Chapter Four #5
Helen’s official term as kitchen slave—a system of alternating weeks that had started as soon as she was old enough to cook—began on Sunday morning, but there was nothing in the house for them to eat that night.
She made a list, took the housekeeping cash out of the cookie-less cookie jar, and drove Kate’s car to the market.
In the parking lot she saw a gigantic luxury SUV and shook her head disapprovingly at it.
There were a lot of disgustingly rich people on the island who drove vehicles that were too big for the old cobblestone streets, but this SUV was especially annoying for some reason.
It was a hybrid, so she couldn’t really get too wound up about the environment, but she felt herself getting irritated, anyway.
Helen pulled a shopping cart out of the stand and wheeled it into the store.
As she waved at a few kids from school who worked at the registers, she started to hear the Furies whispering.
She debated running out . . . but everyone at school already thought she was crazy.
If she ran out of the grocery store now like she had seen a ghost, there would be even more gossip.
She made herself push the cart on, keeping her head down to avoid seeing the Furies—but there was nothing she could do to block out their voices.
She would just have to move fast and get it over with as quickly as possible.
She allowed herself a moment of self-pity for the injustice of her situation.
She didn’t deserve to be haunted like this.
It wasn’t fair. Helen walked briskly through the store, picking only the few things she would need to get through a day or two of cooking.
Her frantic thoughts were interrupted by voices, real voices, coming from the next aisle over.
“She shouldn’t be here,” said a young but strangely seri-ous voice. Helen guessed it was Cassandra’s.
“I know,” said a male voice, possibly Jason’s? “We have to find a way to get to her soon. I don’t think Luke can take it much longer.”
Helen froze. What did they mean, “get to her”? She stood there thinking in slow motion until she realized they were coming around the end of the aisle. Trying to back up, she plowed into someone standing right behind her. The wailing of the Furies grew so loud it was painful.
She spun around and had to tilt her head almost all the way back to find the face above the enormous male chest that confronted her.
Under golden curls, bright blue eyes drilled down into Helen’s.
It crossed her mind that he looked like a blond version of Michelangelo’s Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, newly released from plaster and walking around in three gigantic dimensions.
Helen had never been so afraid of anyone in her entire life.
She took an automatic step back and ran into her shopping cart. Her breath hitched painfully in the back of her throat as she stumbled to the side, her hands and feet clumsy with fear. There was a bright, momentary glimmer, and he twitched away from her, his body convulsing spasmodically.
Helen smelled the nauseating combination of singed hair and ozone that always made her think that she had done something wrong.
A brief thought of the Nantucket ferry flashed through her mind as she studied the blond monster in front of her, trying to figure out what had happened.
After a stunned second, he collected himself and leaned closer to Helen with an evil grin on his angelic face.
He was near enough that Helen could feel the heat coming off his body.
“Hector!” commanded a familiar voice. Helen had only a moment to register that it was Lucas before she felt him grab her arm and pull her away from the Goliath that was his cousin. Instantly furious instead of frightened, Helen rounded on Lucas and threw off his arm.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed. She felt light-headed. “Why can’t you just stay away from me?”
“Why can’t you just stay at home?” he shot back at her. “Didn’t you have enough fun last night in the alley?”
“I have errands to run! It’s not like I can hide in my bedroom for the rest of my life just because some woman . . .” Helen realized she was starting to yell. She stopped herself and lowered her voice. A thought occurred to her. “Are you still following me?”
“You’re lucky that’s all I’m doing. Now go home,” he growled, and grabbed her arm again.
“Careful, Luke,” Hector warned, but Lucas just smiled.
“She can’t control it yet,” he replied.
“Can’t control what?” Helen choked out furiously, her patience pushed past the limit.
“Not here. Not now,” said Jason in a low, clipped voice. Lucas nodded in agreement and started pulling Helen toward the door.
Helen ripped her arm out of Lucas’s grasp again.
Undeterred, he just grabbed her by the hand and held it hard.
