all night. She didn?t have an answer for him. Jerry was as angry as
he had ever had been with her. He demand
ed that she come home
immediately. He even yelled at her, which he hadn?t done since she
was a kid. Helen wasn?t used to disobeying her father, but she
found herself telling him that she was safe and that she wasn?t
coming home just yet. She hung up on him while he was still
sputtering.
She knew she was being unfair to him, but she didn?t know what
else to do. She hadn?t decided if she was going to tell her father
about Daphne?s return and then tell him that she was leaving to
live with her, or if it was kinder to just disappear. Daphne insisted
that a clean break would be better for everyone, including Jerry,
but Helen couldn?t quite bring herself to accept that. He might be
physically safer, but emotionally he would be destroyed. Helen
went through both scenarios in her head, and neither of them felt
right. Either way her father, the person who deserved to suffer the
least, was the one who would be hurt the most. Eventually, her
brooding was interrupted by Noel, who let Helen know that Claire
and Jason were awake.
Helen went upstairs to Jason?s room and pushed the door open a
crack. Daphne was sitting on the edge of the bed next to Claire,
holding her hand and looking down at her with a fretful tenderness.
Daphne had loved Claire when she was a baby, she had explained
to Helen the night before, and she had always worried for
Claire?s safety growing up alongside a Scion. In the hotel during
the storm, Daphne had removed Helen?s curse, and she had also
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explained that she had left Claire excluded from being able to trigger
the cramps, even though it could have exposed Helen, just in