Helens-of-Troy (30 page)

“Whoa,” Ellie gasped. “Now I know where
Mom gets it from.”

“Shut up, Ellie,” Helen snapped. “Or
I’ll ground you until you’re twenty.”

Ellie slunk back in her
chair.

“Then I’ll un-ground her,” Helena
yelled back. “My house. My rules. Why is that so hard for you to
comprehend?”

Helen’s face was so red so looked like
she was going to pass out. She breathed in and out deeply, trying
to calm herself down. “Who is the boy in your dream, Ellie?” she
asked again, this time trying to be calmer.

“Enough with the dream already, okay
Mom?” Ellie pleaded.

Helena moved towards Ellie’s chair and
put her arm around her granddaughter. “That really might be best,
Helen.”

“Don’t you start being all protective
of Ellie. She’s hiding something. She told us about the dream. But
she left out one major detail.”

“I didn’t know I had to tell it to you
scene by scene,” Ellie protested. “Are you talking about the
vampire? Is that what you’re going on about?”

“Whoa,” Helena gasped.

“Yes! I mean the vampire!” Helen said,
throwing her arms into the air. “Why haven’t you told us about him?
Rewind. You said there was a missing girl. You said there was a
bridge. You even said there was a creepy cowboy cutout guy. But you
said nothing about a vampire. Did you?”

“I guess it slipped my mind,” Ellie
said quietly. “But...how did you know about him?”

“Just like that?” Helen questioned,
snapping her fingers and ignoring Ellie’s question. “You forgot
about him just like that?”

Ellie began tapping the arms of the
chair with her fingers. “Um, okay, so maybe there was a vampire in
my dream. And maybe he had the girl in his arms. And maybe she was
still alive then...”

“What do you mean she was still alive
then?” Helen asked, pretending to know nothing about the discovery
of the body. “What are you talking about?”

“They found Brooke Quinlan’s body last
night,” Helena told her.

“This is not good,” Helen said,
suddenly feeling weak. She grabbed the back of a chair and spun it
around so she could sit down. Deep down inside, she had hoped that
her visions, and Willie’s side of the night-ride tale, had just
been a crazy ghost story. “Ellie, what did the vampire look
like?”

“A vampire,” Ellie shrugged.

“Ellie, this is no time to frustrate
the hell out of me,” her mother said lowering her head into her
hands.

Helena moved another chair between
Helen and Ellie and sat down. She looked at her girls, one clearly
distraught, the other clearly confused. She was at a loss how to
help one of them, let alone both.

“Sweetheart,” she said gently to Ellie,
“not that it matters, because you’re right, a vampire is a vampire,
but... do you remember anything at all about him?”

“Of course I remember,” Ellie said.
“I’ll never forget him as long as I live. He was a teenager, like
me. He had dark hair, like me. And he was very scary. Even more
scary than Mom.” She blew Helen a kiss in a feeble attempt to
lighten the mood. It used to make her mother smile. Not this
time.

“I’m not in the mood, Ellie,” Helen
cautioned.

They were interrupted by a knock at the
back door. There was a tall blonde teenaged girl standing outside
on the landing, attempting to peek through the kitchen
window.

“Don’t answer that door,” Helen
demanded. “We need to finish this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Helen,” her
mother said, thankful for the distraction. She needed time to
figure out what was really going on, and she couldn’t do it with
her girls hovering around her. She needed to get them out of the
house. “Ellie’s friends are always welcome here.”

“She’s not exactly my friend,” Ellie
said, recognizing the girl. “You don’t have to open the
door.”

“Nonsense,” Helena insisted, reaching
for the doorknob. “Neither of you are in the position to be picky.
I don’t hear any BFF reality show producers banging our door
down.”

“BFF?” Helen asked, looking at Ellie
for an answer.

“Best friend forever,” Ellie answered.
“Nan’s been watching too much MTV.”

Jacey Sumner, bundled up in a matching
navy pea coat and hat, brushed some snowflakes from her shoulder
and turned to face Helena at the door.

