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I'd seen him three times since he had that meeting that first time.
Once, I had been carrying a basket of laundry down the stairs as he walked in the front door. He seemed to sense me, his head moving up even as I froze on the stair, one foot hovering over the next one down but refusing to move.
His head ducked to the side, a ghost of a smile tugging at the sides of his lips.
"Helen, nice seeing you again," he said in that smooth voice of his - all molasses and whiskey. I swear it seemed to shiver over my skin.
"She bothering you?" Michael asked, coming up the hall, casting me a warning glance. A warning of what, I wasn't sure. But I knew Michael too well to doubt he would make good on it, whatever it was.
"Not at all. Just saw her coming down, decided to say hello," Charlie said, shrugging, falling into step with my brother. But he cast me a smile over his shoulder.
You know the type.
The ones that made you sure your panties were going to ignite.
The next time, I had been walking down the driveway toward my car to head to the beach to work the ice cream booth as he had been walking up.
"Heading to the beach?"
I should have just smiled and walked away, stuck to my rules.
But I couldn't seem to force myself to do it.
"Sort of."
"How are you sort of going to the beach?" he asked, rocking back on his heels, hands ducked into his slacks pockets.
"I work on the boardwalk," I informed him.
"Oh yeah? Doing what?"
"Serving up ice cream," I'd told him. "I'm, ah, running late," I added, shuffling past before I could do anything stupid. Like tell him that I had totally had a sex dream about him the night before, vivid enough to make me wake up in tangled sheets, sweaty, frustratingly unfulfilled.
The next time, he'd walked up behind me as I unloaded paper bags from the trunk of my car.
"Let me help," he demanded, reaching to pull a bag from my hands.
"No, really. That isn't necessary."
"Got two arms, Helen," he'd told me, reaching for two more bags, "I can lend them to you for a couple minutes," he added as I grabbed another bag.
I bit down on my tongue to keep from telling him that it was his hands, not his arms, that I was interested in.
"What are you doing?" I asked as we went in through the back entrance to the kitchen, and he started unloading the contents of the bags onto the counter.
"Helping you," he supplied.
"I'm sure my father is waiting," I said, making a shadow cross his eyes, making me immediately regret saying the words that made him stiffen, made the warm smile fall from his face, made his eyes darken.
My father had an uncanny ability to do that.
To steal someone's light.
To make them go dark.
I'd seen it a dozen times over the years. It never bothered me before.
And it shouldn't have bothered me then either.
But there was no denying it did as he turned from me and walked away.
I didn't see him again for weeks, thinking maybe he was avoiding me, even if that made me seem paranoid or self-centered.
Maybe my father or brother had warned him off, though that seemed unlikely. They'd have to give a shit about how I spent my time to do something like that. And since they clearly didn't care about how I spent my time - evidenced by how no one said boo about how I dressed in one equally ridiculous work outfit after another and went and earned my money while Michael had wads of cash tossed at him randomly.
I was surprised at times that it didn't rub my father the wrong way that I had such common jobs, thinking they would reflect poorly on him.
But nothing was ever said, so I just went to job after job, accepting my measly three-thirty-one per hour, socking as much of that away as possible in a false bottom to my bedroom nightstand I had made myself when I found out my father used them frequently.
Even if someone bothered to search my room, they'd never find anything.
I wouldn't put it past my brother to be that malicious, to steal every penny of my measly savings.
Even if he did, though, it wouldn't change a thing. As soon as Helga was ready, we were going, whether we had money to start over or not.
She was softening to the idea, I thought, the long hours of having to pretend to be well taking its toll on her morale, her resolve.
She's getting old, my father had said as we watched her creak and shuffle her way out of the dining room after serving dessert.
Yesterday, she flipped my mattress like it was a sack of feathers, I had shot back, quick to defend her. Maybe more so than I would even defend myself. And, sure, it was a lie. A bold one at that, not even being partially true seeing as she had been asleep on the chair in my room as I flipped the mattress - doing more huffing and puffing than I would like to admit. But, as it turned out, I was getting good at lying.
