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"Let me get you a water then." Molly did just that, pouring her a second glass filled with water and handing it over so that Helena wouldn't drown her sorrows entirely in wine. As Helena sipped, Molly dared to sit on the couch, though she sat way at the end, perching on the edge and watching Helena with care. "Can you tell me where home is?"
"Lundy," Helena said. She switched back to wine, draining the glass and then holding it out with a nod to Molly that meant she'd like more. Molly stood to refill it, cognizant of the fact that the girl had likely not eaten much more than what Faniry had put into her purse that morning at the pool. She handed back about half as much wine as she'd poured the first time. "Lundy is a small island in the Bristol Channel. It's in Devon. Small, famous for its puffins. No need to call it 'Lundy Island' because Lundy by itself actually means 'puffin island,'" she said listlessly, drinking wine again instead of water. "Boring, small, no place to be young and adventurous."
Molly sat again and this time used her feet to kick off both shoes, stretching her toes and ankles and extending her feet as she drank her own glass of wine. "So you left?"
"I did. Met a man who came to Lundy to document the puffin population. He said he was rich and that he was going to Madagascar to study the lemurs, and did I want to come. Of course I did--I'm a young woman who wants to wander, to see the world." Helena brushed the stray hairs from her forehead, already slurring her words as she did. Molly really needed to get some food into the girl. "So I left with him. He said he was a professor at a university in Spain, but I don't think that's true. I mean, I did then, but I don't now."
Molly studied her swollen toes. She desperately wanted to take a quick, hot bath and get food on the table, but it felt important to establish Helena's origin story first. "What made you think he was lying?"
Helena's eyes grew hard and steely. "Because we got to Madagascar and he told me that I could help make some money to fund his project by going on dates with a few men he knew here." She sat as still as a stone, eyes boring a hole in the wall across the room. "I may be from a tiny place with more birds than people, but I'm no idiot, Molly. I know what a prozzie is. And I'm not one."
Though Molly had never been to the U.K., it was easy to decipher the British slang forprostitute. "Right, no--I would never have imagined that you were," she said sincerely, still watching Helena as she stared off into the distance. "When I saw you sleeping by the pool I thought immediately of myself, and I wanted to help out in any way that I could."
Helena's eyes snapped in Molly's direction. "I'm like you? How? Why are you in Madagascar?"
Molly took another sip of her red wine. "Well," she said. "You remind me of myself because you look like a young girl on a journey. Even while you were sleeping you looked like you were aware of what was going on around you. For those of us who travel alone, we always need to know what the people around us are up to."
"Why are you here, though?"
Molly twisted her mouth to one side, thinking before she spoke. "My husband died," she said simply. "Boat accident. He'd always wanted to sail around the world together, so I decided to do it now in his memory. I got a boat, I set out from Hawaii for Japan, and from there I moved on to Fiji. I stopped in New Zealand and briefly in Australia, and then I came here. I don't know exactly what I'm doing," Molly admitted, looking down into her wine glass as she swirled the liquid around gently. "But I think I'm finding myself."
"Oh," Helena said. She frowned at Molly. "I think I should probably find myself too."
"I think you're doing that now," Molly said. "The minute you got away from that guy you came here with, you started to find yourself. How old are you?"
"Nineteen," Helena admitted. "I almost said twenty-three, which is what I usually tell people who ask, but you've let me into your home and been nothing but nice to me, so I want to tell you only the truth." She sat up straighter on the couch, squaring her shoulders. "My name is Helena Simpkins, and I'm nineteen years old. Born on Lundy, and raised there by Mary and Alfred Simpkins."
"Why don't you just call them and tell them you want to go home? Won't they send for you?" Molly thought of her own father, alone since her mother's death from breast cancer. He undoubtedly would have come to her rescue had she sent word to him at any point to let him know she'd encountered trouble.
Helena's head fell forward and she looked into her lap. "No. I left on a bad note, Molly. I yelled at them, and they found out about me and my boyfriend from school--they found out all of it from reading my diary."
"Yikes." Molly winced.
"They were very unhappy with me. Called me every name you can think of. Made me believe I was as bad as all that."
"You're not," Molly said quickly. "You're not. Don't believe that."
Helena lifted one shoulder. Let it fall. "Hard to change your own mind once it's been made up, you know?"
Molly took this in. Helena was right. But Molly also had about eight years of life experience on Helena, and she wanted to draw on that in any way she could if it would help her new friend.
"I like to think that you can reinvent yourself at every turn," Molly said. "You might think that you're someone's wife and that that's who you'll be forever, but then things change in the blink of an eye and suddenly you have to become someone else. Or you might think you're the kind of woman who doesn't do adventure and world travel--and certainly not alone--but then you set out and actually do it and find out that youarethat person. Don't let anyone tell you who you are or aren't, okay?"
"I'll try," Helena said, sounding completely unconvincing. She sniffled, but her tears had mostly dried at that point. "Um, Molly?"
"Yes?"
"Is that food I smell?"
Molly smiled. "It is. I brought home some dinner, and Faniry, the woman you met this morning, sent dessert. Would you mind if I bathed really quickly and changed, and then I can dish it all up for us?"
Helena put her head back on the couch and smiled up at the ceiling, eyes closed. The wine was working its magic on her already. "Sure," she said softly. "I can wait."
Molly watched her for a moment, marveling at the utter stupidity of youth (imagine: climbing on an airplane with a strange man who wanted to take you to another continent to study animals for an unknown duration!) and also the resiliency of the human heart (imagine: getting on a boat and sailing the world in order to come to terms with the loss of your husband, only to find that you haven't lost him--he's with you wherever you go!), before taking herself off to the small bathroom and stripping off her sweaty work clothes.
The women ate at the table with the kitchen window open, talking more about their lives and families, and making a plan for the next day. By the time Molly had set Helena up on the couch on a makeshift bed of blankets and pillows, they had a plan and an agreement: Molly would help Helena avoid detection by Professor Puffin (as they'd taken to calling him--this made them both laugh), and then she'd find a way to help Helena get back home to Lundy.
It wouldn't happen overnight, but it would happen, and Molly reassured herself of this as she climbed under her thin blanket that night, staring at the ceiling. So far her only purpose on this trip had been to leave a bit of Rodney's ashes everywhere she went, but now her purpose was going to be looking after someone younger and less experienced than she was.
