less deadly. It wasn't a bomb she held inside her any longer, with all the uncertainty of when and if it might explode, but a rapier, whose thrusts she could control with the flick of a wrist. Sadness could never have made her into a weapon, so, no, she had very rarely been sad.
But all she said in response to the question in Drew's face was "Sometimes." Then, feeling that she should offer him more, having left him to draw what conclusions he would about a mother who said she only sometimes felt sad about the death of her child, she added, "Christina would have loved a pirate ship." Which wasn't untrue, she realized. Although Christina had fretted over her dolls and enjoyed pretending that she was a princess in a castle, she had also dreamed of piloting one of her mother's rocket ships into space, and she would have giddily served as second in command on a pirate ship (Drew, of course, being the pirate captain since it was his treehouse).
He smiled and, then, with the complete lack of transition she had expected from him earlier, he shouted, "I bet you can't do this!" and climbed the tree to a branch directly overhead, clamping his legs around it and hanging upside down. He giggled as she climbed to a branch parallel to his and, less quickly and gracefully, swung herself upside down. It was harder than she remembered it being, and she was sure her face was beginning to resemble an overripe tomato. Drew suddenly rocked himself up with a speed that made her heart pound, but he grabbed the branch with both hands and casually dropped to the ground. "Are you staying for dinner?" He was observing her face with concern. "You're all red."
Grunting with the effort to pull herself up even with the branch so she could grasp it, Helena said, "Your mother hasn't invited me."
"I'll go ask her." He ran a few steps before stopping to look back at her. She was still struggling to grab the branch. "We'll probably have chicken. Mom makes chicken a lot. Is that okay?"
"Yes," Helena gasped.
"Do I need to get my mom out here to help you?" He watched as she flailed, once more, at the branch.
"No." Less sharply, Helena said, "I'll be fine." She really should have added more stomach crunches to her workouts.
Drew had no sooner left the shade of the tree than he came running back. "What do I call you?"
"Helena." She could see him silently mouthing it to himself. "H.G. if it's easier."
With a jerk of his head, as if he had made a decision, he sped from under the tree, calling to Shep to follow him. Helena eyed the distance to the ground. It was just a few feet, the worst she could do if she let herself fall was collect a few bruises. But it was the principle of the thing, she had never gotten stuck before, and she wouldn't now. With another groan, she yanked herself up, clawing at the air as she tried to wrap at least one hand around the branch. As her nails bit into bark, she scrabbled for more purchase on the branch. Her fingers inched far enough around it that she could bring her other hand up, and from there it was a simple push off from the branch and drop.
Myka was on the patio, shading her eyes against the sun as Helena, carrying the ladder, angled across the yard toward the garage. "I was just about to come out there. Drew said you might be in trouble."
"Not a bit," Helena said nonchalantly.
"So that's why you're wearing half the tree," Myka said, amused.
Helena looked down at her tank top, the front of it was covered with shreds and pieces of bark. She shrugged. "I wasn't the one in need of a recuperative nap."
Myka followed her through a back door into the garage. "I had a long day yesterday."
"An extended lunch with Jeff?" Helena had said it teasingly, but her pulse was racing like it had when she was struggling on the branch.
"Helena," Myka said warningly as Helena set the ladder against a wall.
Helena raised her hands slightly in surrender. "You're quite right. We're free agents, and it's none of my business whom you have lunch with or how long it takes you to finish." She hung one of her wickedest smiles on her lips and hoped it stayed.
Myka's eyes narrowed. "I thought you said you -"
"And you said to let it rest, and while it's resting, I'm assuming -"
Myka tugged her hand through her hair. "So if Suzanne called, you'd actually fly out to DC, from here, for a . . . ."
"Booty call?" Helena supplied. "Darling, I've traveled farther."
Myka was the first to drop her gaze. A blush had climbed into her cheeks, and Helena's eyes trailed from her cheeks, down that lovely neck, to rest on the notch in her collarbone. Although her description of South Dakota summers as the "forges of hell" had been poetic license, Helena acknowledged that it wasn't all exaggeration. The heat in the garage was stifling, and she was certain if she licked that notch she would taste salt.
"Are you staying for dinner?"
"Are you inviting me?"
Laughing softly, Myka opened the door that let into the house. "We're not playing the game with the radio stations."
