Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness
By Kadi
Rated T
Long after the others had arrived, there had been more introductions. People had come and gone through the house, filling it with the noise of chatter and laughter. Sleeping arrangements were decided, and most of the adults were getting bedrooms while the kids would be camping out in the family rooms of both houses. The rooms at the main house were quickly filled up. Patrick and Miranda of course had their room, and with Sharon and Andy in her old room, that had left Helen and her husband Daniel in a third bedroom, while her son Michael and his wife Jill had taken the fourth with their eighteen month old son.
Just down the way, in the other house owned by David and his wife Lynette, Alan and his wife Susan would be staying in a second bedroom. While David's daughter Christine and her husband Jacob took a third, leaving their daughter Sarah to camp in the family room. The other bedrooms were being filled depending on which of the grandchildren were married, and any rooms left over there would be straws drawn for them.
Back at the main house, Ricky and Rusty were camping out in the family room, along with others of the cousins. Katie was with them this time, and the boys were under threat of death if they messed with her while she slept.
It was after all of the sleeping arrangements had been decided and everyone settled in for their stay, that conversations began. Stories were told. There were embellishments and jokes. Andy went looking for, and found Rusty seated on the porch steps with a book, while Ricky and his cousins set up for a game of beach volleyball. "Hey kid, alright?"
"Yeah." Ricky closed the book and shrugged. "There are a lot of them. Like, a lot."
"No kidding." He let his arms drape over his jean clad knees and leaned forward to watch the cousins, Ricky, Anna, Steven, Tommy, and Victoria do more playing than setting up a net. A familiar laugh drew his attention, and his gaze shifted to where he saw Sharon with her sister and sisters-in-law, setting up two long picnic tables for the family dinner. "I'm not sure I've got it all straight in my head yet. I'm wondering if I should have taken notes."
"I know." Rusty rested his elbows on his knees. "I mean, I think I've got it. There's David, he's the oldest. He's the lawyer, and he's married to Lynette the writer. Their kids are Christine, David Junior, Steven, and Sarah. Christine is the only one married, the two little girls are hers. Helen is next, she's the doctor, her husband Daniel was an architect," he pointed at the tall woman that looked similar enough to Sharon they could believe they were sisters, but her hair was shorter and with much more gray. "The guy with the baby, Michael, is their son. Melanie is the one who told everyone she's pregnant. Alan is the army guy, his wife is Susan, and she used to own a bookstore, but she sold it so they could retire and travel or something." Rusty took a breath before continuing. "They've got all girls, Charlotte, Erin, and Anna. That guy, over there, the one that looks like Ricky, but shorter, that's Jack's brother. His wife is Lillian, and the boys that look like Ricky are his. Adam, Joey, Tommy, and then the girl Vic. So basically, what I've figured out is that Ricky is a giant like Sharon's side of the family, but he looks like Jack's side of the family, and Katie is an alien who just looks like Sharon because no one is like her."
Andy blinked at him. "Wow, I'm impressed. How did you remember all that?" If he'd had a month he didn't think he'd be able to get it all. The kid was right, there were a lot of them.
"I took notes." Rusty grinned and opened the book. He was using the notecard he had jotted all of it down on as a book marker. "There is no way in a hundred years I would ever remember any of their names. It's insane, who has this many kids?"
He snorted and laughed quietly. "Remind me to take you back east to Jersey some time, introduce you to my family. This is nothing."
"No thanks." Rusty shook his head. "At least, not anytime soon. I think I need to figure out who all these people really are first. Isn't it weird though?" He leaned closer to Andy and pitched his voice lower, so they wouldn't be overheard. "That guy, Bill, they treat him like he's one of them, and no one even mentions Jack. Like he never existed. No one even blinked about Sharon getting divorced or the two of you being together or even engaged. That can't be normal, right? I mean, I was a little like whoa! when you guys told me this afternoon and I freaking live with you. We won't even discuss what Lieutenant Provenza is going to say when he finds out."
Andy stretched his legs out and shrugged. "I suppose to us, the outsiders, it might seem a little weird. You gotta understand, though, kid. These people, they've like, all known each other for decades. The way I heard it, Bill introduced Sharon and Jack. He and Alan were in the service together, and sometimes, there are relationships that go way beyond blood. You know? Kind of like you and Sharon, or even you and the squad. Family is family. Other times, there are people that disappoint or hurt you so badly that its easier to just pretend they didn't exist. Or out of respect for the people they hurt, for the ones you love when it's not you involved but them… you don't bring it up so you don't hurt them more. I think people probably just got so used to not talking about Jack out of respect for Sharon and her kids that… it's just habit now."
