Jo lifted her mug in salute. “Sex is a nice thing to have in common.”
Helen felt her cheeks warm. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“Of course you are! It’s been three years.” Jo gave her a shrewd look. “No, it’s probably been way longer than that, hasn’t it?”
“Four years, two months,” she blurted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Oh, Lord, had she actually admitted she knew to the month?
Jo only gave a brisk nod. “There you go. I enjoy sex. Four years of celibacy sounds way too long to me.”
“Me, too,” Kathleen admitted. “Especially now that I’ve discovered how fabulous it is.” She pursed her lips, fixing a compassionate gaze on Helen. “It can be, you know. Even if it was only pleasant with Ben, at its best, making love is pretty incredible.”
“It was more than pleasant with Ben,” Helen said hastily. “But Ben’s the only man I’ve ever…” She stopped. “What I’m trying to say is, sex isn’t just recreational for me.”
“You think it is for us?” Kathleen asked, just a little tartly.
“No! I didn’t mean… Oh, damn it.” She frowned at them. “You know that’s not what I was suggesting. I just can’t see myself separating sex from love and commitment and so on. And…I don’t want that.”
They knew how she felt, and only shook their heads.
“Someday…” Kathleen muttered.
Jo set down her cup. “When I was falling in love with Ryan, and was all confused, I asked you one night whether it was worth it. Do you remember? You’d been crying, and I wanted to know whether you would have taken it all back if you could. If you’d foreseen how Ben would die, would you have said no when he asked you to marry him?”
Helen was already shaking her head.
“That night, you told me it was all worth it. So…how can you refuse to think about being happy again?”
“You don’t believe in once-in-a-lifetime love?” Helen asked them. “Would I face the agony of losing him again, if I could have him back for a while?” She tried to smile. “Yes. Of course I would. Do I want to face it so I can have a companion in middle age?” She shook her head. “I’d say I’m okay on my own, except that, thanks to you two, I’m not exactly on my own.”
“And isn’t that nice?” Jo said with satisfaction.
Kathleen said nothing, only watched Helen. She knew what was coming.
“I’ve been looking for a small place for Ginny and me,” Helen told them. “Maybe just an apartment.”
Jo’s mug clunked to the table. “What?”
“I think it’s time Kathleen and Logan and Emma had the house to themselves. They’re a family. They’ve been very nice about letting Ginny and me stay, but none of us intended it to be forever.”
“Logan and I did.” Kathleen’s jaw squared. “You are part of the family.”
“He may not feel the same.”
“He does. When he asked me to marry him, we talked about my moving in with him and renting this house to you. But…all of us together makes this home. He wanted that, too.”
“It’s not as though I won’t be over here half the time anyway,” Helen said mildly. Her sidelong glance was aimed at Jo. “Like someone we know and love.”
Jo tilted her head. In the year since her wedding, she had made a habit of dropping by and even studying here on evenings when Ryan’s kids had friends over.
Looking straight at Kathleen, Helen continued, “When you told me you were getting married, I was terrified at the idea of having to find a place for Ginny and myself. I’d come to depend on the two of you. I wasn’t ready then.” She paused a beat. “Now I am.”
“I don’t like it.” Kathleen scowled at her. “I’d miss you!”
“No, you won’t. Like I said, I’ll be over here all the time anyway. What with the business, I’ll have to be, won’t I?”
“Then why move?” Kathleen asked, clearly believing the question was unanswerable.
“I suppose…” Helen groped to explain. “I suppose because I need to know I can take care of myself and Ginny. Because you and Logan ought to be able to have privacy when you want it. And because, honestly, I feel a little like a houseguest, now that you don’t need my rent money.”
Kathleen let out an impatient huff. “This argument isn’t over.”
“I know it isn’t.”
“Did you find some place?” Jo interjected.
“Not yet,” she admitted. So far, everything she’d looked at had either been beyond her means or so crummy she hadn’t been able to contemplate moving in. She didn’t want to live in a place where she’d lie awake at night expecting a break-in, or have to battle cockroaches, or walk from her parking spot to her front door past half a dozen men who seemed to spend their days leaning on their cars eyeing passing women. But sooner or later she’d get lucky. She wanted Kathleen to know that she was serious.
“Business has really taken off, hasn’t it?” Jo sipped tea.
“Um.” Kathleen still watched Helen with a brooding expression, but she went on, “I’m having trouble keeping up with demand.”
“Are you thinking of quitting your job at the chiropractor’s?”
“Actually, yes.”
This was news to Helen. “Really?”
“You know how much I hate it. Logan has been getting really annoyed at me. He makes good money and likes what he’s doing. He wants me to ditch the job and concentrate on making soap, which I enjoy. If I don’t pay half the bills for a while, so what?”
“I think we’re at the point where you need to do that anyway,” Helen said thoughtfully. “I’ve been worrying about it. If we add even a couple more outlets where the soap sells well, we won’t be able to keep up and continue the craft fairs.”
“I was thinking,” Kathleen said, “that if I quit my job, you should, too. We need to expand to other markets. Portland is a natural. Spokane, Boise, even the smaller towns like Walla Walla, Yakima and Bend. As things stand, you can’t travel. I can’t make soap and try to sell it, too.”
Helen didn’t like to be suspicious, but… “Is this an excuse to keep me from moving out?”
Kathleen tried to look wounded but wasn’t a good enough actress. “What do the two things have to do with each other?”
“You know I can’t afford to pay for my own place on what I make from Kathleen’s Soaps.”
Kathleen leaned forward. “But you can if we expand. And we can’t expand if we don’t both commit ourselves full-time.”
Catch-22. Helen, too, had dreams of Kathleen’s Soaps expanding throughout the Pacific Northwest and even farther. The idea of making Kathleen’s hobby a business had been hers in the first place! They needed a better Web site, to run ads in national magazines and perhaps create a catalog. Kathleen had been making some soaps lately with patterns and even pictures embedded in them. Now was the time to be aggressive.
But Helen also knew the time had come for her and Ginny to have their own home.
“I’ll think about it.”
Kathleen nodded.
“Logan’s boxes seemed to sell well,” Jo remarked.
“We