Chapter Text
Helena imagined many things she might think about during the trial because she knew couldn't dwell on the invective Blaisdell was planning to rain down on her character, her intentions, her soul (should she have one) without going mad. So the very first day she found an eye-level knot in the wall behind the judge's bench that was equidistant between the bench and the witness stand, and she resolved not to move her eyes from it. She wasn't unaware of Blaisdell's grimaces of contempt or the judge's frequent yawns or the jury's uniformly implacable expressions, but she refused, as best she could, to let them weaken her concentration. She knew enough about wood to know that knots marked where branches had grown or failed to grow; they were imperfections only to the extent that people wanted their furniture or homes constructed without blemish. But there was no living thing without imperfections. She, for example, had many. If she were cut and planed, all she would show would be knots.
So she stared at the knot and wondered which of her many blemishes, her many failings had led her here. When she had sent Claudia away after discovering her next to MacPherson's lifeless body and then dabbed her fingers in his congealing blood to mark her face and throat, she had remembered her mother calling her the devil's spawn. Her greatest sin, according to Eleanor Wells, was her conception. If that were true, then she had been destined from birth, no matter her other grievous errors and misjudgments, to end up on trial for murder. While she couldn't deny the power her mother's disapproval had had over her and the choices she had made, Helena had a pragmatic cast of mind. Perhaps she had been destined from birth to murder someone or, as it turned out, to be accused of it, but why James MacPherson?
When she had traveled to Sweetwater, more from the certainty that she could never completely repay the debt she owed to Mrs. Frederic and Leena than from a belief in a malevolent force at work in Dakota Territory, she hadn't recoiled when she had met MacPherson. She hadn't liked him, she had found him smug, condescending, and, frankly, cheap, but she hadn't looked into his eyes and felt the same chill warning she had felt looking into Elizabeth Sloan's. Her distaste hadn't become active contempt until she had come upon one of the girls from the Spur limping as she circled a display of the ointments and tonics on offer at the general store. The side of her face was swollen and discolored, and her right eye almost shut. She overheard the girl explain to Mr. Burns that she had fallen down the stairs in the saloon, but Helena recognized when a woman had been beaten. It had taken her some time to arrange for the necessary funds to be sent to Sweetwater's bank, but once they had been deposited in her account, she had bought the Spur from MacPherson the next day. Even her growing suspicion that he was behind Joshua Donovan's murder and the realization that he was, in fact, Leena's malevolent force weren't enough to make their collision inevitable, ineluctable. Hadn't she been the one to urge caution upon Myka, arguing that they needed to be careful and go slowly in order to defeat his plans? She had detested Elizabeth Sloan as much, possibly more, yet she was still alive, if locked away in a madhouse. What was it about MacPherson that had resulted in her sitting in this chair, in this courtroom, in full view of a jury who looked like they might preempt Mr. Blaisdell's oration at any minute to sentence her to death?
And then Myka had waited until everyone but Malachi Ross and his pup had left the courtroom after the judge called a recess to come to her, to ask her to remember everything that MacPherson had said when he had shown her his fistfuls of Warren Bering's notes, and Helena knew why it had been MacPherson and no one else. All she had to do was close her eyes and she could see Claudia's workshop rise from the ground, its walls bowing out. An instant later, it was gone. From that moment, when she had believed that Myka was lost to her, there was no future she could imagine in which she wouldn't destroy everything MacPherson held dear.
She felt a thrust at her back, and she opened her eyes. She was being returned to her cell, herded toward it, Sweatt, her jailer, poking her as if she were a cow to be prodded. "Git on, Miz Wells," he whined, "the missus'll let my supper grow cold." If he had spent as much time in her cell as she had, he would be in no hurry to return to it. Her cell smelled of the slop bucket they had given her for her night soil, and the warmer the days, the worse the smell. Helena supposed she should feel lucky that she was the only one being held in the women's side of the jail; it was only her odors she had to ignore. She might have to ignore the rumbling of her stomach as well. Sweatt might remember to give her her supper, he might not. The aromas of Mrs. Sweatt's culinary efforts, however, were hardly more palatable than those of her slop bucket. When her dreams weren't filled with images of Myka, they were filled with images of Leena's biscuits and breads and pies. Helena would swear that she had cracked a tooth on the rolls that Sweatt brought her for breakfast.
If there were to be no supper to interrupt the monotony of her evening, she would resume her marking and noting in the margins of the Bible she had been given. As long as there remained a glimmer of light, anyway. Her cell was a cave even at noon. She found no comfort in her relentless studying, and the minor enjoyment she had taken earlier in the book's collection of scalawags had been transformed, through repeated readings, into resentment that the only interesting figures were inevitably consigned to everlasting hellfire. She noted and marked and, yes, even memorized so that in the event Malachi Ross called upon her (and he would be desperate to save her if he had to resort to such a measure) she would be sufficiently armored when Mr. Blaisdell cross-examined her. He would have what he had told her once was the "sword of justice"; against it, she would have pieties and prayers for forgiveness thousands of years old. Not for what she had done to MacPherson but for what she had been. If she appeared weak and weeping and thoroughly ashamed of her life of sin, perhaps, just perhaps, the jury would consider her too weak, too womanly - in the most patronizing and condescending of ways - to have struck MacPherson so violently. Poison him, yes, seduce another into bludgeoning him, yes, but to fracture his skull herself, no.
She didn't know how long she had been squinting at the piece of paper filled with the handwriting that she struggled to acknowledge was her own, so cramped and uncertain it was. In spite of Mr. Blaisdell's order that she be provided with paper and pencil, Sweatt had been chary about providing either to her. She had flattened out the paper on the Bible she held in her lap and perhaps the noise of its unwrinkling had obscured his footsteps. She didn't turn her head; she knew who it was, and she preferred to ruin what was left of her eyesight trying to make out her words: "In Luke, Jesus casts out of Mary Magdalene . . . ." Was it "six demons" she had written or "seven demons"?
Even before the trial had started, he had come and stood outside her cell. He rarely spoke, content to let his presence alone impress the gravity of her situation upon her. His silence didn't stop her from speaking, however. "You don't know what you'd rather do, Mr. Blaisdell, hang me or fuck me, but I know. I've had so many men like you. They would come to me after they had given their sermons and shaken hands with their congregation, sick of their own righteousness." She laughed dryly. "There is no day of rest at a whorehouse, so I had to take them upstairs and let them climb on top of me and call me 'whore.' Is that what you want to do, Mr. Blaisdell? If you have a few dollars, better yet, if you can bring me an edible meal or prevail upon Mr. Sweatt to rinse out my bucket, I'll pull up my skirt." Variants of this jeer had served as her opening gambit on previous evenings, and he hadn't responded to them, but tonight she heard the jingle of coins and the creak of shoe leather in need of oiling as if he were tucking his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels preparatory to speaking.