"Yeah, I get it." Rusty nodded slowly. "Like how no one mentions my mom, or after Jack left last summer, we didn't mention him anymore." He watched the cousins, then leaned past Andy to watch Sharon and the aunts. "It's still weird."
"Very." Andy agreed. "Remember. Just say the word."
"We're out of here and fishing with the Lieutenant." Rusty nodded. "I remember." He let his gaze sweep the crowd again and found Sharon watching them. She tiled her head at him, in that way she had of silently asking, are you okay? Rusty smiled and nodded. Then he rolled his eyes toward Flynn and made a face. He watched as Sharon laughed, rolled her eyes and turned away, attention recaptured by her sisters and nieces.
"Rusty!" Katie trotted down the porch steps and captured his arm. "Stop being a log." She tugged him with her, toward the beach, her brother, and their cousins. He didn't want to move, however, and she was pulling and not getting anywhere. "Come on. Come play with us." Katie got behind him to push. "Good god, what does she feed you. You weigh a ton!"
"You're like, eighty pounds soaking wet, all puny, so don't come crying to me little ballerina girl." Rusty dropped his book on the step with a sigh. "You get that I'm not really in to sports right?"
"Yes, I know, you're a thinker." Katie made a face. "But we've still got time to fix that." She placed both hands flat against his back and gave a hard shove.
Rusty rolled his eyes at Flynn. "I wanted a puppy. She gave me a ballerina instead." Since he would have no peace until he did as she wanted, Rusty stood up, only to grunt when Katie hopped up on his back."
"Yeah well, I asked for Prada and she came home with you," Katie grinned and tousled his hair. "I guess we'll both have to learn to live with disappointment."
"Yep." Rusty grinned and let her fall, right onto her bottom in the soft beach sand. "Like the disappointment of having to give up your Chanel." He plucked her sunglasses off her face and onto his own before he took off running.
"Vintage Chanel." Katie flounced after him, putting her long dancers legs to use and chasing him across the beach. The kid was skinny and he was fast. "Mom! You're about to be short a son!"
"Careful with that one, Rusty," Victoria yelled, laughing. "She's delicate. You break it, you bought it."
"Oh, she's delicate is she?" Steven perked right up and glanced over at his cousin. "Hey, Michael, did you hear that? Little Katie is delicate."
"I think I did." Michael passed his son to his wife and stood up to join them. "You know, we should really rescue her from herself."
"We'd hate it if anything happened to the little dancing bean," Steven replied.
The cousins shared a look and then bolted after her. There was a squeal which bordered close to being a screech as the chase for the vintage Chanel sunglasses was abandoned and Katie began sprinting toward self preservation. Unfortunately, her cousins had longer legs. "Put me down!" Michael had her legs, Steven had her upper body and they were carrying her toward the water.
"Does she actually swim?" Rusty looked only mildly concerned where he was joined by Ricky, Vic, and a couple of the other cousins to watch the goings on.
"We all do." Ricky laughed. "It's not a party until someone gets dunked. It's Katie's turn. Last time it was Sarah."
"No, it was Erin." Vic told him. "Sarah was the time before that." She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her cut-offs and smirked. "The boys think they can best the girls."
"Think?" Ricky arched a brow at her. "Vic, last time you got dunked, I didn't need Joey or Tommy to help me."
"I was also fifteen," she pointed out. "But if you think you're still man enough."
"Dude." Rusty shook his head. "I wouldn't. She took down the big one," he pointed toward David Junior, the largest of Ricky's male cousins. "On his back in six seconds, and I think he almost cried like a girl."
"I like the new brother, he's smart." Vic threw an arm around Rusty's shoulders. "You get to be on my team." She plucked Katie's glasses off his head and onto her own.
"Oh god." Rusty wasn't sure that was good or bad.
"Well, it's nice to know some things never change." Sharon dropped onto the step beside Andy where she curled her arms around his and laid her chin against his shoulder. "The kids are together all of an hour and already acting like they're twelve again."
Andy was laughing. "This is tame. I was telling Rusty earlier, I should take you both back east, meet the Jersey cousins."
"Oh really?" Sharon laughed. "That would be interesting." She watched the little powerhouse that was her niece by marriage take charge of Rusty and her brows lifted. "Bill," she called. "Your little hellion is attempting to corrupt my little angel." Beside her, she felt more than heard Andy's snort, and poked his side.
"Considering he's yours," Bill called back, without looking up from the grill he was tending, "I'm going to venture to state there is nothing angelic about him. My baby girl on the other hand…" His thick, deep voice rumbled across the short distance between the porch and where the grill was set up. Alan had been manning it, but had gone in to bring out more meat for the flame.
