WARNING: The opening chapter of this story is very sad. Major character death but don't worry. They all had long, full lives. The rest of the story is happier & ameliorates the sadness in the beginning. Please don't give up after chapter one.
Cindy "Mac" Casablancas sits numbly in the dining room of the expensive Neptune mansion where she and her husband, Dick, raised their family. She is idly worrying a platinum surfboard charm on her ever present bracelet. Her shoulder length, dark, wavy hair hangs loosely around her face. It is now naturally streaked with grey; she long since stopped dying wild colors into it. Her normally sparkling blue eyes are blood shot and a family of four could pack for a week's vacation in the huge bags under her eyes. She looks broken, because that's what she is.
A young blonde woman reaches over and wraps her arms around the older woman's hunched shoulders. "It's gonna be okay, mom," she lies comfortingly with more conviction than she feels. "We're all here to take care of you."
Smiling through her unshed tears, Mac lets go of the surfboard to stroke her youngest daughter's hand where it rests against her own shoulder. "I can't believe he's gone, Bree," she sniffs.
Brianna Casablancas, the spitting image of Dick if he had been a girl, hugs her mother tighter. At 22, Brianna is the reigning women's champion of the Professional American Surfing Association. Blessed with her father's height and balance, she had been the apple of his eye from the first time her little, blonde head popped up on the front of his board.
All of the Casablancas girls sit around the table with their distraught mother. None really know how to comfort her. Their dad was her whole world. He was always the family member who soothed everyone and took away their pain. Very few people were blessed with Dick's innate sense of happiness. No matter how bad the circumstances, Dick preferred to keep things light, simple and enjoyable. He had no time for moping and could see the bright side of any situation.
Amanda Casablancas, nee Mars because Logan took Veronica's name, the oldest daughter of Mac and Dick's best friends, is married to their first born, Richard Samuel, after Mac's father. He's affectionately known as Rick to avoid confusion. When he was born, neither of his parents wanted to burden someone with a "third." Plus, Big Dick's ethics hadn't improved much over the years and at the time of Rick's birth Big Dick was serving time in federal prison for yet another questionable real estate transaction. Even back then, Mac had known that her estranged father-in-law would eventually die behind bars and that was just fine with her. Her prediction came true when Rick was five. Given Mac and Veronica's friendship, Mandy was more like a daughter than a daughter-in-law because all the kids were fixtures in the others' houses all their lives.
Savannah Sky Prescott, nee Casablancas, their oldest daughter, is perched at the far end of the room so she can keep an eye on her fraternal twins, Matthew and Catherine, a/k/a Mat and Cat, as they bicker in the den over a video game. Uncle Logan is trying to keep them calm but is failing miserably. Dick had been the master at handling kids, probably because he always remained a kid at heart.
Kelly Lynn Johannsen, their middle daughter, nurses her infant son, Ian. Of all the girls, Kelly's dark hair and short stature make her look most like Mac and different from her fairer, taller siblings. She is waiting for her husband, Darren, to awaken; the time change has thrown his schedule off. He'd flown in the day before from Australia where they live and where he is the current Australian men's surfing champion while Kelly manages the Australian branch of her parents' company. Kelly met Darren several years earlier when she accompanied her sister, Brianna, to a surfing tournament. When Kelly had first introduced Darren to her family, Dick had been more smitten then anyone. Out of loyalty to his blood line and pure pride, Dick often bragged that Brianna was the better surfer, but in any head to head contest, the day of the week and the break of the waves played a bigger role in determining the "winner" in any family competition because the talent was almost dead even.
Lily Kane is also present, in body, if not necessarily spirit. In solidarity to her lover, Mitchell Casablancas, the youngest son, and out of respect for her father's oldest and dearest friends, she sits dutifully in the dining room absently flipping through this week's issue of the National Tattler somewhat perturbed that she isn't on the cover. Once she turned eighteen, Duncan returned from Australia with his all grown up little "angel" in tow. Upon being loosed upon civilization after hiding her whole life, Lily lived up (or possibly down) to her namesake's reputation and courted media attention like an addict - to the point that it made Lindsey Lohan and the Kardashians look like shy hermits. Lily Kane took the idea of being famous for nothing more than her own beauty and her family's billions to new heights and new depths, much to her conservative father's chagrin. Besides the obvious, Mac never understood what Mitch saw in the voluptuous cougar who was fourteen years his senior. Dick often made wisecracks about their relationship calling Lily "Mrs. Robinson" or by the name of his former stepmother, Kendall, as he tried to reassure his skeptical wife that their son's romp with an experienced, older woman was healthy.
A mop haired child comes up to Mac's side. "Don't cry, Grandma. Grandpa hates it when you cry."