"Soon Malachi Ross will begin your defense. How confident do you feel, Miss Wells? I know about the so-called scientist who will claim that someone larger than you and stronger than you must have killed MacPherson. I know about the disgruntled servants and former employees who Ross will claim had a motive equal to yours." He stepped closer, and out of the corner of her eye, Helena could see him staring at her from the other side of the bars. "I know about the confession. When our handwriting expert has finished examining it, what do you think he'll conclude? Do you think he's going to conclude that Warren Bering wrote it, a man so enfeebled by drink that his daughter had to conduct business on his behalf? She often sent out correspondence under his name, or so I've heard. But even years of practice can't guarantee perfect imitation, a difference in the shape of an 's' or the crossing of a 't' showing up over and over again. Miss Bering could end up in a very awkward position . . . ."
He was so confident he didn't need to hide his threats. He knew as well as she that anything she said now was mere bravado, but she had to make the attempt. "As usual, Mr. Blaisdell, I'm amazed that we still have a judge and jury since you've made them all but superfluous; you seem to know what they're thinking before they think it. And now you've added handwriting analysis to your talents. Next time, why don't you bring a noose with you, since I'm sure you'd love to play executioner too." She had risen to face him at the door to her cell, standing so close to the bars that had she pressed herself against them her lips would have touched his cheek.
That unremarkable face filled with its unremarkable features did have one remarkable characteristic, the almost nerveless impassivity it displayed every time she saw him. Tonight was no different. "I don't desire your death, Miss Wells. My only desire is to serve the cause of justice. The form it takes is the judge's and jury's decision, not mine." She felt his breath against her skin; it smelled of nothing, not of his dinner or his after-dinner cigar (should he be human enough to have one). There wasn't even the consolatory hint of a rotting molar, quite unlike Sweatt's breath, which, washing over her of a morning when he came to take her to the courthouse, sharply reawakened her to the misery of her condition. "I do recommend, however, that you try very hard to find it in your heart to ask the Lord's forgiveness of your sins. Your time may be short, after all, and the list of them is long."
The next day and the day after she stared at the knot in the courtroom wall and tried not to listen as he worked to counter virtually every argument the defense might raise. Referring to "rumors" of others who had come to MacPherson's ranch that evening, Mr. Blaisdell brought every cow hand and servant he had previously questioned to the stand, as well as some he hadn't, to testify that Miss Wells had been the only visitor. Her willed inattention, proof though it was against the jury's scornful looks and Mr. Blaisdell's seemingly incidental brushes against the defense's table - as though he were slyly suggesting that, with a twist of his hips, he could send her, Malachi Ross, and his pup flying from the courtroom - failed before Mrs. Grundhofer's loud and decisive confirmation that the sole visitor had been "that woman."
"Are you sure?" Mr. Blaisdell persisted with a gravity so extreme that Helena was surprised the courtroom didn't erupt into laughter. "Some of Mr. MacPherson's employees have been heard elsewhere claiming that an older man came to see him that night."
"I'm the housekeeper, and I ought to know," Mrs. Grundhofer said indignantly. Her tone becoming venomous, she added, "That woman was the only visitor he had." She thrust a finger in Helena's direction, and though she felt it as she might feel Mr. Blaisdell's sword of justice burying its tip in her chest, she couldn't stop herself from whispering to Mr. Ross, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you had coached her. Marvelous performance she's giving."
Then followed several of former MacPherson employees who had been dismissed for crimes ranging from theft to possessing a voice that MacPherson had reputedly claimed was like a nail being driven through his head. Every one of them had an unimpeachable alibi that evening or upbraided themselves while they were on the stand for ever having said an angry word about him because though he was hard, they universally acknowledged, "he was a Christian like the rest of us," as one put it, "and didn't deserve to be murdered."
The following day Helena wasn't taken to the courthouse, which surprised her, since Sunday was the only day that court wasn't supposed to be in session. Sweatt didn't appear until noon, giving her a bowl of something that he called soup but which smelled closer to dishwater, and refused to answer her questions. "I don't know what I can tell you, Miz Wells, except that there ain't no trial today." She thought Mr. Ross might try to arrange a visit to explain what was happening, although later, when Sweatt begrudgingly released her from her cell to walk the corridor for a few minutes' exercise, and she asked him who was guarding the rest of the jail (imagining Mrs. Sweatt knitting at the desk), he snorted, saying "About a million marshals, if you think that there being no trial today means you're getting out of here."
She spent Sunday as she had spent the past several Sundays fiercely concentrating on keeping thoughts of those whom she loved far from her mind. Studying the Bible provided only a partial escape as she concluded that the Old Testament in particular was little more than a collection of lamentations about separations, of husbands from wives, parents from children, families from their homes. It was not a comfort. Lacking even Sweatt's grumbling presence - he had appeared early in the morning with a noxious gruel and even worse coffee for her breakfast and then disappeared for the rest of the day - she was left to mutter to the walls and pace her cell. When she feared she would start beating her head against the bars to stop herself from thinking about Myka or Christina, Helena resorted to the only activity that was certain to calm her; she mentally took apart, bolt by bolt, a machine, any machine: Bessie, one of the looms she had marveled over as a child in her grandfather's factories, the train that had brought her here to this godforsaken part of the world.
Monday morning she anxiously waited for Sweatt or Sweatt's wife, as it sometimes was, to bring the dress she would wear to the courtroom, delivered courtesy of Malachi Ross. Had Mr. Ross not charged one of his pups with taking a dress to her each day court was in session, Helena would have appeared before the judge and jury in the gray . . . sack . . . she was otherwise forced to wear as an inmate of the jail. It would have been a worse humiliation than having to hear every ill-considered act of her life - and there had been many - described in the minutest detail by Mr. Blaisdell. But other than to shove her breakfast tray at her, neither Sweatt nor his wife found reason to come to her cell the rest of the morning. When Sweatt arrived with her dinner tray at noon, she inquired, apprehension sharpening her voice, about why the trial hadn't resumed as it should have, but he pretended not to hear her and when she became strident that she wanted to see her attorney, he cut off her outraged cries by slamming and then rattling the door to her cell after he locked it.
As Tuesday and Wednesday passed the same way, Helena grew convinced that Mr. Blaisdell had managed to permanently suspend the proceedings for fear that there might be one soft heart among the 12 men selected to judge her. She was at a loss to imagine which juror it might be since they had all regarded her with unwavering contempt, leaving her to believe that they had no hearts to be worked upon. Whereas she had feared that Henry would spirit her away, she now wondered with trepidation if Eugene Blaisdell, tiring of the law's presumption of her innocence and its insistence that she be proven guilty, had decided to act on behalf of a higher court, which wasn't really a court at all but a blade that severed and separated the good from the bad. Unlike Henry, he would spirit her away, not to save her, but to punish her, whether in a penitentiary so isolated and forbidding that she would be as good as buried or, perhaps, literally buried, in a hole he would dig himself. By Thursday evening, she was in a panic, hearing every thump and creak as the advance of what Sweatt had told her was a "million" marshals. Making the most of a wan shaft of moonlight, she feverishly tried to take apart her cot, attempting to loosen its screws and nails with her pencils, the hard edges of her Bible, even her fingernails, thinking to wield one of its legs as a weapon. She took no notice of her torn and bleeding fingers and could hear nothing above the hammering of her heart.