“I knew it,” Helena said to herself
with satisfaction. “I told Roy it was going to snow.”

“Erm, is Ellie home?” Jacey asked when
Helena opened the door. “I don’t have the wrong house or anything,
do I?”

“Yes, darling. I mean no. Yes, Ellie is
home. No you don’t have the wrong house. Oh, you know what I mean.”
Helena said, motioning Jacey into the kitchen.

Jacey paused at the threshold. Under
the circumstances, that made Helen overly cautious. Was the girl
waiting to be invited in?

“There aren’t any cockroaches in here
are there?” Jacey asked awkwardly. “Only I saw a van out
front...”

“Great,” all three LaRoses said in
unison.

“Get it out of here,” Ellie and Helena
both said to Helen.

“All right, already,” Helen said alone,
feeling foolish on a few fronts.

“The house is vermin free,” Helena
assured Jacey. “It’s safe to come in. Don’t worry about taking your
boots off,” she said glancing at Jacey’s feet. “I have to do the
floors later anyway." She paused. “Hellsbelles, are those Jimmy
Choo’s?”

“Uh-huh,” Jacey said proudly. “I bought
them myself after I got paid from a modeling job.”

Ellie rolled her eyes.

Helen was impressed that the girl had a
job.

Helena wanted a pair of boots just like
them.

Jacey stepped into the house and
suddenly felt an uncomfortable shiver run through her body. It was
cold in the house and it wasn’t just the temperature. “Should I
come back another time?” she asked. “I get a sense things are a
little crazy right now.”

“She’s sensitive,” Helena whispered in
Helen’s ear.

Helen forced a smile. It wouldn’t take
a genius to sense there was tension in the room. All three LaRose
women were standing with their hands folded defiantly over their
chests.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,
but I just wondered if Ellie would like to come to church with me
this morning?” Jacey asked.

“Church?” Helen questioned.

“Yes, that’s right,” Jacey answered.
“I’m headed over to St. Mary’s for the early mass. I thought maybe
we could go and then grab a bite together afterwards down at the
Topaz.”

“I’m in,” Ellie said suddenly. Right
now, any excuse to get out of the house was looking pretty good,
even if it meant spending an hour or two with Jacey and a
priest.

“What?” Helen replied.

“I said I was in,” she answered back.
“You guys don’t mind if I go out with Jacey for a while? I mean,
you didn’t make any plans for us or anything?” she asked, knowing
damn well that the re-arranging of the front porch furniture could
wait.

“Stay here, Jacey,” Ellie said running
from the room. “I’ll be five minutes, I swear. I’ve just got to get
dressed.”

“Wonders never cease,” Helen said under
her breath.

“Hello,” Jacey said, extending her hand
to her. “I’m Jacey Sumner. You must be Ellie’s mother.”

“I am,” Helen said, somewhat taken
aback by the handshake.

“And you must be Helena LaRose,” Jacey
said, turning her attention to the matriarch. “You really helped
David Kim’s psoriasis. He’s my guardian. He thinks you’re awesome.”
She offered her hand to Helena as well.

“It’s nice to meet you, Jacey. Tell him
I’ve ordered in more of the salve to get him through the winter,”
Helena said, holding onto Jacey’s hand for a moment longer than one
normally does. She looked into the girl’s blue eyes and
smiled.

“I will, Mrs. LaRose,” Jacey said,
nodding and taking her hand back.

“Church… is that a regular thing for
you, Jacey? I don’t think it’s a priority for most teenaged girls,”
Helen asked suspiciously. For all she knew, this girl could be
whisking Ellie off to God knows what.

Jacey shrugged. “I do like to sleep in
most Sundays but with all the craziness in town right now, it’s
kind of hard. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but who can’t use a
few angels on your side to cover your ass, erm, I mean bases? You
never know, right?”

“Well, we can’t argue with that, can
we, Helen?” Helena said, pulling her daughter closer to her side.
She tugged at Helen’s sleeve. “Seriously. Sensitive.”