Feeling particularly geriatric under the weight of the last few days, Mac smiles softly down at her granddaughter. At eight years old Courtney Casablancas, Rick and Mandy's daughter, is the picture of sympathy – childlike innocence on the cusp of understanding - not yet fully comprehending that her happy-go-lucky goofball of a grandfather was gone forever. Looking at her it was often disconcerting to realize that she embodies both the best and worst of her grandfathers, Dick and Logan, disguised as an angel.
Trying to put on a brave face, Mac hugs Courtney. "You're right, baby. Grandpa hates it when I cry." Dick's biggest weakness had always been a crying woman. He'd do anything to make it stop. Mac had to be the bad cop when the kids were growing up. All the girls knew early on that turning on the waterworks wrapped Daddy around their fingers in no time.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Mac wishes for the millionth time in the last week that Dick was here to enfold her in his strong arms, to press her into the warmth of his embrace, or to just do something idiotic that would make all of this unbearable pain go away.
Another blonde woman enters the room. She is almost as weary as her friend. Easing herself down into the chair across from Mac, she gently whispers, "How you holdin' up, Q?" Mandy rubs the newcomer's back.
It has been years since Veronica called Mac Q. Once Veronica became a full fledged FBI agent with unlimited access to far better computer geeks with marvelous toys she stopped asking her old friend to hack into various databases and websites. Mac had been too busy with her growing family and growing businesses to play Lone Gunman to Veronica's Agent Mulder. Despite the loss of the crime fighting aspects of their relationship, the young mothers found new common ground over the years as their friendship evolved and their families grew.
"About as well as you'd expect, Bond," Mac answers honestly.
"He was one of a kind," Veronica offers. How do you console a friend who has just lost her husband of almost 40 years to a freak surfing accident?
Although she and Logan had never married because she just couldn't believe anybody could be faithful for that long, time and Logan had proved Veronica wrong. They had a warm, loving but unconventional relationship; they only played at being miffed when their friends called them the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell of Neptune. Logan had given up asking Veronica to marry him at least ten years ago but fearing his own mortality, he'd asked again the night Dick died. Veronica's answer was still no, but that night she took a long time to respond. For a few minutes Logan thought she'd finally say yes. She didn't, but for him it was enough that she had thought about it, even for a moment.
Despite being over sixty years old, Dick still loved to surf. "Age ain't nothin' but a number," he often quipped. Last week he had gone out to Dog Beach to catch a few waves with Logan when the unthinkable happened – he had a stroke right there in the water. It rendered the right side of his body immobile, preventing him from maintaining his balance on the board or swimming effectively once he'd been dumped into the churning ocean. The waves crashed over him and his board struck him on the head. The power of the surging water pummeled his paralyzed body and repeatedly beat him into the sand because the deadly combination of the stroke and the concussion rendered him unable to maneuver. Miraculously Logan had been able to pull Dick out of the water and start C.P.R. By the time the paramedics arrived Logan had found a thready pulse but Dick never regained consciousness. As he lay immobile on the sand, the unnatural angle of Dick's left leg showed that it was obviously broken, as was the bone jutting out from his right arm just above the wrist. It wasn't until they got the results of the CT Scan at the hospital that anyone realized his brain had begun to compress from a massive subdural hematoma. Five days later, he was gone.
Dick had always had high blood pressure for which he took medication - when he remembered. Despite Mac's best efforts, she was never able to substantially improve his diet. He loved bacon and eggs for breakfast when he wasn't eating pop tarts, cheeseburgers for lunch and steak for dinner which he often washed down with a cold beer and a tequila chaser. His favorite snacks remained nachos with extra cheese and anything deep fried. The six pack abs had long disappeared by his mid-forties but he had been in decent shape for a man of his age. Although his drinking and partying had curtailed significantly since college - thanks to Mac's calming influence - he never completely stopped. His doctor often cautioned that he was a ticking time bomb but Dick preferred to live life to the fullest. Too many people in his life had their lives cut short. Once he learned what it meant, "Carpe Diem" became Dick's mantra. He truly made the most out of every day.
"That he was. That he was," Mac agrees with Veronica's characterization of her late husband as being one of a kind. Removing her arm from around her granddaughter, Mac resumes rubbing the surfboard charm on her crowded, jangling bracelet.
That overstuffed accessory was family legend around the Casablancas' house. Each charm told the decades long love story of Mac and Dick – the unlikely couple who not only weathered the test of time but grew stronger together as they built a devoted family and a billion dollar business empire; Sexy Surfer, Inc. was the world's largest on-line purveyor of surf equipment and marital aids. Like its owners, the business seemed an odd combination but it worked.
"Grandma," Courtney begins, running her smaller fingers though the charms on Mac's bracelet just to hear them jingle, "Why do you always rub the surfboard when you're upset?"
Pulling the little one onto her lap, Mac answers, "Because that was the first charm Grandpa ever gave me." With that reply, Mac gets a far away look in her eye and the corners of her mouth involuntarily smirk upwards at the wonderful memory.