Chapter 22 #3
My cheeks redden. Danny, bare-chested and hovering over me, fills my mind. Then our fight in front of my office. I blink hard to make the images disappear.
“I bet.” Helena grins. Then she sighs. “Sorry if I’m interrogating you.
Job hazard. But, sometimes, I just wish Casey would give me more to go on.
Like, he’s coming down to LA with me, right?
Meanwhile I don’t even know if I’m his actual girlfriend yet.
Or if he wants more kids! Anytime I bring up the future, he gets all guarded.
” She walks around her desk and hands me a chilled Pellegrino.
“That’s Casey for you,” I say, accepting the bottle. I sip the fizzy water, wondering if I should leave. I don’t want to be disloyal to Casey, but, god, it feels good to speak to someone who finally understands what he’s like.
“I’m really sorry if I was rude the night we met,” she says, leaning against her desk, her eyes sliding to the side. “I felt … threatened.”
“Threatened?” I say, almost choking on the fizzy water. “By me?”
“You two have so much history, and his girls already love you. I felt like an interloper. Like I was breaking up an existing family.” Her eyes meet mine. “My dad left my mom for a homewrecker. I’d never be that to those kids.”
“You aren’t a homewrecker,” I say. “Casey and I are just friends.” The soundtrack of my life.
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
My head jerks up.
“Honestly, Lauren,” she continues. “Who do you think you’re kidding? Even if it’s not romantic, you two are way more than just friends. It doesn’t take a seasoned litigator to see that.”
I stare at her, feeling stripped bare.
“OK,” I say slowly. “You’re right. We’re more than just friends. We’re … partners. We rely on each other. But that doesn’t make you a homewrecker. And I’m sorry I behaved all territorial when we met.”
“I get it,” she says, exhaling and tapping her plump lips with an expensive-looking pen. “But where do we go from here?”
“You go to LA, right? For the summer?”
“And Casey comes with me.” Helena rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. It all feels impossible now.”
“What does?”
Her eyes hold mine softly, emerald green and sparkling. It occurs to me that they are the eyes of a woman who knows her worth.
“Competing with the two perfect women he already loves. His late wife … and you.”
My mouth goes dry. There’s that word again. Perfect.
But I didn’t have a choice. I’ve had to be perfect for the people in my life. Dad, the girls, Casey. Especially Casey, even though all my perfection did was push him further away.
I sigh. “I’m not perfect,” I say, looking down.
“I’m just good at pretending. Truthfully, I’m a mess.
And Ally, well, she wasn’t perfect either.
She only seems perfect now because she’s no longer living.
Death is very flattering for a woman. It makes people forget all the ridiculous and annoying things about you. ”
“Flattering?” Helena smiles. “You make it sound like an Instagram filter.”
“It’s true. Casey remembers her as this Botticelli painting now that she’s gone, all pastel etherealness with no flaws. But she was a real woman. And she was fucking fantastic.”
“Tell me.”
“Oh, you know. Normal things. Like, she got banned from OpenTable for making fantasy reservations at restaurants in distant cities and never showing up. Same thing with fantasy vacations on Airbnb—my god, her star rating was so low. So she’d have to use my accounts for everything and was constantly resetting all my passwords.
” I roll my eyes and laugh. “It was infuriating! I was always locked out of everything—couldn’t watch Netflix for years. ”
Helena laughs, too, letting me reminisce.
“It feels good to remember the real her,” I say.
“Keep going. What else made her human?”
“Board games. They unlocked a weird competitiveness in her. She’d go around the next day, personally apologizing with homemade cardamom granola.
Oh, and she tended to be a bit militant about the environment, even by Seattle standards.
She instituted a very confusing waste management protocol, so you never knew how to throw anything away.
The earthworms she housed in her garage were always escaping.
They’d crawl into your boots on the shoe rack, so you’d have to tip them before putting your foot in.
“But she was fun too. And Casey absolutely adored her. She’d drink too much rosé and fall off a garden chair at one of his work parties or whatever, and he’d just shake his head lightly, like ‘that’s my Ally,’ gather the contents of her spilled purse, and go home to make her cheese toast. It was nothing short of beautiful to watch, how that man loved every corner of her. ”
Helena’s delicate features are pensive. “Do you think he’s capable of loving someone like that again?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I hope so.”
She smiles. “I’m glad you came by today, Lauren. I’ve never been much good at making girlfriends,” she admits. “I either feel too threatened, or I go and do the threatening.”
I nod, knowing exactly what she means.
“Anyway, I hope my letter helps your client,” she says.
“Me too.”