When Sweatt's reedy voice pierced through the fear that enveloped her, she fell backwards from the cot with a cry of anguish and frustration both. "I don't know why this couldn't wait. Nothing ain't going to happen until the judge gets in tomorrow morning, and even then, he always looks in on his chickens before he leaves for town." The excessive jangling of his keys the expression of his unhappiness, he unlocked the door, shaking his head at the cot turned on its side and the blanket and pillow thrown onto the floor. "She's been acting crazier than a loon these past few days. Looks like she's trying to do something she's not s'posed to with her bed." He sighed, aggrieved and not a little wounded. "Why'd you have to go and make a mess, Miz Wells? I'll have to report it to Mr. Blaisdell, and he won't like it."
Her visitor had stood behind Sweatt, beyond the glow of the jailer's lantern, but he no sooner spoke than Helena knew who he was. Even in this odiferous pit, he sounded as though he were ready to bring the audience to its feet. "Mr. Blaisdell's untrammeled power over my client is about to end. If you wish to keep in my good graces, you'll leave the lantern with us and scurry away until I call for you."
"Malachi?" Helena's voice cracked as she said his name and she almost burst into tears as the carefully groomed crest of white hair caught the light. Windbag, she had initially thought him and, then, as the trial began and she witnessed his ineffective counterpunches against Mr. Blaisdell's unrelenting attack, she had changed her mind to "humbug," yet he had never been so welcome as he was now. He helped her to her feet and righted the cot; with a flourish, as if he were ushering her into her box at the opera, he invited her to sit on the cot and then, with a maximum of adjustments to his coat and trousers, sat next to her. "What has happened?" She tried to see beyond the habitual, and dramatic, gravity of his expression to the cause of his sudden appearance in her cell so late at night.
"A very good thing," he rumbled, "something that should change the course of the trial." Even though it was just the two of them, he bowed his head and stroked his chin, like Solomon might have done deciding the fate of the child claimed by two mothers, or at least the Solomon in a Saturday matinée of Great Kings of the Bible. "I don't wish to say too much for fear that Blaisdell will somehow manage to continue exerting a malign influence over the judge." Mr. Ross sniffed loudly in condemnation, although Helena wasn't sure which of the two was the greater target of his scorn. "Yet I also want to prepare you for what may be an eventful morning in the courtroom. Be composed and calm as you've been thus far and hold to the belief that justice will triumph."
There was no sarcastic inflection to "justice." He said it with the sincerity of someone who believed that her innocence mattered. He even patted her knee, as if he wanted to show her some sign of sympathy or comfort. She knew, however, that his opinion of her didn't differ significantly from Mr. Blaisdell's. When he thought she had accepted Henry's marriage proposal, he had threatened to help put her in prison. She would always remain a whore in his eyes, and the fact that she was important to Henry made her only a more expensive whore. With another series of dramatic adjustments to his clothing, he stood up and called for the jailer. As Sweatt shuffled and whined his way to her cell, darkly predicting that his being rousted from his bed at such an hour would have grievous consequences for Mrs. Sweatt's peace of mind, Mr. Ross gazed at Helena with begrudging admiration. "I admit that I've not always understood the devotion you've inspired, first Tremaine and now Miss Bering. Should things proceed as I hope, you'll owe her much, Mrs. Wells."
Helena stared back at him as steadily as she could. She knew all too well what she owed Myka, more than he could even imagine, but she would share none of those feelings - her love, her gratitude, her adoration, her respect - with him. If she were a whore to him, he was a client to her. She would give him what he paid for, nothing more. "I appreciate your efforts on my behalf, Mr. Ross," she said assuming a cool civility that was a world away from the haunted, virtually shrieking figure he had found sprawled on the cell floor. "If there is a positive outcome to all that I and my family have suffered," she smiled with the same apparent sincerity that he had offered her, "it will largely be the result of your work."
Unlike her, Mr. Ross saw no need to question the depth of her sincerity. His chest swelled so that it literally ballooned, taking her words as due acknowledgment of his prowess, and, with a tiny shake of his head that might have been a gesture of self-deprecation, he said, "I won't deny that this case has been taxing," and issued a long, weary exhalation to underscore the depletion of his reserves, "but success is also dependent on a certain amount of luck." As Sweatt impatiently coughed behind his hand to signal that Mr. Ross should hasten his departure, Mr. Ross moved only the more slowly out of Helena's cell, a silent but pointed reminder that a lackey of the justice system had no place to be telling one of his betters to be doing anything, much less leaving. He stopped just outside the cell door, preventing Sweatt from closing it, which only occasioned more impatient coughing. He trained a look on Helena that fell somewhere between grandfatherly geniality and hard-nosed practicality, the one she knew acting as a mask for the other. "If we are successful, Mrs. Wells, we will have been very lucky."
While his coming to see her had calmed her fears, his visit also raised additional questions in her mind. What did he mean by "eventful"? More importantly, what had Myka done? The next morning when Sweatt and, in a departure from routine, two marshals accompanied her into the courtroom, she anxiously scanned the spectators, most of them already seated, hoping to spot Myka's face among them. And there she was, in a chair as close as she could get to the table reserved for the defense, the springy mass of her hair testing the strength of the coils into which she had bound it and winning the battle. Helena suppressed the loving smile she wanted to allow at the sight of that tall, lean frame imprisoned in yet another shapeless dress. Mr. Ross had said for her to maintain her composure and gazing upon Myka was ill-suited for that. So Helena let her eyes sweep across the spectators again, registering a disappointment sharper than she expected at the discovery that Charles had apparently chosen today of all days not to attend. Or perhaps the other occupant of the bed he had been sharing these past several days had found ways of encouraging him to stay in it a little longer. With rented rooms at a premium in Pierre, she had little doubt where Charles had sought a bedpost upon which to hang his hat, although beds in saloons and whorehouses weren't generally of the quality to have bedposts.
Sweatt put a palm to her shoulder, not gently, to turn her around to face the front of the courtroom, and Helena, hearing someone angrily suck in a breath nearby, hurriedly sat down on a chair behind the defense's table before Myka decided to upbraid, or fly at, the jailer. His duty done, Sweatt shuffled toward the back of the courtroom, intent upon returning to the jail. The two marshals didn't accompany him, leaving her only to take up positions on either side of the room. The jurors, who had already gathered behind the railing and taken their seats, stopped frowning at her and the courtroom in general to watch the marshals. Some whispered behind their hands to their neighbors, speculating about the reason for the marshals' presence. Mr. Ross and his pup of the day, who were taking their seats at the table next to her, eyed the marshals but said nothing. The only one they were waiting on was the judge . . . and Mr. Blaisdell, Helena noted with some surprise. If he hadn't developed the habit of coming to stand outside her cell of a night, she could easily believe he never left the courtroom. He was always there whenever Sweatt brought her in and he remained in the room after she was led out.
Helena glanced at Mr. Ross from the corner of her eye. Other than offering her his customary greeting of "Better mornings are in your future, Mrs. Wells," he had said nothing, and his pup was equally silent. Yet as they read, or pretended to read, their notes on the trial. Helena noticed that each of them was barely keeping a smile off his face as they flipped through pages filled with their equally illegible handwriting - Mr. Ross's ornamented with an excess of loops and elongated lines, his "t's" so dramatically slashed they could stand in for the cross on Calvary while the pup's was so severely compressed that the words might have been Morse code. The doors slammed and the judge strode through the room to his bench, his robe flapping above boots freshly encrusted with hay and mud. Today there was about him an especially strong smell of turned dirt and . . . chicken coop . . . as if he had forced himself to leave for town at the last possible moment, and his impatience with the attorneys seemed even more pronounced as he glared at the prosecution's empty table.
