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"You've got to stop covering for me," Helga insisted that night when I came in from work, finding her in the kitchen, waiting on a batch of blueberry scones to bake for the morning, knowing it was hard for her to get moving first thing, and wanting to ease the burden off of me somewhat.
"It won't be for too much longer. Then you can settle into a nice retirement. Let me take care of you like you have taken care of me all these years."
"Oh, Helen. I knew from the first time I cleaned up that first bloodstain that I was never going to get a chance to retire. That there was only one way out of this job."
She never talked about that with me.
My father's dealings.
The blood on his - and her - hands.
Things were always skirted around, implied, but never expressly discussed.
"Don't say things like that," I begged, reaching across the table to close my hands over hers, the knuckles made knotty and swollen from too much hard work for too many years, the skin rough and thin with age.
"You're old enough now, Helen, have felt the touch of their rage often enough, not to be wearing those rose-colored glasses anymore. It's time to take them off. See things in the stark, ugly daylight they really exist in. I'll never leave here. Unless it is in a body bag. And you, I'm afraid, won't either if you don't stop fussing about me, and take off on your own now. Before it is too late."
"Too late how?" I asked, brows drawing low, picking up on something guarded in her tone that I didn't like there.
"You ever wonder why your father keeps you here? He doesn't enjoy your company. Doesn't realize how much work you have been doing. But he never talks about kicking you out."
So maybe that was something I thought about. Often. Never coming up with any answers of my own. Aside from the fact that I tried never to cross his path, so maybe he forgot I existed at times.
Which, well, was a rather naive thing to think. My father was a lot of things, but stupid or unobservant he was not.
Conniving and backhanded, however...
"What do you think he wants with me?" I asked, hearing hesitation in my own tone, almost not wanting to know. But ignorance would never do me any good.
"I think he plans to use you to secure better contacts in Colombia."
"But... how? I know nothing about the trade."
"Think herzchen," she implored. "What use have daughters always served for their fathers? Historically speaking."
There was only one answer to that.
But it was ridiculous.
Antiquated.
Something of times - and customs - gone by.
"I think that is a little far-fetched, Helga."
"Is it? You think? You think your father wouldn't trade you for a more secure supply? A bigger income?"
I didn't really even need to think about it when she put it that way.
Money and power would always be more important than me.
"Your father's contacts have been in and out of this house for years. And every last one of them watches you, eyes like hungry dogs staring down a juicy steak. In case you haven't noticed this lately, herzchen, you have turned out every bit as beautiful as your mother. More so even. And your father sees this. He sees how these men he wants to build relationships with look at you, and he is waiting for the chance to use that."
"I would never date one of my father's men," I insisted, voice fierce even as goosebumps prickled over my skin at the idea of that reality, that this man who had participated in creating me would want to subject me to such a fate.
"There are men, Helen, many men, who would very much enjoy your objections. There are men far worse than your father. And we both know how bad he is. You need to get away before one of them gets their hooks into you. Once they do..." she said, trailing off, shaking her head.
The drive was there.
It was the dominant thought every waking moment of my day. At night, I would wake up sweating, vividly re-experiencing the incident just last year when I had come home with two shirt buttons undone because I had needed to rush to change in the bathroom at work because some asshole had spilled coffee on me.
But he thought I was out with a guy.
And he refused to have a whore for a daughter.
Then did something that made my gut churn just remembering it.
He pulled me down the hall by my hair much like he had done so long ago to my mother.
The fear had been overpowering, a crippling, sensation that made me curl into myself, prepared for the same end she had met, knowing I didn't have what it took to fight him off.