"Spoiled rotten, don't try to deny it." Sharon had laid her cheek against Andy's shoulder and snorted with laughter when her own daughter reappeared, completely doused and dripping salty, ocean water. "Much like mine."
"I'm not touching that one." Bill shook his head. "I think I'm partially to blame for that." He had filled in where he could in his brother's absence. At least, where Sharon would allow him to. When he looked over, he realized he had already lost her attention. Her fiancee had drawn her over, so that she was seated between his legs and leaning back against his chest while he rubbed her shoulders. Sharon was pointing out the kids and speaking quietly while the man nodded. Bill turned his attention back to the grill, his brother was a damned fool, and she was well rid of him.
Dinner was slightly less chaotic than the preparation, but filled with several conversations and laughter as each generation settled into their own groups. Each table was a mix of parents and their children, along with spouses and the smaller children. The cousins grouped by age or occupation, with Steven, Ricky, Anna and Victoria settling into a group at one end of the second picnic table. Katie had joined them, as she and Ricky had flanked Rusty while their mother and Andy sat with the adults. Along with Joey, one of the Raydor cousins, seated across from Katie, they made up the small group of cops which had sprung up among the third generation. As was inevitable, the cops vs lawyers debate had broken out among the kids, with the decision still up in the air as to which profession was the better.
"What I'm still trying to figure out," Joey lifted his deep voice to be heard over the friendly squabbling taking place between his cousins Ricky and Christine, "is how anyone related to us," he indicated his fellow police cousins, "could have ended up a Narc."
Michael and Steven both groaned, they had both been on the beach that night, along with Ricky and Joey. They knew where this was headed. "Didn't we figure this out last time?"
Steven leaned forward, taking a dinner roll from a nearby bread basket. "He was negatively impacted by the alien ballerina presence. It made him a little crazy."
"Hey!" Katie and Ricky echoed that sentiment, but it was the latter which continued. "There is nothing wrong with my division, thank you very much. At least I'm not running around town dressed in drag with the Vice yahoos."
"Dudes who get busted smoking dope on the beach, with their far more awesome cousins, by the coolest Aunt ever - for never telling our parents - do not end up Narcs. It's just wrong!" Joey pointed a finger at his cousin. "It flies in the face of everything we were thankful for that weekend.
"Everything that you were thankful for," Ricky pointed out. "I got my butt kicked. She might not have ever told your parents, but hello! I was right there with you, and it was my mom busting us. I didn't know that woman could run that fast."
"No, really?" Rusty leaned forward, suddenly less anxious about being surrounded by so many people that he didn't know, and incredibly interested in hearing this particular story. When he came to live with her, Sharon had mentioned that he was not the first adolescent that had ever graced her home. She always hinted that there was nothing he could try that she couldn't see coming a mile away, and he always figured it was because she was a cop. While he didn't think Ricky and Katie were entirely perfect, especially after meeting them, he never imagined they were the kind of kids to get caught smoking pot on a beach.
"Oh man." Steven was laughing as he remembered. "That was the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life."
"I think I remember this." Alan shared a look with his brother, and together they and Helen turned toward Sharon. "I remember the kids finally coming clean some years later."
"What did you do?" Andy watched Sharon's face flush a delightful shade of pink, although she was laughing.
"I did not do anything," she pointed out. "I was simply trying to be a good parent."
"She kicked his butt," Katie told Rusty. "You see, the four stooges," she indicated her brother and cousins, to which Michael, Steven, and Joey each raised their hand to indicate which cousins she was talking about exactly. "Along with my brother, decided to go down by the wharf with a couple of doobies."
"I'm really sure this isn't a story that we should be telling in front of the younger children," Sharon pointed out, covering her face with her hand.
"No," Ricky drew the syllable out. "I think it makes a good lesson, especially for our new baby brother. He needs to understand that you can just be... mean." He draped an arm across Rusty's shoulders and leaned toward him. "So there we are, a group of reasonably well behaved sixteen and seventeen year old boys."
"Fifteen," Joey pointed out. "I was only fifteen. You corrupted me with your bad, bad ways."
"You were like two seconds away from being sixteen," Steven tossed a wadded up napkin at him.
"He's also failing to point out he was the one who scored the weed," Bill stated, trying very hard not to smile at the particular incident. "Do continue, Richard, tell us how mean your mother is." He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, particularly interested in the tale now. He grinned when Sharon moaned and turned her face into Andy's shoulder.
"Right," Ricky chuckled. "So, Joey gets the weed, and we go down by the wharf. The four of us are just sitting there, minding our own business, getting completely stoned. We're not paying a bit of attention to the time, or thinking that anyone would notice that we're not camped out in the family room anymore."