For a few minutes longer the only sounds were the shifting and coughing of the spectators in their seats, and then the doors opened and closed again, not loudly but with care, as if Mr. Blaisdell were fastidiously pulling them to. Rather than immediately taking his place at the prosecution's table, he stopped at the defense's table and inclined his head at Mr. Ross, who rose and with much sweeping aside of the tails of his suit coat, followed him to the judge's bench. All three engaged in a whispered colloquy so brief that it might have been rehearsed, the decision, whatever it was, reached so quickly because it had already been made, their bent heads now only a pantomime. If Helena hadn't known that the judge and Mr. Blaisdell both would have refused to engage in such a bit of stage business, the one from the certainty that it was a waste of time and the other from the belief that it would be an affront to "Lady Justice," she might have been persuaded that Mr. Ross had orchestrated the moment simply to prolong the suspense.
The judge pushed his chair back, the legs protesting with a squeal, and the courtroom quieted. He stood and surveyed the spectators, his eyes skimming over Helena before resting on the jury. His expression, which softened into something that might be considered apologetic as he regarded them, hardened into its usual disgust when he turned back to the attorneys. He waited as if he were expecting one or both of them to speak, then, with an impatient shrug, he faced the spectators.
"New evidence was submitted to the court, and after considerable review," he hesitated, glancing quickly at Mr. Blaisdell and, the latter remaining silent, he continued, "the prosecution has decided to dismiss the charges against Helena Wells in the death of James MacPherson." He rapped his gavel, his next words lost in the shock and surprise of the spectators, " . . . owe to you 12 men a debt of gratitude . . . justice has been served . . . ."
Helena felt hands clamping onto her shoulders, and she instinctively reached back to squeeze one of them. She didn't need to look behind her to know it was Myka. Mr. Ross had spun around, contemplating the room fast emptying of its spectators as if were filled with an adoring audience, and the pup leaned in to shout into her ear, "We've won, Mrs. Wells! We did it." But it was Eugene Blaisdell who was the focus of her attention. She had seen hatred in the faces of men; for so many, it seemed the corollary of their desire. It had usually held as much significance, which was to say none at all, unless the man made a threatening gesture, and then - it was the only time she ever appreciated his presence - Kincaid was just down the hall. But Mr. Blaisell’s hatred frightened her. There was no Kincaid in this courtroom, however, only two marshals, who were under Mr. Blaisdell's authority, and, if Sweatt were right, 998,000 others still in town. She stiffened, expecting her and Myka's hands to be pulled apart and rougher hands to take hold of her shoulders and yank her up.
Through a sudden lull in the noise, Helena heard the judge say clearly, emphatically, "You're free to go, Miss Wells," yet she remained as pinned to the chair as if Mr. Blaisdell had unsheathed the sword of justice and pierced her through with it. A body interposed itself in her line of sight, blocking her view of Mr. Blaisdell, and the rich baritone boomed at her, "Mrs. Wells, you're no longer a 'guest' of the court." Mr. Ross said more softly, "It's over. Let's go before Blaisdell manages to convince the judge otherwise."
"He said only that the charges were dropped, which means that I could be tried again." Helena looked up at him, not moving from her chair. "You saw how he looked at me, how Blaisdell looked at me."
A rustling of skirts, and Myka was kneeling beside her, much as she had the night following their disastrous visit to Sykes's ranch. "Blaisdell's never coming near you again, Helena, I promise." Myka tried to hold her gaze, but Helena couldn't ignore the marshal who was still standing on this side of the courtroom. She was too afraid to turn her head and verify that the other marshal remained as well. The marshal facing her was cleaning his fingernails with a jackknife. Sensing that he was under study, he lifted his head and stared at her, expressing only disinterest, and then returned to digging the blade under his thumbnail. Myka, watching the silent interplay between them, said in a voice pitched so low that only Helena could hear it, "He's not going to stop us from leaving. In fact, we're the ones keeping him here."
"How do you know?" Helena tried to inject a laugh to hide the naked apprehension behind her question, but it sounded more like a cry cut short than laughter.
"Because no one's going to take you from me," Myka said in the same low voice. Then she smiled, a smile in which self-deprecation couldn't battle back pride. "I'm not afraid of Eugene Blaisdell, and you shouldn't be either. It's over, Helena. Come home with me."
She hadn't let herself imagine anything like this for so long, since before MacPherson's death, since . . . since the moment he had shown her the scraps of paper on which Warren Bering had signed away his and his daughter's future. She had known even then that whatever MacPherson wanted from her and however she chose to respond, it would have no good outcome. Leena had once accused her of living in a prison of her own making, worse than any real one, and though living in a cell for weeks was awful in ways she hadn't expected, the fatalism that had frequently guided her actions, taking the place of resolve, was no less crushing. As Myka continued to kneel beside her, Helena saw none of the anger or regret in her face that had been there that evening. Instead she saw love and joy and, perhaps, just the tiniest bit of frustration. Myka had thrown the door open for her, and all she had to do, Helena knew, was walk through.
"Yes," she said tremulously, "let's go home."
As she had spent the days when the trial had been effectively suspended in a fugue of dread and suspicion that the worst was about to befall her, her reason and sense of time both impaired, so Helena passed the days after her release in a haze of disbelief that she was once more among the ones she loved. The sensation of crushing Christina to her when she emerged from the courthouse and hearing that voice mimicking in its jumps from exclamation to exclamation her daughter's bouncing into the air; the rush of affection she felt upon seeing Charles and laughing with him as he hugged her and murmured into her ear, "Now that you've added jailbird to your list of accomplishments, what will you be setting your sights on next?"; the tears to which she finally surrendered when, after being whisked by carriage to the train station and put on a private car, she watched Henry rise from a chair, those features, as blunt and uncompromising as if they had been carved by an axe, softening in the largest grin she thought she had ever seen, she experienced as an unconnected series of moments, as if she had been only dreaming them. None of it felt real until much later, after Henry had left for the comforts of his private car (parked on a stretch of unused track just outside Sweetwater) and Charles, Leena, and Christina had stumbled to their respective beds, two drunk with relief and the other drunk with relief as well as several congratulatory brandies shared with his sister, and Helena, fresh from the first true bath she had had in weeks, ran to the shabby little rooms in which Myka waited for her.
Strangely, lying under a sheet so thin she could see - and count - the freckles on Myka's skin through it and on top of a mattress that sacrificed nothing in comfort to a sack of potatoes, Helena felt more at ease than she had in her own home. She acknowledged that her sense of security might owe more to the fact that she was curled against Myka with Myka's arm around her waist than to any welcome or safety the rooms themselves offered. She had thought the Journal's living quarters mean and cramped the first time she had seem them, and nothing since had changed her opinion. If anything, they were drearier, as if Warren Bering's unforgiving spirit had determined that the months she had spent charged with a crime he had committed and then the weeks in a jail cell that, sadly, made of these rooms a palace weren't misery enough.