After a half-skip or two to catch up, Helena snaked an arm around Myka's waist, drawing her in. "I feel that I have made my position clear. You have to give me something." She couldn't reach the notch in Myka's collarbone, but she swept Myka's hair away from her neck, bending to kiss it, but Myka slid out of her grasp, pushing Helena's arm down.
She turned her head over her shoulder, an eyebrow arched but the look surprisingly sober. "Yes, I would like you to stay for dinner."
Dinner included chicken, as Drew had predicted. Apparently he hadn't predicted the green beans that would accompany it, as he scowled when Myka took a bag of green beans from the refrigerator. "Gotta get our green veggies, buddy."
He looked at Helena, who was at the island cutting tomatoes for the salad. "Did you make Christina eat vegetables?"
Myka's eyes widened, but Helena gave her a minute shake of her head not to interject. "Yes, I did," she said, dropping the chunks of tomato into the bowl. "Like you, she detested peas, but she was rather fond of beets." At that, both Myka and Drew shuddered, but Helena only clucked at them as she reached for a cucumber. "There's nothing wrong with a good fresh beet," she said reprovingly.
"Only everything," Myka said with another shudder. "All that magenta, in a vegetable, it's disturbing." Drew nodded vigorously. "Green beans not so bad now?" Myka grinned at her son. Pointing to Helena, she said in a stage whisper, "If she was in charge of the menu, we'd be having beets."
Resigned to the green beans, Drew shuffled into the family room and collapsed onto the sofa. Opening a package of marinated chicken breasts, Myka said, "The more the decision making is taken out of cooking for me, the better off we all are." Moving closer to Helena, she said quietly, "You two must have bonded for you to have told him about Christina."
"He asked if I had built treehouses for anyone else." Helena added the sliced cucumber to the bowl. "So I told him a little bit about her. The last time I lied to a child about my past, it didn't turn out well."
"Just remember that he's a kid. They have questions."
Helena said, "He's quite sensitive, you know, for being Pete's progeny."
Myka slanted her a look before peering at the instructions on the back of the package. She shrugged and emptied the chicken into a skillet. "I am not going to switch to a different temperature setting midway through cooking. It's medium-high until I'm sure they're cooked through or they become chicken briquettes, whichever happens first."
"At least you're saving us from food-borne illnesses," Helena said, mixing the salad. Seeing Myka at the stove, pushing the chicken around the skillet with a spatula, and hearing the steady pulse of chatter from the tv in the family room, Helena thought she could lay the scene like a sheet of tracing paper over one from Boone and not err on a single stroke. That wouldn't be quite true. Nate would have marinated the chicken himself and Adelaide would have been deep into a book. And as for her, she wasn't staring at the pictures of Nate's wife hanging on the wall in the hallway and wondering what Jennifer would make of her presence. Not that there weren't pictures of Pete in Myka's house, captured in various poses and settings with Drew, but so far she hadn't felt compelled to look at them and confirm her suspicion that she didn't belong. Did she belong here?
Her eyes roved around the kitchen, which was nice enough, although were it her own she'd make a few improvements. But that really wasn't the point, she reminded herself, the fact that she would want to replace the tile and countertops. Did she belong here with them? As if sensing she was being looked at, Myka turned from the stove. Touching Helena's wrist, she said, "You look like you're ready to bolt. Stay awhile, even if everything's overcooked, which it probably will be, there's ice cream later."
"Because Drew's the one with the sweet tooth," Helena said dryly, even though she didn't feel as relaxed or as casual as she sounded. Myka was right, she did want to bolt. Didn't she? If she stayed, she might let Myka convince her, someday, that she wouldn't soil everything she touched, that, having crossed the line that made a human being into a monster, she could still cross back, that what had happened over a hundred years ago, had almost happened over ten years ago, wouldn't ever happen again. Maybe Myka was willing to risk being wrong, but she wasn't. Or at least she hadn't been. Because, she decided, she really didn't want to bolt. Ultimately she might not belong with this woman and her son, but she didn't feel she was standing in someone else's place. She could do as Myka suggested and stay awhile, see what happened.
"Darling, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to try one of your briquettes." Helena inclined her head toward the skillet where the chicken was smoking.
