It's Complicated (Bigelow Bay Book 2)

by Jakki Frances

  Greg spun and strode to his truck before Kasey had even finished talking. He knew exactly where Helene was.

  # # # # #

  Helene pushed her laptop down her lap in defeat; her days of writing in the sun were definitely at an end. The overcast sky and slightly cool breeze sucked her usual enjoyment from spending time outside, she frowned, her creative juices were not flowing today either. She was stuck, she’d not been able to write a word in days. Her ‘heroine’ was waiting for the man of her dreams, poised, ready for her happily ever after, except the damn man just wouldn’t come through. He was stubbornly refusing to be written, he was refusing to be the man she needed him to be. Helene huffed with frustration, she should have hiked to the waterfall but no she’d wanted to spend just one more day here. She wasn’t ready to leave yet but she knew she had to move on, the weather was getting colder, it would soon be too cold to live here in the camper and there was no reason to stay. Greg had made sure she was aware of that.

  The crunch of tires on the carpark gravel drew here attention, in all the time she’d camped in this carpark no one had ever come here. It was far enough from town and the hiking trail small and overgrown enough that she’d been undisturbed. Her stomach lurched into her throat and then dropped heavily as she recognised Greg’s truck pulling into the small space. She flipped her laptop closed and set it inside the open camper door then turned and waited.

  Greg sat a moment, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he prepared to do the unthinkable. He felt strangely at ease with his decision, he needed for Helene to know him whether she chose to allow him to know her or not.

  He staggered slightly as he climbed from the car, his knee complaining from the recent lack of exercise his hands stuffed in his pockets unsure how to approach Helene.

  “Why are you limping more? What happened to your knee?” Helene’s keen eyes zoned in on his leg, concern flitted across her face before a blank look of indifference established itself.

  Of course, her first reaction would be one of concern for him, it was just the sweet person she was Greg thought.

  “I was hoping we could talk? I’ve been looking for you for days, Kasey told me where to find you otherwise I never would have……” her silence was unnerving. Well, she hadn’t told him to fuck off yet, that was a bonus.

  Helene sat on the top step of the camper without a word and waited. She’d hear him out, but she didn’t have to make it easy for him.

  “Ok, so talk. Well, I guess I need to begin with apologising. I’m really, really sorry Helene. I was way out of line, you were right I was a total asshole. I was rude and mean and unreasonable and I jumped to a whole lot of unfounded conclusions. I called you a liar and accused you of hiding things when you weren’t. I know now that you were always honest with me and had even told me how to find what I wanted to know, I just didn’t listen. And I thought you were trying to make me do something or be something I didn’t want and I didn’t even bother to talk to you about it. Basically, I fucked up BIG TIME, and I’m so, so sorry.” Greg almost felt like he should fall to his knees and beg, if only he was physically capable.

  A small smile tugged the corner of Helene’s lips and Greg’s heart soared, there might just be hope after all, until….

  “Yes, you did fuck up big time. You fucked me and threw me out of your house like I was a hooker you’d caught stealing your wallet. You started accusing me of things I have no idea about. It came out of nowhere and you gave me no reason why. I thought we were friends but apparently, you just wanted to fuck me and then get rid of me…. You should have just told me that from the outset and it would have made it easier for both of us.” Helene’s eyes flashed with anger behind threatening tears.

  “You’re right, about all of it,” Greg stated simply. “I want to tell you a story and then maybe you’ll understand some of it, I hope.” Pausing Greg flexed his aching knee as he prepared to tear himself open for Helene to see the mess inside.

  “So this story starts 40 years ago, well actually before but for today’s purpose that will do. When I was 6 I was put into foster care. It had always just been my mum and me, we lived in the city I remember the cars and the noise, I don’t remember ever having grandparents but mum seemed to have a lot of friends. Then one day she went out and didn’t come back. I stayed at home and waited, I’m not sure how many days until eventually I went to the neighbours to see if they had any food. I remember the Police coming to their house and they took me home to pack a bag of clothes and then I never went home again.” He scrunched his brows as the memories he’d shut away flooded his mind.