"You're leaving this place tomorrow," Helena announced to the bedroom, "and taking up residence with me."
"Last I checked," Myka said, her breath stirring the hair at Helena's temple, "you have no vacancy."
"I believe I have a boarder who would share her bed with you."
"It might be a little hard to explain to Christina why I'm staying with you, in your bed, when I have a perfectly good bed of my own just down the street." Myka's arm drew Helena in tighter. "We're not lacking for time. We have all we need. We don't have to rush."
Yes, there was time now, but its abundance seemed only to emphasize how much time she had wasted, because it wasn't just the time she had sacrificed to the poisonous combination of fear and pride that had led her, first, to respond to MacPherson's blackmail without telling anyone of her plans (and allowing herself to be talked out of seeing them) and, second, to confess to his murder, but all the days and months and years before, when she had been what Monika had so shrewdly identified as a "slow suicide," drifting from one untenable situation to another, unable to punish herself enough for giving up her daughter. She had stolen time not only from Christina and Myka, time when they could have been together, but from herself as well, and she wouldn't deny herself any longer . . . .
Her movements weren't subtle; she arched against Myka's arm and then pressed her buttocks into Myka's belly. She heard a breath being unsteadily sucked in and felt Myka's nipples harden against her back. "Helena," Myka whispered, "there's no hurry -"
Suddenly twisting around and gently inserting a knee between Myka's legs, Helena nipped at her jaw, her chin, feeling, as she lightly rubbed the top of her thigh against softer flesh, that Myka was about to change her mind. "There's every need to hurry because I have only a few hours before I have to sneak back into my bedroom, and that's not nearly time enough."
"Not enough time for what?" Myka asked, her voice betraying in its quivers and stops the effect of the devotion Helena was paying to the skin over her larynx.
"To show my gratitude." Helena eased her fingers into Myka, the teasing note undermined by the groan she released as Myka rolled her hips to invite her in deeper. "I know I owe my freedom to you, whether it was that spurious confession or something else, you were the one."
"Not the only one." As Helena wriggled her fingers, stroking and circling, Myka said, breathing unevenly, "I wasn't going to lose you. It was all very simple after that."
"What did you do?" Helena persisted, establishing a slower rhythm than Myka wanted.
With a huff of frustration, Myka said, "I'm not going to let you torture it out of me. I promise there will be time enough later . . . much later . . . for explanations." Slipping away, Myka turned Helena on her back and pinned Helena’s hands behind her head. "Not another word." Helena felt rather than saw Myka's grin. "Except 'please.'"
It was playfully, initially, their lovemaking, as if they had been separated only at their own wish, using the time apart to fan their desire. They romped up and down and back and forth on a bed barely able to support a sleeping body, let alone bodies grabbing and lunging and, not infrequently, grappling for dominance. The playfulness gave way to a more driving need to join, each acting as if this night would be their last, determined to imprint the other with her cries, smell, touch. Then, the night ending and discovering that no one had come to separate them, no marshals to burst into the room and take Helena away, no Eugene Blaisdell solemnly pronouncing that Lady Justice must be given her due, they laved and kissed each other's exhausted body until they came again. Helena, bucking under Myka's attentiveness and keening a jumble of curses and hosannas, thought the room looked fractionally darker than it had a moment ago, and she fancied that they had been so assiduous and so unrelenting in the intervening hours that they had reversed the Earth's rotation.
It might have seconds or minutes or an hour later when Myka murmured, "You have to go," nuzzling Helena's face. "It's almost time for Christina to get up and pound on your door."
"I know," Helena said almost sulkily, turning her face for more nuzzling, "but first I want to hear how you did it because the day you left . . . Ross wasn't going to save me, I knew that. Blaisdell had already convinced everyone of my guilt."
"It wasn't just me, Helena. It may have been my idea, but it was Christina's money and Jonas Simcoe's rectitude, for lack of a better word, and" Myka paused before adding with a disbelieving laugh, "Henry Tremaine's wiliness."
It wasn't admiration that was in her voice when she referred to Henry, but it also wasn't the contempt and resentment that usually filled it when she was forced to say Henry's name. Nor on the train ride back to Sweetwater had she viewed the luxury of his car - the plushly upholstered chairs and sofa, the poker table with its new felt covering as intensely green as the eyeshade of one of his army of accountants, a corner of the bed visible beyond a screen fragile and sturdy both, a vista of mountains delicately painted on it, that might as easily have been plundered from a temple in Japan as purchased from one of Henry's favored designers - with the scorn Helena had expected. In turn, Henry had displayed more than the begrudging courtesy he had adopted toward Myka in the past, he had seemed genuinely respectful. Curious, but Helena thought she might find out the reason for Myka's change in heart if she didn't call her attention to it. Besides there was the more surprising revelation of her daughter's role in the events, although not truly surprising considering it was Christina, which she needed to understand first. "Christina's money?" Helena repeated.
Myka shifted uneasily. "Finding MacPherson's secretary wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, and ultimately I had to pay for the information. Christina provided the funds." A rueful laugh escaped her. "You're likely to be the new owner of an assortment of women's accessories, courtesy of one greedy drummer who had seen Jonas Simcoe. I think Christina may have stored the boxes in the parlor." Her voice grew even quieter, but a wondering note had entered it. "She was with me when I finally found him. He had hidden all the secrets that MacPherson had managed to unearth about the powerful men of the Territory. He could have done with them what MacPherson had planned to do, bent his victims to his will, gotten from them a king's ransom, but he couldn't be a part of such evil. That was what he told me, and he gave me it all, letters, account books, deeds, wills, because I think he feared that what MacPherson had done was blighting the land itself. Maybe he was right, the hovel he and his sister and her children are living in . . ." Myka's voice trailed away.
Helena didn't try to fill the silence by prompting her to continue, choosing instead to curl herself into Myka until Myka's arm snaked around her and drew her closer. Held like this, the steady beat of Myka's heart sounding in her own chest, Helena could almost believe that the story Myka was telling her was about someone else, an unfortunate soul whose escape from worse misery was sufficiently removed from her, this bed, and all that had been shared between them in it. Helena could almost offer a sigh of sympathy for the poor woman. Then Myka's next words destroyed the illusion that she was talking about someone else. "In the trunk he brought out, there were receipts for MacPherson's purchases of my father's debts. When I saw them, I understood why he had been able to dare you to destroy the notes. He still had proof that he could hang over my father's head had he chosen to. I had hoped that would be enough." She chuckled weakly. "But compared to what else was in that trunk, I knew that proof of my father's motive wouldn't matter. Mr. Ross wanted to make a spectacle, to have Mr. Tremaine hire two men to bring in the trunk, although one of his assistants could have carried it without difficulty. He even began to practice his introduction of it." Myka lowered her voice and began to declaim in a fair approximation of his oratorical style, "Members of the jury, our esteemed prosecutor has led you to believe there was only one person who had cause to murder James MacPherson. I give you . . . 50!" She removed her arm from around Helena's waist to gesture grandly at the room.
Helena laughed, but she quickly returned Myka's arm to its proper place. "You need to work on your dramatic flair, darling."