After dinner, Drew took the controllers from a shelf of the tv stand and announced that he was ready for a rematch. Helena sat cross-legged next to him on the floor and selected a black Porsche, while keeping her eye on the blue Lamborghini. This time she was in full command of her faculties, not bobbing along on a sea of scotch and wine, and she was more than equipped to do battle with the programming of a 25-year-old computer nerd who did his coding in the Red Bull-stocked confines of his cubicle. Cracking her knuckles self-importantly, which earned her a snort from Myka, curled up in a corner of the couch and studying a thick sheaf of paper, Helena gave Drew a curt nod to start the game.
Drew had practiced. He drove his Corvette with an aggressiveness that, more than once, had Helena scrambling to avoid having her Porsche spin out or collide with another car. However, she never lost sight of the bright blue flashes that announced the Lamborghini's stealthy advance, from back of the pack to just behind the leaders. She took too long to decide whether the Lamborghini's latest maneuver was a feint or a push for the lead, and suddenly she found herself boxed between a Jaguar and a Ferrari while the Lamborghini smoothly eased ahead of her.
Drew's hoots of laughter must have caught Myka's attention because, as she frantically worked her controller, Helena heard Myka mock-hiss, "From hell's heart I stab at thee."
Helena didn't turn her eyes away from the tv. "That car's hardly Moby Dick, and I'm not Captain Ahab, monomaniacal tendencies notwithstanding."
"No, you wouldn't possibly be trying to prove that you're smarter than a computer game."
At that, Helena twisted her head over her shoulder to look at Myka. "You think I'm that petty."
"I think you're that competitive."
"So says the woman who always wanted to be the smartest girl in the class," Helena rejoined.
"I did," Myka agreed, "and then I found out that there were other things I wanted more." She rose from the sofa.
No longer caring that both the Lamborghini and Drew's Corvette had crossed the finish line ahead of her, Helena said, "I devoutly hope there's a hidden meaning in that."
Myka gave her a Mona Lisa smile. Shifting her gaze to Drew, she said, "Drew, ice cream."
He ran to the kitchen, Shep snuffling excitedly beside him. Helena put her controller down and watched Myka and Drew coordinating their movements in the kitchen, setting out bowls and containers of ice cream. It struck her that this was often what she had done during her time with 13, watch everyone else congregate in the kitchen or living room until Myka would see her and call her to join them. Myka had never failed to include her, had never made it easy for her to bolt. Even now she was waving an ice cream scoop in the air, saying, "Get over here before it starts melting."
Stumbling a little as she pushed herself to her feet, Helena stopped, amused, as Drew danced around her, a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, crowing, "I beat you, I beat you."
"Drew," Myka said admonishingly, "that's enough."
"We'll see if you can do it a second time," Helena growled teasingly at him. She examined the vaguely pink ice cream in his bowl; it smelled of bubble gum. As if to confirm her guess, he blew a bubble and popped it. "Yummy," she said, her lip curling. He continued to prance around her as she surveyed the offerings on the island. The disgusting bubble-gum flavored ice cream, the chocolate-upon-chocolate-upon-chocolate Myka was eating, and. . . butter-brickle. "You remembered," Helena said, taking the scoop from her. "You could have said something earlier, we might have had some at lunch," she added innocently.
Myka choked, and Drew ran around the island to pound her on the back. "I'm fine, I'm okay," she said, escaping to the sink and pouring herself a glass of water. Her eyes still tearing, she drank it down. "You and Artie," she wheezed. Her voice growing stronger, she said, "You were the only ones who ate it, which confirms my suspicion that most butter-brickle lovers came of age when the light bulb was invented."
"Ha." Helena licked the scoop. "Jeff would be more of a bubble-gum ice cream fan."
"Ha." Myka made a face at her. Putting the ice cream back into the freezer compartment, she said, "I bought it yesterday when I was out, having lunch at a restaurant with Jeff." Picking up her bowl, she came around the island to put her lips close to Helena's ear. "Just so you know."
There was another race, more butter-brickle ice cream (for Helena), a bath (for Drew, although Helena, catching a whiff of her tank-top as she shrugged back into her long-sleeved shirt, thought she could probably do with one herself), and bed. In his Superman pajamas, Drew ran from the bathroom into the family room, kneeling beside Helena as she put the controllers away.