  “Once I was older a social worker told me that my mum was a drug addict and had OD’d the day she left. She’d been taken to hospital but had discharged herself not long after. So anyway, I was bounced from foster home to foster home to group home from that day until I turned 18. I was never in one place for more than 6 months, some of the homes were nice but not many people want to raise someone else’s kid especially a boy. I was lucky, some of the kids I knew had been in homes where they got hit, and I never was. I was just an extra kid in the house, unnoticed for the most part. I made sure to keep all my stuff packed away, my bed made everything neat and tidy…… I did my best to not give anyone a reason to move me, but all us kids were constantly shuffled around as new kids came and others went.”

  As he spoke Greg kept his eyes on the ground if he had to look at her he wouldn’t be able to do this, but he knew her eyes never left his face, he could feel them.

  “So I moved around a lot, changed schools so many times I’ve lost count. School didn’t mean much to me anyway, every move meant a new one with new books and classes, I never completed the year at the place I’d started. I scraped through each year, I think based more on the school not wanting to fail the kid who’d only been there a few months rather than based on my scholastic ability. Most of the kids I knew in foster care dropped out of school once they were teenagers. They’d drop out and run the streets, some did drugs, some dealt drugs, some shoplifted, some stole cars; I never actually committed a crime but I came close.”

  Helene sat quietly listening as Greg poured out his life to her; already her heart was breaking for him. She wanted to pull him against her, to wrap her arms around him and soothe him but the tension coming off him in waves told her now was not the time.

  “When I turned 18 I was on my own. There were too many younger kids in need to waste a bed on someone who was officially an adult. A few times I managed to get a bed for a night or two in a shelter but mostly I crashed on friends’ couches, other kids who’d aged out and were getting by making money on the streets. I played lookout a few times for a dealer and I jumped into ‘help’ when one of my friends got mugged by a couple of junkies looking for a free score. But when the dealers started pushing for me to do more, to work for them, I knew I had to make a choice; either stay where I was in the life that I was in… or find another life. I knew a community policeman, he was always hanging around the group homes trying to get the kids to stay in school and work had. Kept telling them that they had choices in life and didn’t have to settle for the hand they were dealt with. So when the time came I sought him out and asked for his help. I would either become a criminal or not, I chose not. He let me stay with him for a few months, made me pull my weight around the house and instead of rent I had to study, whatever I was interested in but he insisted that a little knowledge wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “I applied to the police academy and was accepted. I started out in the city for a few years, I’d go out on nights off and women would be all over me. They were all about being with a policeman, all about the job security. Every woman I dated would very quickly start hinting about our ‘future’. They all wanted to play happily ever after and meet her parents, meeting mine, big family get-togethers. I once found out a woman I’d been casually dating for a month picking wedding dresses in a magazine, she wanted to talk timelines and children and a joint mortgage, she even made up a �
��cover story’ for her family and friends to explain my lack of family. Apparently not having a family is socially unacceptable. I can’t be a happy family, I can’t be a dad. I don’t know how to meet parents and do family get together, I’ve never had that. When I joined the force I did a sneaky database search and found my mum, Community Services had tried more than once to return me to her care when I was growing up, she always refused.”

  Taking a breath Greg finally looked up, facing Helene with all of his messed up past on view. Helene’s face clouded with concern, she was obviously struggling to process his words.

  “I never asked for happy families Greg, I never asked for anything, I never expected anything other than friendship. You judged and convicted me based on what you don’t want without even talking to me to see what I want. I understand you not wanting to tell me all this but you held things against me, a past against me that just don’t exist. You punished me for your own past.” Her voice was so quiet with none of the usual cheeriness that Greg loved.