Helen had two choices. She could put up a fight in front of the entire store, or she could go quietly holding the hand of the most despicable boy in the free world.
She was so frustrated she could feel a repressed scream squeezing her lungs shut, but she had no choice.
Lucas frog-marched her past a chestnut-haired beauty that Helen guessed was the other cousin, Ariadne.
She tried to smile at Helen compassionately even though she was clearly just as inflamed by the Furies as everyone else was.
For a second, Helen considered smiling back, but she didn’t possess Ariadne’s self-control.
She was too angry to manage it. Fleetingly, she thought that Ariadne had to be the nicest person in the world if she could attempt to be kind in that moment.
“Don’t even look at my sister,” Lucas growled through gritted teeth, jerking brutally on Helen’s hand as they walked past tiny Cassandra. Cassandra opened her mouth to say something to her brother and quickly shut it, turning away.
“I have no food in the house. What am I supposed to do for dinner?” Helen growled through her closed-off throat.
“Do I look like I care?” he replied, dragging her out of the store.
“You can’t treat me like this,” she said. He was leading her across the lot. “We hate each other. Fine. Why don’t we just stay away from each other then?”
“And how has that worked out so far?” Lucas asked, sounding frustrated rather than sarcastic. “Do you always come to this same store at this same time every Saturday, or did you come today on a whim?”
“No, never. It’s the busiest day of the week. But I needed groceries,” Helen sputtered. He laughed incredulously and squeezed her arm even harder.
Helen suddenly realized how many random events and raw impulses had driven her decisions these last few days. When she thought about it, it was as if she had stopped choosing for herself days ago.
“The Furies won’t allow us to avoid each other,” he said in a dead voice.
“Then we can make a schedule or something . . .” Helen began, but she knew it was a lame suggestion and trailed off before he had a chance to shoot it down.
An ancient, supernatural force was compelling her to kill Lucas.
It probably wasn’t going to be deterred by something as prosaic as a time-share.
“My family hasn’t decided what we want to do about this, about you—yet.
But we’ll be in touch,” Lucas said. They got to her car.
He shoved her against the driver’s door, as if he couldn’t stop himself from trying to hurt her one last time.
“Now go home and stay there,” he ordered again, and stood over her while she fumbled with the keys.
For a moment as she backed out of her parking space she considered gunning the engine and hitting him with the car, but she didn’t want to mess up Kate’s paint job.
Angry tears started pouring down her face as soon as she was out of the parking lot, and they didn’t stop until she was at home, splashing cold water on her face in the kitchen sink.
She felt humiliated in a dozen different ways. Some of that humiliation she had brought on herself by attacking Lucas at school, but he seemed determined to belittle her. She wasn’t even allowed to go grocery shopping now. How was she going to explain that to her father?
The thought of Jerry derailed any nascent plan of escape.
She was hopelessly outnumbered, and unless she was willing to leave her father behind to fend for himself she had to wait until the Delos boys were done deciding how to handle her.
She leaned against the kitchen sink and stared at the block of knives on the counter.
If she had Lucas cornered the way he did her, she would have already picked out which knife to use.
What she didn’t know was why. Why did they hate each other so much?
What purpose could all that anger possibly serve?
She suddenly thought about Hector, about the way he had smiled at her, and a carpet of goose bumps unrolled down her arms. If she was ever alone with him, she knew he would kill her. Not just bully her like Lucas did, but actually, joyfully, kill her.
She was still leaning up against the sink half an hour later when her dad finally made it home. He froze midstep and looked around the kitchen, giving the entire room a fast once-over.
“Did I do something wrong again?” he asked, his eyes wide.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Helen huffed.
“Because the past few days every time I come home you look at me like I’ve forgotten your birthday or something equally unforgivable.”
“Well, have you?”
“No! I haven’t done anything! Nothing wrong,” he said with a straight face, but the red flush rising up his neck gave him away.
“Should I ask about you and Kate or would I be too grossed out?”