"Are you coming over tomorrow? I have a game where we go looking for treasure. In the ocean, shipwrecks and stuff." He added, obviously unsure whether it was a selling point for her, "I'm pretty good at it."
"Probably not tomorrow." Helena felt absurdly touched as his face fell. "But the next time I'm here, we'll play it." She lightly poked him in his stomach. "I'm pretty good at finding treasures, too."
He hesitated, then flung an arm around her for a millisecond in what could generously be described as a hug. "G'night, Helena." Leaving the room noticeably more slowly than he had entered it, he said, "I'm going to bed now, Mom."
Myka looked up from the account statements she had been studying most of the evening. "Be right there, bud." She handed the clipped pages to Helena. "These are Afton's. Take a look at the items I've circled."
Helena sat on the sofa, flipping through the pages. She heard a door open and Myka say, "You're going to have to show Helena your Empire State Building. She'll be impressed." A beat later she heard Myka say, "No, not tonight." Smiling, Helena saw that Myka had circled what appeared to be payments Afton had made, on a more or less regular basis, to something called PAWL, obviously an acronym. The amounts were small given Afton's income level, a couple hundred dollars each, and Helena suspected that they were donations or membership fees to support PAWL in whatever its mission was. There were similar payments to well-known charities and a few political organizations and think tanks. The latter were mainly on the conservative end of the spectrum, but not all.
As Myka sat next to her, Helena murmured, "So when do I get to see the Empire State Building?"
"After tonight you're angling for another dinner invitation?" Myka said disbelievingly.
"More like breakfast." Helena dropped the statements to the floor and leaned in, giving Myka feathery kisses along the line of her jaw. She kept leaning in, her weight beginning to press Myka down onto the cushions, but Myka placed a hand on Helena's chest and pushed back.
"Sorry, nice try." Pointing to the papers on the floor, she said, "That's what Afton and Michaelis, the race car driver, had in common. Payments to PAWL. It took this long to find the connection because there are just two entries for Michaelis, over the same two-year period. Do you have any idea what PAWL is?"
Helena shook her head. "I bet that it'll still exist tomorrow, whatever it is." She kissed Myka again, letting her tongue limn the shape of Myka's lips.
"I'm sure it will too. But you need to go back to the B&B." Myka's voice was firm, but the look in her eyes said she was undecided, and she let her hands trail the length of Helena's arms. Helena took Myka's hands and pulled her in, sinking back against the sofa arm. Working her fingers past the waist of Myka's shorts, Helena stroked the curve of Myka's butt through her panties and, when Myka groaned, she slipped her hand down and then under the hem of a leg opening, stroking bare skin. Another, louder, groan, and Myka rolled off the sofa, readjusting her shorts and trying to regain her balance at a safer distance. Hopping a little on one foot, she said, "Seriously, you need to go."
"Because of Drew?" Helena asked, tucking a pillow between her head and the sofa arm.
"Because of me." Myka stopped hopping, her expression equally determined, anxious, and wistful. "It would be all too easy just to let go with you, and I'm trying hard not to. I need to be sure of you this time. It's what I was trying to tell you earlier. For all I know, tomorrow you'll have found a new Boone, and I can't go through that again."
Helena sat up, unconsciously crushing the pillow to her. "Let me tell you about Boone, why -"
"But it's not just Boone," Myka said, interrupting her. "It's everything. In some ways, it's like you never left, and you're just as I remember you, and at the same time, you're so different." Her voice took on a wondering note. "You used to be so. . . consumed, Helena. At first, well, I know what I thought was driving you, and even though I was wrong about what it was, you were driven, that was clear. And then after Yellowstone, you were falling all over yourself trying to atone for your mistakes. I thought that's why you left, you were still looking for forgiveness. But we get to Boone, and it's not that, it's some other obsession. Trying to reconnect to Christina through Adelaide. And now? You seem so. . . ."