Myka, with a mock offended exclamation, hugged Helena tighter. In between kissing and nibbling Helena's shoulder, she said, "I have enough sense of theater to make you wait for the rest of it."
"Don't you dare," Helena growled, "because I know ways of prolonging -" and then gasped as Myka leaned over to take her mouth in hers. Their kisses became deeper and more intense, and Helena thought she could wait another half-hour, or hour, to hear more of the story. What did it matter, really, how it had happened? What was important was that it had happened, and she was where she should be. Almost where she should be. As soon as Christina and Charles returned to England, she was moving Myka into her house. Dear friend, companion, sister of her soul, she didn't care how she would have to disguise what they were to each other for Sweetwater's, and even New York's or London's, consumption, they would be together - in a much better bed.
"We can't," Myka groaned, pushing herself away. "Get up and get dressed. Your daughter has waited for weeks to hector you out of bed. I won't be responsible for disappointing her."
As Helena dressed, Myka, still invitingly naked under the sheet, related the rest of the story, to the extent she knew it, and what she didn't know, Helena, knowing Henry and his world more intimately, had little difficulty figuring out. Henry had argued that they should take the trunk to Blaisdell and disclose its contents to him. Mr. Ross had strenuously objected, declaring that once Blaisdell had the trunk in his possession they would never see it again. Henry had smiled, his eyes nearly closed, resembling, Myka said, nothing so much as a lion contemplating his next wildebeest. "That's what I'm counting on," he had responded enigmatically. She hadn't been present at the meeting with Mr. Blaisdell, but the outcome had been that both he and Henry had traveled to Washington to consult with the United States Attorney General . . . and select others. Mr. Blaisdell had wanted to make the trip alone, Mr. Ross had later conceded to Myka, but Henry had insisted that he accompany him, and they had taken a train that Henry had managed to commandeer at the Pierre station precisely for the purpose of conveying him, Mr. Blaisdell, and the trunk, as well as a number of marshals to protect it, to Washington.
"I'm not sure what happened in Washington, but when Mr. Tremaine returned a few days later, he told me and Mr. Ross that the case would be dismissed." Myka had drawn up her legs and was hugging them to her chest. The sheet was still pinned between her knees and her breasts, but it was drooping, and Helena, as she fastened the last buttons on her dress, could trace the rounded line of Myka's back, the slight expansion of her ribs as she breathed, the swell of a breast only partially covered. Later, Helena counseled herself, later she would make Myka sit just like that again, only she would be on the edge of the bed, tugging the sheet down, and cupping that breast. "Don't look at me like that," Myka cautioned her, "you'll need to hurry as it is."
Helena only rolled her eyes. Task at hand, task at hand, she further advised herself, fluffing out the skirt. She could imagine Blaisdell arguing to his superiors that the information that had been found did nothing to weaken the case against her. Even if MacPherson had been blackmailing all of the men whose secrets he had discovered, there was no evidence that any of them had gone to his ranch that night, while he had more than enough evidence to prove that Helena Wells had gone there with the intent to kill him. But the men pretending to listen to Blaisdell would have been more concerned with what it meant that Henry had so willingly turned the trunk over to him. One trunk would have multiplied into several in their minds, and who knew what MacPherson might have hidden in them. If Blaisdell had managed to miss something this significant in his investigation, what else might he have overlooked? And what if Henry Tremaine had even more damaging documents in his possession? No one knew better than Henry Tremaine how the powerful maintained their prerogatives and how ruthlessly they would protect them. Better to let Tremaine's whore get away with murder than to provoke him into releasing information MacPherson could have gathered that was dangerous to them. A dirty deal, yes, but that was the reason Blaisdell's Lady Justice wore her blindfold.
"What happened to your father's confession?" Helena peered into the cracked hand mirror and patted her hair. The chignon was a little rough, but she would have to wear her hair up only for as long as it took her to run back to her house. Then she would let it down, strip off her dress to put on a nightgown, and pretend to be huddled in sleep under her bed. Deceit was so time-consuming.
"The handwriting expert couldn't come to a conclusive determination." Helena angled the mirror to observe Myka's expression and Myka's eyes steadily held hers in the mirror's reflection. "There were inconsistencies between the confession and the samples he compared it with, but they weren't so significant that a man under great physical and emotional distress mightn't have . . . carelessly formed . . . letters." She paused. "Mr. Ross decided it was too risky to submit the confession. I didn't know that until Christina and I returned with MacPherson's trunk."
Helena waited, but Myka said nothing more. After a few moments, she said with a finality that she hoped would forever put the subject to rest, "Indeed your father was very ill. A perfect hand couldn't be expected."
She didn't leave as quickly as Myka had urged her to. She decided to sit on the edge of the bed, after all, and exchange kisses, her hand sliding underneath the sheet, unobstructed, until it found the breast that had been teasing her. She began teasing it in turn until the nipples of both breasts were stiff and demanding attention. Myka had already pushed down the sheet and was arching her chest up to meet Helena's mouth. Helena leaned back, taking in the view of Myka's body, her breasts, already showing the effects of lavishly bestowed affection from hours earlier, yet still presenting the neediest nipples, her thighs, with the thatch of hair at their juncture bearing the damp traces of Helena's last foray, halfway parted, the muscles in her abdomen working, flexing as she anticipated yet more touches. Prim, Charles had called her. An old maid, Henry had sneered more than once. They knew nothing. Feeling her own body react to Myka's unabashed display of arousal, warming and moistening under layers of cotton, Helena said, with more regret than command, "I must hurry away. You'll have to wait until later." Before she could entirely forgot herself, she crossed the room to the door, but she wasn't fast enough to escape the pillow that Myka threw at her. "Save your energy," Helena admonished her. "We have weeks apart to make up for."
As it turned out, she could have spent another hour or more in bed with Myka since Christina didn't start pounding on her door until after 7:00, and even then it wasn't so much pounding as knocking and it was a weary knocking at that. Helena made a great show of grousing and stumbling out of her bed (she had fallen asleep waiting on Christina) before opening the door to be greeted by a giant yawn. "Perhaps," Christina had said, "we might have a very, very leisurely breakfast?"
There was much reading in the library and casual strolling about the town over the course of the next few days, sometimes in the company of Myka or Charles and sometimes not. The townspeople didn't seem to have taken the ending of the trial with any more dissatisfaction than they had greeted its beginning with an eagerness to see her punished. It had had little impact on their daily lives and, if it altered their impression of her at all, seemed to have altered it slightly in her favor. The men's doffing of their hats was less abbreviated and their wives' sweeping aside of their skirts to the side to avoid touching hers wasn't quite so vehement. Like the hands who survived a blizzard and the farmers who escaped the ravages of a grassfire, Helena's release was treated as another example of the suspension of God's judgement. Who were the citizens of Sweetwater to quarrel with God?
