Chapter 39 Jessiah
The apartment seemed darker than usual as I stepped inside and threw my keys on the kitchen counter.
Quieter, too. I took off my jacket without turning on the lights, sinking onto the sofa, unable to find the strength to do anything but stare into space.
I’d thought about driving to the beach on the way home, but something stopped me.
A feeling I couldn’t put my finger on. It was probably a good thing; in this state, I wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in the surf—and my board was broken now, anyway.
I had no idea how much time had passed when I heard the knock at the door.
Perplexed, I heaved myself off the sofa and cast a glance at the kitchen clock—it was just after ten.
Was it Thaz stopping by, knowing I’d have had a shitty time at my mother’s?
I didn’t think so—he wasn’t the bereavement-counselor type. So who was it at my door?
For a moment I thought about pretending not to be home—I could really do without a visit tonight from one of my neighbors complaining about the bar down the street and asking me to do something about the noise.
But in the end, my sense of duty won out, and I went to answer—it might be important.
But when I opened the door, it wasn’t a neighbor standing there.
“Helena.” I stared at her as if she weren’t real. She looked like a vision, in her blue dress fit for a princess and her perfectly chignoned hair. But the expression on her face was real enough, and it tore my heart in two. Just like the day we’d first met, when I knew we felt the same.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words came out, and I saw how hard she was trying to keep it together.
But she didn’t have to do that for me—I let her in, and took her in my arms, and as she pressed her body to mine and began to weep bitterly, I knew this was exactly what she needed today.
No, not true: it was exactly what we both needed.
I let her cry and stopped fighting my own tears—and so there we were, in the middle of my apartment, holding each other tightly, letting it all out, finally giving free rein to all our feelings.
I’d suspected Helena had been holding it all in the whole day, just like I had.
And that I’d been completely wrong when I thought nobody understood how I felt.
She knew. She knew better than anyone in the world.
It was some time before Helena’s tears abated and her sobs grew softer. We both took a deep breath at the same time and finally broke apart.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her face, her voice thick. “I know I shouldn’t have come, but it was such a shitty day, and then I was suddenly in front of your building—”
“Stop,” I implored her, wiping my own eyes with my sleeve. “Don’t apologize. Please. I’m happy you’re here.”
“Really?” She looked at me uncertainly.
“Yes.” It was foolhardy, but it was the truth.
It was hurting us both that we couldn’t be together, and I realized when I looked at her now that it didn’t alter the fact that we couldn’t stay away from each other.
Against all odds, on a day like today, desperate and in despair, she had turned up at my place.
A guy she didn’t know very well, who was totally off-limits to her.
And who, despite all the heartache, was so pleased to see her that he couldn’t help but feel a spark of heat.
“How come you’re dressed up like a dark-haired Elsa?” I asked, brushing a strand of hair from her face and indicating her ballgown.
“How come you know Frozen?” came the prompt response.
I laughed out loud. “Eli loved that movie when he was little. I’ve seen it so many times, I could sing you a perfect rendition of ‘Let it Go’ from memory.”
Helena gave a little smile, looking down and smoothing her tulle skirt. “It was a ball, one of the most important events of the year. I didn’t want to go, but I knew it was important to my parents, so…”
“So you went anyway, as a favor to them,” I finished the sentence for her.
Helena nodded. “Yes. I didn’t think it would be so bad.
But everyone there was shit-talking my family, and Valerie as well…
it was too much. Too much after today, when I was the only one who wanted to commemorate her anniversary.
I had to get out of there.” She pressed her lips together to stop herself crying again.
“Maybe it’d be better if I went home,” she said, though it didn’t sound like she wanted to do the sensible thing.
“Maybe you should just stay here,” I replied without thinking too much about it. I didn’t care about the consequences right now; I just knew it would be good for us to spend some time together.
“Is that really okay?”
“It’s more than okay, Fair Helen.” I smiled softly. “Your turning up at my door is by far the best thing that’s happened to me all day. I had a terrible dinner at my mother’s and then an empty evening ahead. Well, except for a bottle of whiskey, maybe.”
She nodded, and despite the sadness in her eyes, I could see she was glad not to have to go back to the Park Avenue apartment, where I guessed that a dressing-down from her parents for leaving the ball early was all that awaited her.
“Do you have anything I could change into? Something a little less Disney?”
“Sure.” I grinned, a cozy, warm feeling wrapping itself around me—she’d decided to stay. “I just can’t promise it’ll fit.”
“It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s comfortable and doesn’t remind me of that stupid ball.”
I went to the closet and looked through the shelves of sports gear. Helena followed me and waited in the doorway, taking out her phone and tapping something out before she stowed it away again.
“Giving yourself an alibi?” I asked, pulling out a stack of hoodies and giving them the once-over.
She laughed sadly. “Yes. Officially I’m spending the night at a friend’s. It’s not really allowed since the Mirage, but they’ll let it go today, I’m sure.”
“If not, we can always say you lost your memory and turning up at my door was a total coincidence.” I gave her a lopsided grin.
“Here.” I’d found her a blue sweater—it had shrunk in the dryer, but I’d got it in Europe and was very attached to it, and I gave it to her along with a pair of drawstring sweatpants.
“Thank you.” She sounded relieved, as though I’d just saved her life with those clothes.
“The bathroom’s over there,” I said, pointing to the door; I wasn’t sure she’d ever been here during Adam’s time. “There are towels in the cupboard next to the shower, in case you want to clean up.”