"Adrift?" Helena said sharply. "Without purpose?" Myka was biting her lower lip, the determination and anxiety in her face giving way before the sadness. Claudia and Pete were right; the more broken she was, the more Myka itched to fix her. But there wasn't that much drama in her life anymore, she had seen to that. Long stretches of time spent traveling from place to place interrupted by sporadic bursts of sex when the loneliness became too much. She was no threat to anyone any longer, not even herself. "I had never thought you and Irene were much alike, but I'll have to revise my opinion," she said with a brittle derision. "Shorn of my superpowers, awful though they were, I'm not nearly as fascinating, am I? In fact, I'm pretty pathetic, just some troubled middle-aged woman you're fucking hoping all the while she'll become someone else."
Myka's eyes grew large. "Hey, hey, hey, hey," she said softly, crossing the distance between them with those leggy strides Helena had never tired of watching. Dropping to her knees, Myka tipped up Helena's chin with a finger. "Look at me," she said quietly. Helena, clutching her pillow tighter to her, raised her eyes with reluctance. They were green, some calm, dispassionate part of her decided, Myka's eyes were green. Not hazel or some color in between, but green. "You and Irene, the two of you have always had a strange kind of relationship that I'm not going to pretend to understand. I know I spouted a lot of crap years ago about how you couldn't live a normal life and that you were part of the Warehouse, but I was just lashing out. Helena, I don't care whether you come back to the Warehouse or appraise antiques the rest of your life. I don't think being a Warehouse agent defines you, just as I don't think the things you've done, good and bad, define you either. You're more than both, but you have to want to believe it."
Helena lifted a hand, as though she might touch Myka's face, but she couldn't complete the gesture. Myka did it for her, taking her hand and nestling her own face against it. "What I was trying to say before . . . I was just trying to say that, for the first time in all the years I've known you, I thought you had room for something, someone, besides your . . . . " She turned her head and kissed Helena's palm. "Preoccupations, for lack of a better word."
"You're saying that my narcissism has finally been dented," Helena said with a shaky laugh. As Myka laughed with her, she traced the shape of Myka's eyebrow and the arc of her cheekbone with the thumb of her free hand. "They don't tell you before you're bronzed, because, of course, they don't know and because, truly, no matter what you might say about being released in the future, they don't ever plan to release you, that the world you'll find yourself in isn't yours, will never be yours," Helena said hollowly. "Not that I would've listened had they told me, I was still arrogant enough to think, after everything that had happened, that I was stronger than any punishment. I could make myself the master of any situation I found myself in." Her voice faltering, she said, "But I was wrong. Everyone I had known, everyone I had loved was dead, and the homes I had lived in or visited were gone or altered almost beyond recognition. Or put on some register of historic places.' She attempted a wry smile. "It turned out that I wasn't bigger than the forces that had shaped me, I was a product of my time, and my time had already passed." Taking a deep breath, she said, "You've been what's made living in this world that's not mine, this century that's not mine possible. You're also what makes it impossible. You've seen me for who I am, and yet you still think I'm worthy of being loved. I've never been able to reconcile it."
"Because it can't be reconciled," Myka said. "You just have to accept it." She tilted her head back, squeezing her eyes shut. Blinking them open, her eyelashes wet with tears, she said ruefully, "Or not."
Unfolding herself from she where she knelt at Helena's feet, Myka sat next to her on the sofa. Helena threaded her fingers through Myka's hair, and Myka sighed, swinging her legs over the other sofa arm and laying her head in Helena's lap. "When Pete and I came to Boone, and I saw you in Nate's house and how you hung on everything Adelaide said or did, as if she was all that kept you from being swept away, I literally thought, 'This is Helena's new obsession. She's found a way to reconnect with Christina.' And though I wasn't even sure what my feelings were entirely, I knew they needed to end." Myka looked up into Helena's face, her mouth crooked in a half-smile. "But Pete was there. He was always there, and maybe it started then, with him, because I knew I couldn't take his there-ness for granted anymore. Because whether you intended it or not, even when you were there, in the Warehouse, on the road, in the B&B, you weren't there. Not where I could reach."
Helena wrapped a strand of Myka's hair around her finger. "Adelaide was precocious and curious like Christina, and while Nate didn't really need a wife, Adelaide needed a mother. Then you came to Boone, and I realized she wasn't very much like Christina at all, but she was very much like you. So serious and eager to please, constantly feeling like she had to make up for something. As I often imagined you felt as a child, responsible for what were your father's failures." She looked away from Myka for a moment. "I don't know what was the worst realization. That I had run from a lover, a potential lover, only to become her mother, or that I had forgotten who my daughter was." Turning her gaze back to Myka, Helena let those green eyes, earnest and grave, draw her in, deeper and deeper. "I was trying to make up to her for how badly I had hurt you, and all I did in the end was hurt her the more. Is it so hard to understand why I leave?"