“Seriously fruity-loopy,” Helen
whispered back.

“Don’t worry about Ellie, I’ll make
sure she’s fine,” Jacey promised.

“I feel better already,” Helen said
sarcastically, not certain herself if the tone was directed at
Helena or Jacey or both.

Helena gave her daughter a quick jab to
the ribs.

“We’d appreciate that, Jacey.” Helena
said. “Ellie doesn’t know much of the town yet. It’s very nice of
you to offer to show her around.”

Ellie re-appeared in the kitchen. She
had thrown on her jeans and under her jacket was a sweater she had
found in her grandmother’s closet. Helena could see a hint of black
lace below Ellie’s coat collar.

Helena tilted her head. “Is that my
Lacroix sweater under your coat?”

“Smart girl. She’s up against the
Choo’s,” Helen reminded her mother.

“Bye,” Ellie said, running from the
house before anyone had a chance ask tell her to go back upstairs
and change.

“It was nice meeting you,” Jacey said
cheerily as the door slammed behind the teenagers.

“If she wrecks that sweater, you’re
paying for it,” Helena remarked, taking her finger and poking Helen
on her left shoulder.

“Good luck with that. I’m an unemployed
gravedigger, remember?”

“I could kill her. That would solve
both our problems.”

“Now you know what I go through every
day,” Helen sighed. “I’m going upstairs. I have a
headache.”

Helena let her go. She needed time to
think. Although she wasn’t about to let on, she too, was troubled
by the revelation that Ellie’s dream had involved a young
vampire.

“I warned you,” she said
icily.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Okay, where are we really going?"
Ellie asked before she even got to the driveway. “Are you driving
us to the city to go shopping? Because I could really use some new
gloves.” She held up her left hand and showed Jacey where her
fingers were poking out from the holes in the tips of the ones she
was wearing.

“I told you,” Jacey said. “You’re going
to church.”

“Why?” Ellie asked. “I mean, I don’t
mean to insult you or anything, but I thought you were just saying
that so I could get out of the house.”

Jacey looked at her with a puzzled
expression. “Do you have to lie to get out of the
house?”

“No,” Ellie said honestly. “Let’s just
say that you came over at a really good time. We were having a
family discussion that I didn’t want to be a part of. ”

“They seemed nice to me,” Jacey
shrugged. She looked at the heavy cloud cover in the sky. “I don’t
like to drive when the weather gets crazy like this, so I left my
car at home. The walk will do you good.”

“Me good?” Ellie wondered what she
meant by that? It wasn’t like she was overweight or anything. Maybe
a pound or two by Jacey standards, but not from the viewpoint of
the rest of society. “What do you mean by that?” she
questioned.

“Well…” Jacey hesitated.

The snow was really starting to come
down, making the thought of going for a walk even less attractive
to Ellie. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all, Jacey. Do
you want to go back inside and watch a video or something? Nan had
Ryan put a DVD player in my room. I don’t know how good her
collection is, but there has to be something we could
watch.”

Jacey pulled some balm out of her
pocket and applied it to her lips. “Right. Listen El, we have a
little problem. This is how it is. I’m the one who had to lie. I’m
stuck next door, looking after Stan, but I really need you to go to
church for me.” She reached back into the pocket, pulled out a
piece of paper and handed it to Ellie. “Here’s a list of things I
want you to bring back to me.”

“What?” Ellie asked, looking at the
list. “Are you serious?”

Jacey’s expression said she was. “Is
there a problem?”

“Uh, yeah there’s a problem. Do you
really want me to go to church alone and get these—things? I
distinctly remember you saying ‘come-with-me’. I don’t even know
where the church is. That would be the first problem.”

Ellie watched Jacey scowl. The fact
that those flawless features could even form a scowl indicated to
Ellie that for whatever reason, Jacey was bound and determined to
make this happen. Ellie decided to humor her and look at the list
again.