The only happening worthy of note during those first few days of her freedom was Henry's return to New York. Leena led him into the library, where Helena and Christina were reading aloud to each other passages from Pride and Prejudice. Helena's first instinct was to jump from her chair to hug him, but she rose uncertainly and when she neared him, she simply held out her hands for him to take them. There was a reserve about him that had been missing since he had first come to Sweetwater. It was as if the end of the trial had realigned their relationship, and now that she was no longer in need of his help, he no longer had a reason to be in her home. While he might not have a reason, he would always be welcome. What they had been to each other would always guarantee that. They exchanged some meaningless pleasantries and Henry excused his sudden departures on "business in Washington," which would always be true. Then he said softly, her hands in his, "My offer of marriage still stands. It will always stand, Helena."
She laughed, her eyes nonetheless welling with tears. She didn't try to remove one of her hands to wipe them away. "Don't tempt fate like that. It just means someone you haven't yet met will come to steal your heart."
"Since it's always been in your possession, I suspect stealing it will be virtually impossible to do." His smile was full and broad and apparently without regret. "I hope you'll find your way to New York occasionally, and if you do, I'm always at your disposal."
"I won't be a stranger to New York or to you," she promised.
He gave her a chaste kiss on her cheek. "I'd best be getting to the station. Can't have my train holding up the traffic that has a better right to the tracks than I do."
"Yes," she said dryly, "you'd best catch your train."
"Since I won't have the chance to do it myself, please tell Miss Bering that I much enjoyed our acquaintance and look forward to seeing her again." He stopped only to add with emphasis, "Should the opportunity present itself." His eyelids lifted more than usual, and those eyes, so predatory, were almost merry. "I noticed that your swain was nowhere to be found when you were freed. It's too bad that Miss Bering isn't a man. If she were, I could understand your devotion."
It was Helena's eyes that shuttered in a speculative look. "Yes," she said slowly, "Miss Bering's a wonderful woman. I expect that our friendship will continue to deepen." Almost piously, she said, "She's a virtuous influence on my behavior."
Henry couldn't take her piety any more seriously than she could. "Not too virtuous, I hope. A cautious, circumspect Helena Wells is not Helena Wells."
"Don't worry. I'll never be completely reformed."
Henry's departure reminded Helena that there would be others. Charles and Christina had already stayed long past the few months that they had anticipated it would take to see the "silly" charges dropped and her name cleared. Charles was clearly restive, preferring once more to stay in the house, drinking brandy and smoking his pipe and cigarettes in the library, while she and Christina visited, first, Claudia at the Donovan ranch and then her own small ranch. Myka had accompanied them on the latter visit, and Zeb and Dantes both were practically ecstatic, in their own ways, to see her again. Zeb once more trimmed his beard and hair and little posies of prairie flowers appeared at the kitchen door in the mornings. Dantes, after prancing, stamping, and neighing his disapproval for several minutes (he also, Helena decided, had missed a career on the stage), would allow Myka to give him apples and whisper her praises of him in his ear. They each were wary of Christina, although Zeb unbent enough to let her help feed and curry the horses. She was an apt hand at it, reminiscing with more than a touch of homesickness in Helena's hearing that she rode when Jemima would invite her to the Newcastle family's estate. Dantes maintained his distance, but Christina quickly became a favorite of Rainbow, the colt Zeb had found wandering on the prairie. He was already showing promise of the large horse he would become, but his was much a sweeter disposition than Dantes's.
Helena had hoped that she and Myka might be able to meet for a few midnight swims, which she fully intended to have end differently than their first, but Christina, as ever untiring, joined them each night. She and Myka managed to steal a few kisses when Christina would finally drag herself to the bedroom that she and Helena shared, but that was all. And then even that sweet frustration came to an end because they had no sooner returned to Sweetwater than Charles had his and Christina's trunks packed and tickets purchased for their train ride back to New York. They had a steamer to catch the following week. Helena traveled with them to New York, trying to fit as much dining and theater-going and sight-seeing as possible in the few days they had in the city together, but they passed all too soon. It seemed to her that they had arrived in New York only in time for her to accompany them the next day to the ship that would take them back to London. There were hugs and repeated vows to spend Christmas and New Year's with the elder Wellses, with Christina exclaiming, "You must bring Miss Bering with you, Aunt Helena! You must!" Then there were even fiercer hugs from Christina and the declaration that next spring she and Papa would be coming to the States again, this time with Matilda. "Papa said he will give Mother the 'grand tour,' but I'll be spending all summer with you, Mama. You'll teach me all you know about business and we'll visit Claudia and the horses, and I'll help Miss Bering with the Journal. It'll be wonderful!" She bounced and clapped and ran to hug Helena one last time. Helena met Charles's gaze over her daughter's shoulder, and he smiled, giving her an elegant shrug as if to say, 'How can you say 'No' to a force of nature?'
The train ride back to Sweetwater was long and lonely, and she cried for missing Christina already, but Myka was waiting for her at the station. Distracted by the minor bustle of getting Myka moved into the house, which was no more than loading her valise and a few boxes of books and mementos into the carriage, Helena consoled herself with the thought that Christmas was only six months away and "next spring" less than a year. There was the Journal to attend to (although that remained primarily Myka's responsibility), and a much needed cleaning of the house, and attendance at various socials and charity events and even the wedding of Sheriff Lattimer to Liesl Albrecht. Liesl looked lovely in her wedding dress and the sheriff managed to look presentable, albeit uncomfortable, in a suit bought new for the occasion. Helena counted that it was only twice that Liesl looked at Myka and not at all toward the doors of the church, so she had to assume that the union wasn't a completely unappealing prospect for Miss Albrecht. Yet she couldn't entirely dismiss a pang of guilt. While she was willing to admit that the sheriff might make a good husband and she hoped that Liesl would come to love him, she couldn't convince herself, knowing what she knew about Liesl, that it was a match that would ever truly, or fully, suit her. But as she and Myka congratulated Sheriff Lattimer and his new wife following the ceremony, she was sincere in her wishes that they would always find happiness in each other.
How could she not be sincere when she herself was happy, perhaps for the first time since she had held Christina in her arms as a baby and realized that she loved her? Myka had put her clothes in the guest room that Charles had occupied, but the only time she went into the room was to dress. She went to sleep with Myka each night knowing that she would still be in their bed when she woke in the morning. The only thing that marred her newfound contentment was the last departure with which she had to reckon and perhaps the most difficult one she had to accept.
Helena knew Leena would leave Sweetwater. She had come to Dakota Territory for the sole purpose of identifying and combatting a threat too nebulous literally to put a finger on (and Helena believed she would always remember Leena's finger plunging toward the map of the Great Plains when she had asked her where and what this threat was), but they had identified it and they had combatted it, and now that it was gone, Leena's time in Sweetwater would also come to an end. Helena had assumed her stay in Sweetwater would be temporary as well, but the arrival of Myka Bering had eventually changed that assumption. Though she was still reluctant to call Sweetwater a "home" in the sense that she had called New York and the London of her childhood home, she was bound to it, through Myka, in a way she hadn't been bound to any city, any place before. But Leena had no Myka to bind her to Sweetwater, and while she had a Helena to keep her here, Helena knew it was not enough. Their friendship had deepened over the past four years, in part the result of their motive for coming to the town and, in part, the result of the isolation imposed upon them for being "foreigners," but the relationships that sustained Leena were in New York. If nothing else, the responsibilities of her strange gift would demand a bigger arena than Sweetwater could provide, and, oh, the patterns she would untangle and reweave in New York. So when Leena joined her at the kitchen table one morning, not long after Myka joined their household, Helena said, more into her half-empty teacup (she had been the one to light the range, draw the water, and steep the tea) than to her, "It's time, isn't it?"