"If that's how you feel, why did you come back?"
Helena lifted her shoulders helplessly. "The farther I've run from you, the less I've cared about where I ended up. There's nowhere else for me to go, Myka."
"That's deflating, but it's honest, I guess." This time it was Myka winding a strand of Helena's hair around her finger. "If you run, I'm not going to chase you. You've got to want to be here, Helena, for this to work between us. And by here," she said, her gaze growing intent, "I mean here, present, unobsessed. You have to make room for two of us, and if you can't do that. . . ."
Helena caught Myka's hand. "'I try all things, I achieve what I can.'"
"I never should have introduced you to Moby Dick. Only you would think quoting it would win a girl over." But she was smiling, a little. "But, sadly, I'm the type of girl it works on." She paused. "I know, neither one of us is promising anything." She reached for one of the sofa pillows and put it on Helena's lap. Snuggling her head into it, she said, "Just for a minute, and then you really do have to go back to the B&B."
Helena heard crunching sounds and an irregular tinking. She opened her eyes, her hand automatically hooking back to rub her stiff neck. There was an uncomfortable weight pressing on her bladder and, looking down, she saw Myka sleeping on her lap. Helena dazedly realized they had spent the night on the sofa in the family room, and the crunching and the tinking were coming from Drew, who stood in front of them, eating a bowl of what looked like Cap'n Crunch.
"You stayed over again," he announced unnecessarily. "And you were snoring again." He looked over his shoulder at the tv. "Do you want to play the treasure-hunting game?" At Helena's shaking of her head, he asked, "I finished putting together the Empire State Building Mom got me. Do you want to see it?"
Myka stirred, sleepily pushing her head into Helena's abdomen. Helena winced at the added pressure, but she only smoothed the tangle of Myka's curls from her face. "I think I have time for that."
Helena was yawning as she unlocked the door to the apartment. She had a container of Earl Grey and a croissant in a bakery bag pinched between the fingers of her other hand. She stopped just inside the threshold; Mrs. Frederic was sitting regally, not a bend in her back, on the sofa. The pale pink suit was crisp and the pumps shiny and unscuffed.
"Did someone leave you as a housewarming gift?" Helena asked sardonically, crossing to the breakfast bar and putting the tea and bakery bag down.
Mrs. Frederic smiled blandly. "I thought I would check in and see how you're doing."
Helena opened a cupboard and took out a package of donut gems. "Mini-donut? Would you like some Gatorade instead?" The bland smile didn't change. "Do you eat? I've often wondered." Helena removed the lid from the container and took a sip of her tea, eyeing Mrs. Frederic over its rim.
"You've made inroads, it appears. With Myka and with our replication problem."
"I heard you were a cheerleader for Myka and Pete, I can understand if you don't find her being with someone whose soul has shriveled like a raisin a step up." Helena broke off a piece of the croissant and popped it into her mouth.
Mrs. Frederic looked at the skirt of her suit, and the downward sweep of her eyes revealed a weariness that made Helena regret the sarcasm of her remark. "You had made it clear that you had no intention of returning to the Warehouse, and Myka needed to move on. Why wouldn't I be supportive of it?" Mrs. Frederic didn't sigh, it would be a sign of weakness, Helena thought uncharitably, but she heard the exhalation in the quiet of the apartment. "In so many ways, you remain such a child. If Myka is happy with you and you with her, why would I object? She's always had a positive influence on you, and, in your own way, I think, you can be good for her. The fact that you're at least trying to strengthen your relationship with her . . . perhaps I needn't fear for the state of your soul. Time will take us where it will, and the fact that Pete was what Myka needed when you left the Warehouse doesn't mean he's what she needs now." Shifting on the sofa to turn toward Helena, she said, "My concerns are with what's happening to artefacts and the Warehouse, and your ability to stop it."
"And there's the confidence booster I was looking for from you," Helena said dryly, taking a seat on one of the chairs at the breakfast bar.