  “I know. I understand that you told me how to get to know you and I didn’t. I know that it was unreasonable to expect you to open up to me, a complete stranger when I wouldn’t be open or honest with you. I understand now and I’m sorry. I got all worked up that night that we……. Well, I started thinking you’d demand more, you’d expect happily ever after and I’ve never done that. I don’t know how”

  Helene stood suddenly, her hands clenched in fists he could practically see the sparks flying off her.

  “What exactly do you understand Greg? You’ve obviously Googled me and now know about my life. Hell anyone with a computer can learn about my entire life, I’m sure there are people out there who even know more about me that I do. Do you understand what that’s like? To know that my entire existence is out there for the world to know about. Do you understand what it’s like to know I once had a life, I was once another person but that person died on a filthy train floor one day? Do you understand how it feels to know that no one ever came looking for me? Not family, not friends, not even a boss or landlord when I disappeared leaving everything behind. It’s like I never existed!” She paced back and forward the anger and hurt pouring out of her. “Do you understand that they cut open my head, my brain, to save my life and because of that I lost my entire life? I don’t talk about myself because people don’t really want to know, they are curious sure but they either don’t want to know or they want to ‘test’ me, try and see if I really don’t remember. I don’t remember who I was, I don’t even remember how old I am; the doctors guessed that I was around 20ish. When I was taken to the hospital I was listed as UNKNOWN FEMALE for over a week, until they realised I’d live after the surgery. Then I became JANE DOE, just like any other woman without a name. But that’s not my name! I met a nurse when I was going through rehabilitation named Helene, she was the first person who allowed me to be me. She took me shopping for clothes and let me choose them myself, jeans, a candy-striped shirt and purple boots. Until then I’d been given things from the hospital lost property to wear, unwanted clothes for the unwanted woman; I didn’t even have the clothes I was found wearing, the hospital lost them along the way! Helene let me be a real person for the first time and so I asked her if I could borrow her name. Do you understand that it took years to be allowed to have a name? That I had to go to court, I had to be tested over and over by doctors and shrinks and social workers, interviewed and investigated by pretty much every security agency in the country before I was legally allowed to even have a name, a job, a bank account, an existence. My legal ‘date of birth’ is just the date the courts allowed me to have a name with an approximate year added on. And in all that time I lived just like you did, in hospitals, on couches, in shelters - not family shelters like here, my roommates were prostitutes and junkies and women released from prison. My first book bought me my name, the publishers paid for the lawyer in return for my story. I bought the camper because no-one would rent me an apartment without references, credit checks, a past.”

  Tears ran freely as Helene opened up to Greg; she understood his past, now he needed to understand hers. Nothing was as simple as it seemed online.

  “I totally understand your feelings about family and happily ever after. I don’t have a family either you know, I never planned on having kids – how do you explain to a child why they don’t have a granny or aunts and uncles or cousins? How do you explain a blank family tree? Now I’m in my 40’s, probably, and I’ve made my own picket fence home, you’ve seen it painted on the camper. I write romance so I can write my own happily ever after because I don’t believe I’ll ever really get one. I need you to understand all of that Greg.”

  Helene’s shoulders fell and her whole body seemed to shrink from her outburst. She returned to the door of the camper and turned to face him.

  “Greg, I’m glad I tripped you over that day. The friendship we had was real and means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me and I’ll admit what happened that night was mind-blowing, well, before you threw me out anyway. You blamed me for tempting you, but you tempted me just as much. You’re a great guy, funny and kind and talented and sexy as sin. Look what I’m trying to say is let’s just leave it at that. We go our separate ways as friends. I don’t hold what you said against you, now I understand why you felt that way. But it’s getting cold and it’s time for me to move on. I can’t stay here in the winter it’s too cold for the camper so I’ll go somewhere warmer. You can continue on with your life and I’ll continue on with mine.”

  There was a sense of finality as she closed the camper door behind her leaving Greg with a painfully empty hole forming inside at the thought of not having her as part of his life.

