Helen On The Run: The Lost Years

I have been getting this story ready to publish for close to a year, but it looks as though it will take at least a year more.  It is fairly long: close to 60 thousand words, and unlike the other Helen episodes it has a definite plot, and a sort of an ending.  True to form, the things I like about it are how it illuminates the character of Helen, and the characters of the children.  By the end of this story, Helen has given birth to her youngest, James, her only natural-born child.  The others, the three girls, are all adopted.  We also see the circumstances that lead to the middle girl, Erin, being taken into Helen's family.  Oh, it is a lovely story, possibly the most likable story of all the Helen episodes, to abuse a word.

Synopsis

Helen and her partner of the moment, Michelle, come under scrutiny from a state agency that oversees the welfare of adopted children, which has been subverted.  Succumbing to pressure from certain conservative citizens, the agency takes the children into custody.  The women are devastated.  It is halfway through the winter semester, and Helen, though sunk deep in depression, cannot bring herself to stop working on her courses, but she gets psychological counseling.  Her friends urge her to travel to Rhode Island to attend a national meeting, at which she presents some work she has been doing.  She meets a young man there, Jeffrey Gibson, whom she invites to Philadelphia on the spur of the moment.  Some weeks later, he takes up the offer, and spends a weekend with Helen and Michelle.

Just as Helen and Michelle are about to give in to total despair, Gena and Alison run away from the foster home, and manage to run back home to Helen, Gena pushing Alison in a stroller.  The women, taken totally by surprise, decide that the best thing to do is for Helen and the children to go into hiding.  The first half of the story is about how Helen, with some interesting help from a wonderful woman named Penny, manage to stay alive, and even give the children a degree of happiness and normalcy.  Helen has gone back into housing construction, as a carpenter and electrician.  Michelle escapes surveillance and joins Helen, but is picked up by the FBI while waitressing, and Helen has a narrow escape.

Helen is pregnant, and as she begins to show, it blows her cover.  Michelle is taken in, and placed in a house in the Sacramento area owned by Helen, presumably as bait for Helen. Helen decides to seek shelter with her mother's family, in St. Paul, MN, where she is unexpectedly offered a teaching job in a private school.  Her pregnancy is a good disguise, but the school administration has taken a serious risk, employing a teacher without proper documentation.  Soon, due to the principal being taken ill, Helen is appointed acting principal, having become very popular with the students and the teachers alike.

It is in the school that one of the most powerful scenes in the story takes place.  It is so beautifully set out that I have a horrible suspicion that I have read it somewhere.  When I recognize the source of the anecdote, I will give credit, but I have only vague ideas of its origins.  Or I shall have to remove it.

Anyway, young James is born, (and we're introduced to James's Dad, Jeffrey,) and during the graduation ceremonies, Helen is hauled off to the lockup.  We're also introduced to the amazing young woman who ends up falling in love with James's Dad.

Of course, the whole thing is a fantasy, even if there are scary elements in it.  Given that Helen is in hiding, with both children, everything happens in the least frightening way, true to the Helen tradition.

Kay