Free Helen Hath No Fury by Gillian Roberts

himself a glass of wine and, after much urging and waitressing by the group, amassed a plateful of offerings and retreated to the bedroom.
    “He’s
gorgeous,”
Roxanne said the second the bedroom door shut. “And, oh, that Southern
accent.”
There was much agreement and further embellishments about his hunkiness and my luckiness.
    I appreciated the sentiments, although I admit the hungry expressions on some of my dear friends’ faces worried me. I believe Louisa Traverso, she of the three failed marriages, actually drooled.
    The accolades continued. I was glad the awkward silence had been broken, although I found this effusivenessexcessive. No need to be so very effusive in their praise, or to so lovingly catalogue his fine attributes.
    They made him seem like a great purchase I’d made, a clever investment. Or an especially adorable pet.
    And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, it ended, and the stilted silence returned. This time, it felt like shame in new attire. We weren’t supposed to be ogling a handsome man; we were supposed to be mourning, eulogizing, doing something about a dead friend.
    “What we have just witnessed, ladies, is the life force in action,” Tess said, putting us back on course. “Isn’t it nice to know that despite how sad and rotten and upset we are about Helen, it hasn’t extinguished our pilot lights altogether? I say hooray for it.”
    It is good to have a shrink around.
    “I’m so upset,” Roxanne said, breaking the ice in which we’d set the dead woman. “And shocked. I’ve known her forever, but I must not have known her at all. That frightens me. I don’t know what it means.” She looked down at her fingernails, ticking one tip against the other. We waited. She made her tick, tick noises. Then she lifted her head again and spoke more forcibly. “I’m sorry, but she did not seem depressed Monday night.”
    There was a round of murmurs, all agreeing. “Not depressed,” was repeated softly. “Not suicidal!” more loudly.
    I was glad to hear my gut impressions seconded. Nobody had found Helen quite herself Monday, but nobody thought that a tirade against suicide dovetailed into committing suicide the next day. Nobody suggested that Helen had felt irresistibly drawn to replicate Edna’s actions.
    My suspicions surfaced again, but this did not seemthe time to broach them, since nobody else was moving from disbelief toward what I thought was believable.
    “But there was a note,” Tess said. “This is so difficult to absorb or believe, but then there’s the fact of the note.”
    “She wasn’t depressed, but she wasn’t herself either on Monday,” Clary said. “She was so
jumpy!”
She stopped, her eyes growing first wide, and then overflowing. “I didn’t mean—how could I have said that word! I didn’t mean …” She shook her head and bent over to find tissue in her bag.
    “Please,” Tess said. “It was just a word. And she did seem hyped up, overly upset about the book and Edna’s behavior.”
    Clary cleared her throat and seemed to have almost regained her composure. “Listen, I meant to say … the truth is, I can only stay awhile,” she said. “Ivan’s devastated, and I promised I’d—”
    So Helen’s husband was back. Clary didn’t offer an explanation for where he’d been and nobody asked. At least not out loud.
    A polite cough broke the brief silence. “I can’t stay either,” Denise said. “I wanted to be a part of this, but in truth, I shouldn’t be here at all. I’m supposedly out in Villanova with Roy Stanton, but I said I’d be late. Zack’s at the helm.” As she said her stepson’s name, a fleeting frown, very fleeting—Denise seldom showed even slight displeasure—darkened her expression.
    I was continually surprised by what a political animal she was. Being arm candy, a professional smiler for an ambitious man, sounds appalling to me. I hadn’t known her before her marriage, but people said she’d been strongly