"Except Aunt Sharon gets up," Michael added, "and comes outside to cool off because it was seriously hot that weekend. She didn't notice we weren't in the family room, but she can hear us."
"Because this one was giggling like a little school girl," Ricky hooked a thumb at Steven. "But we were all being pretty loud, and didn't realize it.. ya know, 'cause we were stoned."
"So without us ever knowing that we're busted," Joey told them. "Here comes Aunt Sharon, basically just intending on busting our hides for being out after curfew."
"Only she walks up," Steven said, "Just as Ricky has got the doobie in his mouth. Inhaling..."
"With everything else that is going on, as if I really needed to catch my seventeen year old with a joint in his mouth," Sharon was leaning back in her seat, shaking her head. Beside her, Andy was laughing. "Oh stop it," she nudged his shoulder.
"So Steven is all, be cool man, be cool," Michael laughed. "She'll never know... Just as loud as he can, while Joey is standing there going, man we are so screwed. It had to be the cop, why did it have to be the cop."
"Ricky apparently agreed with me. He handed me the joint and took off running," Joey laughed into his tea glass.
"Well, he tried to." Steven snorted. "He got like two steps, fell flat on his face."
"No," Ricky pointed out. "I was put flat on my face. In the dirt. Granted, running when your mom is already ticked is probably not the brightest idea in the world. So there I am, mouth full of sand... and I can't feel my legs anymore because there is this little, bony, knee in my spine and..." He shook his head, laughing. "I didn't know she could swear like that either."
"You're putting us on," Rusty stared at him wide-eyed. The other three boys were slowly shaking their heads and laughing.
"I wish," Ricky said. "So then she jerks me up, and she's steadily walking me back to the house, giving me an earful the entire way. What was I thinking, have I lost my mind, she is so disappointed... And those three are just following, tails tucked between their legs."
"We're weren't dumb enough to try it," Steven said plainly. "The woman was MAD. Of course, we were also thinking we were all done for, there was no reason to make it worse with our parents."
"We get back to the house, and we're expecting she's going to have us wait while she goes in and gets our parents. Only... My mom is waiting on the porch," Michael pointed out, nodding toward Helen. "Then the most amazing thing happens."
"I think I might have realized that when my dad calls my uncle an idiot, he means it capitalized," Joey stated, reminding those unfamiliar with them, again, that he was Bill's son and Sharon's nephew through her marriage to Jackson.
"Never said a word." Steven flashed a lopsided grin at Ricky. "She told Aunt Helen she caught us out after curfew and was sending us back to bed. It was years before our parents found out what really happened that night."
"For yours maybe." Michael was laughing again. "She still had the joint in her hand. I found out later that mom knew the whole time, she just chose not to comment on it. Never understood why though?" He leaned forward against the table, craning his head to get a look at his mother.
"Sharon had already handled it," Helen shrugged. "Besides, after we sent you four to bed, we sat there and smoked that baby."
The boys stared at the two ladies, jaws hanging open. "Sharon!" Rusty could hardly manage to get the word out of his mouth.
"What?" She blinked at him and smiled, a little too innocently. "I wasn't going to flush a perfectly good specimen of mountain green."
He gaped at her, unable to imagine his proper, rule abiding adopted mother doing anything even remotely illegal, much less smoking dope. "What if you had, like, failed a drug test at work or something!"
"Oh Honey," Sharon smiled warmly at him. "I was the person that people called when officers failed their drug tests. It was okay."
There was a loud round of laughter while Andy shook his head. "I always knew you weren't as perfect as you liked people to believe. It's always the quiet ones." He leaned over and kissed the side of her head.
"I was having a bad year," Sharon shook her head while the others continued to laugh. "I just turned forty, that was the year that Katie decided to be a real snot - typical fourteen/fifteen year old girl. Jack was being, well..." She rolled her eyes. "Jack. Then to top it all off, there's this cocky, pain in the butt, trouble every fifteen seconds detective at work who is making my life so many levels of hell. My phone is ringing almost around the clock because this joker cannot behave himself the minute I turn my back. If it's not one thing, it's another, and he's calling me himself, so of course I'm starting to think that he's doing it on purpose."
"Reason number 982 to never choose a career in Internal Affairs," Anna stated with a grin.
"So I was beginning to think," Sharon agreed. "It got to the point that I was tempted to make a case for harassment, I was really starting to believe this guy was personally trying to drive me crazy."
"Nah." Andy lifted his napkin to his mouth. "I just thought you were cute."
There was a round of chuckles. "He's not kidding," Rusty said, shaking his head. "It's the LAPD equivalent of pulling a girl's pigtails."
