They strolled out into the night, beginning to quiet
down now that the formal firework displays had exhausted themselves in
a final orgy of boom and flash. Shane turned her head, watched them for
a moment, nodded, and purposefully turned away. The air was pungent
with gunpowder drifting up from the city, but a breeze was stirring
that would carry it out to sea eventually.

Tina took Helena’s arm, draped it around her shoulder, leaned into her
strength and softness. “Any idea how the proceeds are running?” she
asked in deliberate avoidance.

“Fifty thousand, the last I checked, and that’s without the Foundation’s matching contribution,” Helena answered quietly.

“Wow,” Tina’s eyes went wide. “That’s a lot.”

“Custody fights are expensive. But every little bit helps.” She smiled with her lips, and blinked back tears.

They managed to sustain a conversation about nothing but fundraising
business for all of five more minutes before Tina steered Helena into
the shadows, out of Shane’s view, even though she knew Shane wasn’t
watching. She was good at not getting into someone else’s business.
Almost too good at it.

Helena placed her fingers gently under Tina’s jaw, tipped her head up,
searched her face for some hint as to what she really wanted from her.
“Sothings are going well, yeah?”

Tina shook her head. “No. Not well at all. And I don’t know what to do,
Helena. I just don’t.” Her eyes darkened, fought back tears.

“Well, give it time,” Helena said gamely. “Everything changes when you
have a child. It’s a lot of well, not stress, exactly, but
disruptions. Everything focuses around the baby for a long time.”

Tina laid her hand over Helena’s. “It’s more than the baby. A lot more
than that. Sometimes, I thinkI mean, I love being a mom, I love
Angelicasometimes so much I can hardly breathe when I hold her, but.”

“A child can only do so much, Tina,” Helena pressed her warm lips on
Tina’s forehead. “You can’t ask too much of hersome things you have to
do for yourself.”

Neither would say it outright. But Helena knew what Tina had never told
her, that she believed that the reason Bette had asked to have a child,
and she had agreed, was to try to patch the growing emotional and
sexual distance between them, to give them something in common to focus
on. It had worked all too well. They were so focused on Angelica that
they hardly paid attention to each other at all. But Helena knew it,
understood it as she understood that she and Winnie had tried the same
thing.