"You want to know who's been interested in the time artefacts."
"It's a theory I'm working on -"
"You think the number of times someone's gone back to change time has enabled the replication. Yes, I'm aware. What I don't understand is why you want to know who's been interest in your artefacts. You were never able to successfully change time."
"Thank you for the reminder," Helena said with a tight smile. "I didn't realize Claudia had become such a little gossip."
"She doesn't have to tell me," Mrs. Frederic said equably. "We have a connection. As do you and I, believe it or not."
"Oh, I know our connection," Helena said, frowning down at her tea. It had cooled. She hated cold Earl Grey. "We're two old women who have lived far longer than we should have."
"But not past our usefulness, I hope."
"It doesn't matter that I failed to change time, it matters that I disturbed it, more than once." Helena hesitated. "I don't belong here," she said quietly. "You're still a caretaker, you have a reason for being here. I don't. My being unbronzed was never intended by anyone at the Warehouse, and I would have died or, rather, remained dead had Arthur not changed the time line. I'm a walking anomaly, you know that, as would anyone who had access to the Warehouse's records. An anomaly, moreover, who for some strange reason continues to share an affinity, I guess you could call it, with the Warehouse. Sometimes I think I must be like that character from Fringe, the one from the alternative universe who glows in this one. Do I give off a glow? Do I make lights blink and toasters short out?"
"Actually, it's a little black cloud right over your head."
Helena barked a surprised, not entirely pleased, laugh and stared at Mrs. Frederic. "You do have a sense of humor. I hadn't been sure about that either."
"And I think you're getting carried away with your sense of self-importance. There's no reason for you to think that whoever is behind the replication has a special interest in you." Mrs. Frederic slowly pushed herself up from the sofa. "I agree that someone may have an interest in the time artefacts, and I fully support any energies Claudia wants to devote to finding out if those artefacts have been handled without our knowing it. But I do not support her wasting time trying to determine if your artefacts have been disturbed, nor do I appreciate your insistence that she keep her investigation secret."
There was something in her eyes that Helena couldn't quite read, something more than worry but less than fear. "Did Pete ever tell you that he's had vibes about me, stretching back five years ago?" A muscle in Mrs. Frederic's face twitched, the only giveaway that she hadn't known. "He didn't tell you. Pete gets a lot of things wrong, but not his vibes. He said they were about me, and I believe him."
Mrs. Frederic said, deadpan, "Of course you would. Mr. Lattimer's vibes are very useful, it's one of the reasons that I wanted him as a Warehouse agent, but I wouldn't base a course of action solely on his vibes."
"Who said anything about taking action? I have no plan in mind, Irene. I'm trying only to see all the possibilities." Helena took her tea to the sink, dumped it, and then dropped the container in the small recycling bin next to the garbage can. So conscientious this new Warehouse regime.
Mrs. Frederic regarded her impassively. "You have always had a fondness for the grandiose. We are a team here, Helena. Should you discover anything tangible, I expect you to tell us and not to act on your own."
"Little more than a week ago, you doubted that I could act to save an agent, if necessary. Now you're presuming that I would throw myself into the fire to save the Warehouse. You can't have it both ways. Either I'm still capable of such grand gestures or I'm not." Helena came around the breakfast bar to stand in front of Mrs. Frederic. She was petty enough to take satisfaction in the fact that she was the taller. "Let me reassure you, I'm not seeking redemption. I would very much like to solve this problem with my skin intact. If I discover who is behind the replication or how it's being done, I will be more than happy to share it with the rest of you and let you decide what action to take."
"You've also had a fondness for lying when the truth would better serve you. I can only hope you're being honest with me now."
Helena shook her head, rolling her eyes. "Wouldn't this connection between us that you've so blithely mentioned tell you when I'm lying -" She cut herself short when her gaze landed on the empty space in front of her. Bollocks. There was no having the last word with that woman.
She went back to the kitchen and dampened a sponge to wipe the crumbs off the breakfast bar. She had no plan in her back pocket, no course of action mapped out. She didn't know if she bore some special connection to the replication. But what she did know was that if, somehow, the efforts to replicate the artefacts depended on her or something of hers, she wouldn't let any of it touch Myka. That didn't require any chest-thumping declaration or dramatic avowal. She just wouldn't, that's all.