Helen Hath No Fury by Gillian Roberts Read Free Book Online

As if I’ll explain why it isn’t possible that happened, and then it will turn out that it didn’t happen.”
    “Clary called me,” Susan said after a pause. “She started a book group chain. Also other chains, for other parts of Helen’s life.”
    I was impressed by Clary’s efficiency, and I stifled thoughts that it might be cold of her. Unemotional. Untouched. Some people had businesslike habits ingrained, I reminded myself.
    “You call Tess, she’ll call Louisa, and that’s it,” Susan said. “This is awful, isn’t it? I’m so upset, I keep crying. I mean I don’t know what to do. This feels… impossible.”
    “Her poor daughter. And Ivan. He must be devastated!”
    “Probably would be, if anybody could find and tell him.”
    “Meaning?”
    “He isn’t in Cleveland where he said he’d be. At least not at the hotel he said. Never had a reservation.” She dropped the matter-of-fact, no-inflection tone she’d adopted. “Damn but I hope the explanation isn’t as tawdry as it sounds like it’s going to be.”
    “I’m sure it isn’t. He dotes on her. Don’t read things into this. There is undoubtedly a boring explanation. Somebody had the wrong information, or his plans changedand Helen knew but it wasn’t worth repeating to anyone else. Not everything is suspicious, Susan. Not everything’s mysterious. This is real life.”
    “I never said!”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply …” I did mean to. Susan’s imagination is hyperactive and there’s no Ritalin for that. I think the fertility of her brain is what keeps her from ending her books. She invents alternative scenarios, comes up with ever new options.
    But that was neither here nor there. What was here was Helen, dead.
    “What about Gretchen?” Susan asked. “She surely needs her father! She’s with Clary, it isn’t as if she’s abandoned, but still … it’s horrible, his not being reachable at a time like this.”
    “Poor girl. This is such a shame for her …”
    We could as easily have said, “Whush, whush, whush.” We were making noise to stave off that time when we’d have to hang up and be alone with our bad thoughts. Eventually we faced it and hung up.
    I sat and thought about Helen. I could see almost any one of the rest of us becoming so distracted that we ignored the rickety temporary fence, but Helen was the least flibbertigibbety of us all. And she was intensely involved in every decision concerning the reconstruction of her house and was unlikely to lapse into sudden daydreaming while inspecting the work on the roof.
    On the other hand, she hadn’t been herself the night before. Preoccupied. Agitated. Antagonistic. Maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly.
    I wished Mackenzie were home. Or anybody. Anything.
    Actually, anything was, but the cat was completely occupied by his five P.M. nap and wasn’t swayed by my need for companionship.
    I remembered I was supposed to make a call as part ofthe chain. Except I couldn’t remember whether I called Tess or Louisa, and she was Clary’s sister, so surely she already knew, even if I was supposed to call her.
    I was making excuses. I decided that I’d call them both, starting with Tess. How woefully different I was from Clary Oliver, who’d efficiently organized the spreading of the sad news, who would have remembered who it was she was supposed to call. On the other hand, why hadn’t she called her own sister? Maybe she disliked Louisa as much as I did.
    After hearing my news, Tess said nothing for a long time. Then, her voice tight, she said, “I can’t believe anybody could be so stupid as to put up a fence that weak.”
    I’d expected something more profound from a psychologist. “They assumed nobody would be up there till the brick wall was up,” I said softly.
    And then, as if she heard herself, she sighed loudly. “Sorry. I’m having trouble absorbing this. I guess I’m looking for somebody, something, anything, to blame. As if that would