"Yes." Leena rubbed at her forehead, the small weary gesture hinting at a greater fatigue, as if only now were she surrendering to the strains of the past four years. "I've stayed here too long, but I needed," she amended, "wanted to make sure that everything was where it should be, that you were where you should be."
"And my place is in Sweetwater?" Helena quietly teased. Not trusting that she could maintain the teasing note, she simply reached for Leena's hand and awkwardly gripped it.
"Your place is with Myka and, for now, her place is in this town." Leena didn't try to loosen the hold that Helena had of her hand. "I can see only so far into the future, you know." She smiled uncertainly at Helena, as if she didn't trust her ability to keep her voice steady either.
"So you've said," Helena attempted another joke, "but I think you just don't want to admit that I'm stuck here for the next 20 years." She glanced around the kitchen, listing in her mind all that would need to be done to this room, let alone the house, to make 20 years in it tolerable. "Myka told me once that Sweetwater was too small for me. If I can't be less than I am, perhaps it's my new mission to make of this place more than it is."
"It sounds like a worthy one, and knowing you, you've already been at work on it." Leena chuckled affectionately.
Helena carelessly swept her hand in front of her face, dismissing, without naming them to Leena, her various negotiations to buy Sweetwater's bank, acres of prairie surrounding Sweetwater in anticipation of its future expansion, the newspaper in Halliday, and, smaller in scope and size than her other acquisitions though not the least of them, the building next to the Journal's office. A bigger town would need a bigger newspaper, and Myka would need an assistant. She already had the man in mind for the job, someone who wouldn't mind trading in a failing farm for a living more secure. Surely one or more of those ventures would occupy her time while Myka continued her efforts to inform a populace that, if the avidity with which they had read the largely fabricated accounts of her past was any indication, Helena surmised, would prefer to remain ignorant. She glanced at Leena, who had closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the ceiling as if she were basking in a light only she could see, which might actually be the case. Helena had wondered more than once how she remained so serene when she could foresee the effects of a careless remark or a burst of rage multiplied a hundred times, a thousand times over. Leena had been one of her few better angels, perhaps her only one, Helena ruefully acknowledged, tempering the scorn she expressed for the petty and narrow-minded, who seemed to her, at times, to be the only inhabitants of the Territory. Having seen far worse than Helena had ever experienced - and Helena would be the first to claim that she had experienced more than most - Leena retained a generosity of spirit as unflagging as it was humbling.
"I don't know what I'll do without you," Helena said.
Leena's eyes fluttered open, but she didn't turn her head to meet Helena's gaze. "I won't let you and Myka starve," she said in deliberate misunderstanding. "I've asked someone to come by the house this afternoon. I became acquainted with her in the fall when I tended to her husband. He was in constant pain, cancer, I think, although Dr. Collins kept insisting it was stomach ulcers." She delicately snorted. "There wasn't much I could do for him but give him what respite from the pain I could. Mrs. Erickson was always cooking, hoping to tempt to his appetite. I benefited from it more than he did." Finally dropping her head to meet Helena's eyes, she said softly, "Her husband died earlier this spring, and she's hoping to move to town. She's not only a good cook and housekeeper, I also found her to be very . . . understanding."
"'Understanding' is good. Myka and I need someone who's understanding . . . and discreet . . . almost as much as we need someone who can cook." Helena's expression was a mixture of skepticism and amusement. "Please tell me you have something more substantive for her understanding than the fact that you 'sensed' it."
Leena's smile was pained. "She was one of the few people who ever asked me to sit at their table with them or offered me something to eat. She didn't try to avoid touching me. She's a good woman, Helena, and tired of living on her sister-in-law's charity. I think you could each do the other some good."
Helena ran her thumbnail along a crease in the tablecloth. "When are you leaving?"
"Two days from now."
Two mornings later they walked to the train station, Leena carrying a traveling bag hardly bigger than the one she had brought with her when they had gotten on the train that would bring them to Sweetwater. It was early, earlier than when they had sat at the table and talked about her leaving yet saying little about what it meant to the both of them. Their conversation was even more desultory this morning, Helena commenting on how warm the day was likely to be while Leena greeted the handful of townspeople opening their businesses or strolling along the walk, peering into the windows to see which shops were open. Most wished her a good morning in return, although a few pretended not to hear. Her expression never changed, and Helena, noting its almost dreamy cast, suspected the larger part of her was already in New York and waiting only for her body to catch up.
Leena's ticket purchased, they lingered on the platform, exchanging few words. Leena's eyes darted anxiously to the train, while Helena's looked everywhere but at her. Eventually the conductor leaned from the door of the last of the cars to shout a warning that it was time to board, and Helena, her throat so constricted that the words seemed to abrade it, managed to croak, "Give my best to Irene and Josef."
"We'll see each other again," Leena said reassuringly. "This isn't the end for us."
Eager to make the moment lighter, Helena joked, "No more mysterious tasks, no more setting the world aright?"
"Not without asking Myka first." Leena gave her a mischievous glance that quickly turned affectionate. "We're bound together, you and I. We always have been."
"From time immemorial?"
"Yes," Leena said simply, seriously. She held out her hand for Helena to take it. As their fingers touched, the platform seemed to lurch and Helena was dropped into a world that consisted not of lines forming patterns but of waves rippling across the surface of an ocean, identical and unique, separate and indivisible, and Helena knew without being able to see them that her mother and father, Charles and Christina, Alan Lawrence and Elizabeth Sloan; Monika, Irene, Henry, Claudia, and Myka, all of them and others more were next to her, a part of her, merging only to divide and then recombine. Ceaselessly. Timelessly. Leena stepped back, and the platform was once again solid under Helena's feet. "Now when I say that we'll see each other again, do you believe me?"
Helena, dazed, could only nod. Leena bent to kiss her cheek, then, before Helena could try to delay her for a few seconds longer, ran up the steps to the car, stopping at the top to say, "I will always be thinking of you. I will always know exactly where you are." A plume of smoke appeared above the engine and the cars shuddered. She disappeared inside.
Helena watched until the train became a shimmer on the horizon. Leena was gone, yet she wasn't. Looking down at her feet, Helena confirmed that she was still here, on this platform, yet she was also elsewhere. Sweetwater was solidly present, every weathered plank, every fly-spattered window, yet it lived 20 years from now, 50 years from now simultaneously. To make Sweetwater a town befitting the future, the future she envisioned at any rate, there was much to do. So much to do. Turning toward the station, Helena glimpsed above the roofs and chimneys of the buildings lining the main street the roof and chimneys of her home, her and Myka's home, at the street's far end. Myka would be up, getting things ready for Mrs. Erickson, who wasn't expected for hours. Helena imagined her fretting over the newspapers and books and teacups that cluttered the library and groaning at the mess of contracts on top of the desk. She could help out by making breakfast, trying to cook the eggs and toast without burning them. She could start there.
Smiling to herself, Helena walked briskly toward the street, eager to begin her day.