It only took one look at the amused expression on Andy's face, and the way Sharon was rolling her eyes for them to realize that she was, really, talking about her fiancee. "He would call me at two in the morning, eleven at night, whatever, whenever…"
"Well you wouldn't go out with me," Andy deadpanned.
"I was married." She poked his side.
"Didn't stop you from eating his face last Christmas," Rusty muttered into his glass.
"Score!" Katie and Ricky high-fived over his head. "I told you he would work that in," the former stated proudly.
"It was probably the last bit of mileage it was ever going to get," Ricky stated with a grin. "Well played little protégé."
"You really could have gotten a puppy," Andy told her with a grin.
"Hm." Sharon tilted her head and hummed. "But I brought you home instead."
"Wicked, wicked witch," he murmured and leaned forward to kiss her.
"Rule three violation," Rusty pointed out with a groan.
"Just like his mother…" Andy feigned an aggrieved sigh, much to the amusement of the others.
"It never fails." Patrick and his wife had looked on with amusement while their grandsons told their little story. Now the patriarch of the family leaned back in his seat to chuckle. "Whenever the kids think they want to sneak off and get into a little trouble, they always head down to the wharf. Our kids did it, their kids have done it, and now the next group will probably do it too."
"Each one never believing the older generation did it first," David chuckled.
"What they've all failed to realize," Bill nodded and smiled when his wife topped off his iced tea. "Is that half of them were all conceived down at the wharf."
"Dad!" Adam covered his face. "I did not need to know that. I'm pretty sure the others agree with me."
"Oh god." Christine slumped where she sat. "Those are mental images that are never going away."
"Burned forever onto the insides of your eyelids," Ricky stated with a sigh. "It's worse when its up close and personal, but hey, sucks to be you."
"I wouldn't get so cocky about it if I were you." David snickered.
"What?" Ricky leaned around to get a look at his mother. "Nuh uh."
"I don't know what any of you are talking about." Sharon stuffed a piece of bread in her mouth.
Lillian laughed quietly. "Oh honey, you can try, but we all know better."
"No," she said at length. "That was Helen, I was the good one."
Her sister gasped. "Daddy, she's lying." She pointed at Sharon and gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. "I was not the one sneaking out of the house at sixteen to go make out with Chris Sheehan in the back of his daddy's Impala."
"Some things never change," Susan looked across at Andy, then shared a look with the other spouses, including Daniel. "Get these four together and they start acting like their sixteen again."
"No, you were just the one making out with Tommy Sheehan in the front seat of their daddy's Impala," Sharon shot back, ignoring her sister-in-law. "Do not pin that one entirely on me."
"Oh my god," Helen sat upright and looked at her, laughing. "Do you remember the night Uncle Jamie caught us."
"Oh no." Sharon covered her face with both hands. "I had forgotten all about that."
"Ahhh… poor Uncle Jamie, never quite the same after that," David was wiping his eyes he was laughing so hard.
"No, he wasn't." Patrick shook his head. "But you girls never snuck out of the house again." He nodded firmly.
"Hm." Sharon looked away. "That might not be entirely true, Dad."
"Always the quiet ones," Andy chuckled. "How did I never know you were so bad."
"Well, you know what they say about preachers' kids, and cops' kids," Bill pointed at his former sister-in-law and her siblings, his best friends. "I found out early that the same is true of Judges' kids."
"We all went a little wild at some point," Alan said. "The girls were sneaking out with boys, David and I were sneaking out with girls. We drank too much, smoked too much…"
"…and thought we were getting away with all of it," David said. "Dad might not have had a clue, but mom always knew about it." He nodded to the silently chuckling Miranda. "Just like you all always thought you were getting away with it. We'd already been there and bought several of the t-shirts."
"Although, I have to admit…" Helen sat up and gestured at her siblings. "We got into our own fair share of trouble. We turned out more or less okay, the jury is still out on Alan, but for the most part…" She and the others laughed while he made a face at her. "I do have to say, no matter how much trouble we always got into, we could always count on Daddy's little princess to get us out of it."
"I'll be giving lessons later," Sharon drawled with a smile and a shrug.
"Now it all makes sense." Andy arched a brow at her. "I understand how it is that you are so good at looking for loopholes."
"That, and how I could always see through all your crap," She grinned brightly at him.
Andy laughed. "Takes one to know one?"
"Exactly." She bumped her knee against his and her eyes sparkled a little more. "We can go down to the wharf later and discuss a Rule 2 violation."
"Oh man." Rusty's head hit the table with a thud, while on either side of him, his siblings snorted and fell into riotous laughter.