  CHAPTER 19

  Greg paced the house restlessly; it was still to empty, to quiet. Helene had left a void and he realised now that she was the only one who could fill it and because of his own stupidity, she was gone. He’d delivered the books and his collection of small wooden creatures to the shelter that morning, much to the excitement of the families and workers combined. Even Joey managed to find a book that caught his interest stating it would be the subject of his next book report. Greg’s mood soared as the children poured over the books and toys, their parents all thanking him profusely with some even settling down to read themselves. Greg refused any credit and directed all praise towards Helene.

  Drifting into his workshop he picked up the half-completed carving he’d started weeks ago. He’d found it buried under the completed toys and holding it now his fingers itched to work. Sitting at the bench he picked up a file and began shaping and smoothing the wood. He worked for hours until the perfect shape appeared just as he saw it in his mind. When it was perfect he reached for his paints, adding colour after colour making sure it was just right. Then he set it to dry while he called Kasey, he needed to talk to her about this.

  # # # # #

  “Definitely time to move on” Helene declared packing the last of her equipment into the camper. This morning the windows had been frozen over for the second day in a row and she was sure the clouds would be releasing snow rather than rain soon enough. Swiping a tear she was resolute, she’d always said she’d move on when it became cold, the fact that she couldn’t get Greg out of her mind shouldn’t change that plan. There would be no happily ever after for her, it was never on the cards she knew that, but she still wished it was.

  The sound of a car pulling up had her mood lifting even while she knew she couldn’t face him. If she did it would make leaving hurt even more. Flicking the latch on the door she sunk to the floor to wait him out.

  Knocking on the camper door Greg knew Helene was there, her scooter was mounted to its bracket on the back and all of her equipment had been packed away. He was just in time, she was ready to go.

  “Helene please come out, I just want to talk to you before you leave.” Greg held his breath and waited.

  “Ok then I’ll talk and you can listen. I do understand. Everything you said, I underst
and. I want you to understand too, I don’t know how to be without you around anymore. My house is too big now because you’re not dancing around it or messing it up with your post-its, I miss those crazy coloured post-its. That house is the first real home I’ve ever had in my whole life. It is the roots I never had. I’ve been afraid that it wouldn’t be enough, that I wouldn’t be enough for someone else. So I made rules for myself to keep anyone from being disappointed in me and so I was never left alone because of where I came from. Until you……. You got into my house and under my skin and I want you to stay there. You made me realise my rules seem stupid now, my house is just walls and a roof it’s not the roots I thought it was. I can’t offer you happy families or any family but that’s ok. Neither of us has a family so we’re even. You have your own picket fence and I want to share it, you don’t need me to give you one. I get that my past is complicated and yours doesn’t exist but that’s ok. That’s life, it’s complicated, and it’s meant to be. We can work it out. We can be whatever we want. I’m not talking happily ever after, I don’t know if that exists but Frank and Kasey seem to think it does. I’m offering the winter. Please Cupcake, don’t go anywhere! Stay; Shack up with me! Stay the winter and then we’ll see, let’s just go one season at a time, no future, no past, just us.”

  Greg rested his head on the door that remained shut between them, there was nothing left to be said. Placing his gift on the step he turned and drove away. Where they went from here was all up to Helene.

  # # # # #

  Tears ran freely down Helene’s face as she heard Greg’s truck pull away. Struggling to catch her breath she unlatched the door as the sound of his car faded away down the mountain. Swinging the door open Helene was about to step down when a small colourful shape sitting on the step caught her eye. Picking it up Helene gasped; there in her hand was a small replica of her camper. Perfectly carved from wood the palm-sized camper was painted as if it had been shot by a paintball gun, a tiny white picket fence decorated the front side panel. Attached to the roof was an addition missing on the real thing. A tiny pink frosted cupcake with a silver metal key mounted in a slot like a cherry on top.