“Hey. There’s nothing going on there. We’re just going to be friends,” he said, his expression grim. Helen could tell there was a lot of backstory behind that decision, but she didn’t really want to hear it at the moment.
“Your loss,” Helen responded with a disinterested shrug. Jerry’s head jerked up quickly, stunned by the bitterness in her voice.
“You didn’t used to be so mean, Helen.”
She crossed her arms and looked off to her left at absolutely nothing, too ashamed of herself to meet her father’s sad gaze.
She could handle the fear of being pursued by vengeful spirits from Hades, but not if turned her into a bitch.
Whatever the Delos family decided, she hoped they would do it quickly.
She started to mumble an apology, but was saved from having to explain herself by a knock at the door.
Jerry went to answer it and after a few moments he called out to Helen to come and join him.
“What is it?” she asked, coming out of the kitchen. There was a delivery boy at the door with bags and bags of groceries.
“He says these are for you,” Jerry said, holding out a note with Helen’s name on it.
“I didn’t order these,” Helen said to the delivery boy.
“The order was made by a Mrs. Noel Delos to be delivered to a Miss Helen Hamilton. It’s all paid for,” he replied, anxious to be on his way.
Jerry tipped the kid and took the groceries into the kitchen while Helen read the note.
Miss Hamilton,
I am so sorry for my son’s appalling behavior toward you at the market today, and I ask that you accept these few things I’ve sent, even if you are unable to accept an apology. I understand what it is to try to put dinner on the table with no groceries, although apparently my Lucas does not.
Noel Delos
Helen stared at the page for far longer than it took to read it. She was touched by the gesture. It was a ridiculously decent thing to do. Helen got the impression that there was something different about Noel Delos, but she had no idea what it was.
“What does she mean, ‘appalling behavior,’ Lennie?” Jerry asked, reading over her shoulder. Helen could see outrage beginning to build in him. “What did that Lucas kid do to you now?”
“No, Dad, it’s okay. She’s exaggerating,” Helen said, trying to make as little of it as possible.
“Then we can’t accept these. This is over a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries,” he argued.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Helen moaned at the ceiling.
She took a deep breath and launched into an explanation.
“Okay, you win. Lucas and I had another fight today at the market, but it was a small one. In comparison, at least. Anyway, the point is that he started it and I couldn’t go shopping like I needed to and one of the other Delos kids must have told his mom that I didn’t do my shopping and she took it the wrong way and sent all these groceries because she’s obviously a really nice woman but I don’t want you to say anything to her and can we please, please, drop it? ”
“What the hell is it with you and this Lucas kid?” Jerry said after a moment, completely flabbergasted. Then a thought occurred to him. “Are you two dating?” he asked in a terrified voice. Helen burst out laughing.
“No, we’re not dating. What we’re doing is trying to not kill each other. And that isn’t working out too well,” she responded, trusting that the absolute truth would be so inconceivable he would think it was a joke. She was right.
He got a pained look. “You’ve never had a boyfriend. Is it time for us to have that talk about what men and women do when they love each other?”
“Absolutely not,” Helen replied firmly.
“Good,” he said, relieved. They stood in awkward silence for a moment. “So . . . we can eat the groceries, right?”
“Heck, yeah,” she said as she turned on her heel and made for the kitchen while Jerry practically ran to the living room and the dependable comfort of SportsCenter.
As she put together some bruschetta with the amazing bufala mozzarella, fresh tomato, basil, and crazy-good Spanish olive oil Mrs. Delos had sent, she thought about her father and how oblivious he was to the forces pulling her life apart in hunks.
With all that was happening to her, she knew she might not have many more nights of dinner and baseball to look forward to, but the thought didn’t bother her as much as it would have a week ago.
If the Delos family wanted her, they could try and take her.
She was sick of being angry all the time.
Fight and kill or fight and die, she really didn’t care.
As long as she could keep her father out of all of this Greek tragedy nonsense, she would deal with whatever came her way.