She grinned. “Do I look that bad?”
“No, not at all,” I replied, dead serious. “You’re the prettiest panda I’ve ever seen.”
Helena laughed weakly, then took the clothes into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
I went to the kitchen, got some glasses from the cupboard, and put them on a tray with a bottle of whiskey. Then I had a look in the little pantry next to the fridge to see if I had any snacks, but since Eli’s last visit all that was left was a sad mini-pack of cheese-flavored Combos.
“Okay, where’s this whiskey?” announced Helena as she emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. I looked up.
She’d taken off her makeup, twisted her hair up into a bun, and was wearing my clothes, which were of course far too big but still looked good on her. The sight of her made my heart leap in the best way. I’d never found anyone more beautiful than in that moment.
“What is it?” she asked. She’d noticed the way I was looking at her, and touched her face as if she’d missed a bit of makeup.
“Nothing.” I smiled and grabbed the tray. “Come on, let’s go up.”
“Up?” Her gaze went to my bed on the mezzanine. Any other day I might have made a crass comment, but this time I just shook my head.
“No, right up top.” I started up the stairs and waited for Helena to follow.
Setting the tray down on the bed briefly, I opened a narrow door built inconspicuously into the wall, behind which a wrought-iron staircase spiraled steeply upward.
I retrieved the tray and took it up. Seconds later, Helena appeared on the terrace and stopped in her tracks.
“Wow.” She looked around, stunned. “I had no idea this was here.”
“It wasn’t, during Adam’s time.” I put the tray down on the low table in front of the outdoor sofa, reaching behind the back of it for the remote control to turn on the subtle mood lighting.
“I mean, the terrace was here, but it was just a bare patch of concrete with a railing. When I moved in, I thought it’d be a shame not to make better use of it. ”
A ring of shrubs sitting in pots around the edge of the wooden deck formed a kind of green barrier to the city outside. Helena touched one of them lightly. “Did you do all this yourself?”
“Not everything, no.” I put my hands in my pockets. “I had help from a couple of builders and one of the garden gurus who used to work for my father. But I did the planning.”
“It’s gorgeous.” She took in a deep breath and let it out again. “You could completely forget you were in the middle of New York City. Which must be why you did it, right?”
I gave a shrug as I went over to a storage box next to the wall, handed Helena a blanket to keep her warm, and we sat down on the couch.
She unfurled the blanket over her legs, and as her gaze met mine, I knew my roof terrace wouldn’t distract her from the ache in her heart for long.
So I poured us both a glass, and handed her one. We clinked glasses lightly.
“To Adam,” she said.
“To Valerie,” I replied.
Helena smiled.
We drank in silence. In the distance, a ship’s horn sounded as it made its way along the Hudson, and down in the street, a dog barked.
“Can I ask you something?” Helena studied me from her corner of the sofa.
“Of course.”
“How did you find out?”
“You mean…?” I swallowed, turning the glass over in my hand.
“Yes.” She nodded, lowering her gaze. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just wondered. I was thinking about it again this morning. What it was like when they broke the news to me. How the floor went out from under my feet.”
I took a deep breath. “I got a phone call. In the middle of the night. The part of Australia I lived in is fourteen hours ahead of New York, so it was two or three o’clock when my cell phone rang.
We’d only just gone to bed; we’d been celebrating.
I can’t remember why now…” I swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump sitting stubbornly in my throat.
“Anyway, I woke up in the night to my phone ringing. It was Trish. She was pretty collected, like always. At first she just said something had happened, and I thought it must be Eli. She couldn’t get the words out, and I think I must have pushed her pretty hard.
Then she said it. Just two things. Adam is dead.
And, You have to come home. Then she hung up. ”
Helena’s eyes grew large. “She left you alone with that?”
“I think, from her point of view, it was actually the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
I took another sip and stared into my glass.
“She’s never said it out loud, but I know it’s not just Valerie she holds responsible.
She blames me too. She’d called me a few weeks earlier, begged me to come back and talk to Adam.
Talk him out of being with Valerie. But I didn’t want to.
I told her she shouldn’t spoil it for him now that he was finally having some fun for the first time in years. ” I sniffed quietly.
Helena leaned in closer to me. “You know she’s wrong though, don’t you?”
“For a long time I thought she was right. Because I believed the things she said about Valerie.”
“And you don’t anymore?”
“No.” I took a breath. “You were right about what you said. He was always there—for me, for my mother, for my brother, for all his friends. If you ever had a problem, you could call Adam; you could be sure he would come and help.” I gave a bitter laugh.
“But I wasn’t. I was never there for him, not when we were kids, or teenagers, and definitely not later on, when he decided he was going to marry a woman he’d only known a few months.
I dismissed it as an obsession he’d latched on to because he’d always had to be so fucking sensible.
I thought he wanted to make up for lost time—partying, girls.
I had no idea he was serious about her. That he really loved her.
And that there was probably no one on the planet who could have talked him out of it. ”
Helena broke into a smile, her eyes glistening again. “No, no one could have done that. I saw them together.”
“Would you…” I broke off. I didn’t know how to get the words out.
I looked at her uncertainly. “Do you think you could tell me something about Valerie? I’d really like to know who she was.
What she was like.” I wanted to get to know the woman who had managed to make my brother really and truly happy.
Probably for the first time in his life.
Helena brushed the tears from her cheeks with a smile. “Of course. I’ll tell you anything you want.”