devil's walk

Olivia's rarely up before noon lately, but she's coming home from somewhere and it's only just past nine. She sighs, opening the door into the kitchen and sinking heavily into the chair. She's holding the crook of her elbow like it's hurting her and I look up from my breakfast and catch her wiping at her eyes.

"What's bothering you dear lady?"

"Nothing." Olivia's distracted, more so than I remember her being when she was drinking and lately she hasn't been. Not since that night we spend together. Something changed, but without our children she's barely aware of it. She hasn't had a purpose other than to keep things together until they get back. Gregory had a fortune to consider. She was doing me credit before the drinking began, and now that she's been back on the wagon she's brilliant with money. Must have been paying attention all those years we were together.

She tries to smile but it's weak. She looks tired, and dark circles are harsh against her ivory skin beneath her eyes. "It's just hard to stay in this house. Everyone I've ever loved is gone."

I touch her shoulder in a fatherly gesture as I drop my plate in the sink. "Care for a walk?"

Olivia slides off the stool, still protecting her arm with that faraway look on her face. "I'd like that."

"Gets you out of the house. Away from your memories." I let myself touch her lower back and feel the shiver run up my arm. Letting myself have her just once reminded me what I'm missing. What I'm supposed to have- my wife, my son and a life with them..

We walk in silence down the beach until we walk by our old house. I look up at it, smiling and pretending to notice it for the first time. It was restored beautifully after the earthquake. The earthquake where I couldn't leave her. Where I put myself between her and that explosion. She catches me looking at it and takes my hand.

"I have more memories in that house than I'll ever be able to forget." She points at the pool and gives me the softest smile. "Gregory used to swim laps." Olivia tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and insinuates her fingers into my hand. "Back and forth every morning. I've never liked swimming, but there was something comforting about the routine. The way he smelled when he got out of the shower."

She blushes and the pink flush runs across her cheeks like the sun over the ocean. "Not that you needed to know that."

I laugh and squeeze her hand. She needs to be comforted this morning and there's nothing Tobias is better at. "It's all right poppet, I don't know much about my nephew's adult life. It's nice to know he was happy."

The same slow smile. "I think he was sometimes." She starts to take a step past the house but pauses, she's more tired than she cares to let on. It's in her steps, in the way she tries to shake it off. "He made me happy."

"More than he hurt you?" I try to sound curious, but even though I have trouble hiding my interest, Olivia's too distracted by her memories to read into it.

"I think you remember the good more than you remember the bad." She offers as she disappears into the past. "Of course we fought there. We had terrible arguments and said awful things to each other, but there were wonderful times. We loved each other more than I ever thought two people could. Your nephew might have made me cy, but he made me smile, and laugh and feel like I was on top of the world."

Olivia takes a deep breath, as if she has to fortify herself against her memories. "I never got to say goodbye. Gregory and I were divorced, we were so cruel to each other. The last time we spoke we yelled at each other. He was trying to run away with Caitlin and Trey and I couldn't let him go. I couldn't let them go without me-" Her hand's gone cold with sweat in my hand and I can't help worrying that she's going to collapse. It never occured to me that she might be the one person who truly mourned for me. Olivia believed there was good in me. She still does. Why else would she look so deflated?

"But he knocked me down. I hit my head and he was gone. The last thing I did was stand up to him and he didn't want me." She looses the battle against her tears and there's bitterness in the way she refuses to look at me. "Sometimes I wonder if the only thing Gregory ever loved about me was that I gave him Caitlin."

I grab her, pulling her tight into my arms. I can't tell her the truth, but I can't let her go on thinking I never loved her. "Shhh." I whisper, nearly slipping out of Tobias' strange accent. "It's all right Liv-"

The mistake slips through my lips and the shock of it runs through me. I keep my grip tight, hoping she didn't hear it. Olivia's still crying. Maybe the nickname set her off. Maybe she can't cry in front of AJ. I have to admit I never saw AJ and Bette coming, but I can't help loving the idea. Don't know what Bette sees in the waste of space that's AJ, but I never have understood her choices in men. How she can love a new one every few years is truly beyond me. When I met Olivia, my heart was done with falling in love.

"I never thought I'd have to be without him." She whispers as she tries to win her composure back. Her liquid blue eyes find mine with a hint of recognition. "Sometimes you look so much like him it hurts to look at you."

I find a handkerchief in my pocket and hand it to her gently, but she's beaten me to the gesture. One of my old handkerchiefs with my "GR" monogram embroidered with silk thread on the corner looks right in her hand as she daubs at her eyes. "I took them from his drawer. Top left, across from his socks." Olivia's smile breaks through her tears like a ray of sunshine. "Annie was going to throw all his things away. Part of me wanted to burn them." She coughs against her tears, finding her composure again as we pass our old house on our way down the beach. "But I'm glad I kept them now."

Olivia doesn't know Gregory's belongings have been shipped to my new home. That the money she and Annie have been arguing about has been carefully funneled through enough banks to hide any trail. I was tempted to drain Caitlin's and Sean's trust funds, but I have enough money. Trey is the one I worry about. Even if he's not my son, it's no way to grow up running around Europe looking for Cole. He's still Olivia's son. Her arms are still empty without him.

She surprises me out of my thoughts, "I want to ask you something." She heads for the ocean, letting the waves dance over her feet as she looks out and away. "I know it wasn't part of Gregory's will, but I want you to consider leaving the estate to Bette."

"Bette?" I raise my eyebrows and hid a chuckle. "Mr. Deschanel's latest conquest? I doubt my nephew would approve. Besides that, the only reason I wouldn't choose you is the your drinking, which seems to be under control again." As quickly as it started it was done. Annie's been in a tizzy since. I caught her looking desperately at Olivia's water and there's no doubt she had something to do with it, but like all of Annie's plots, this too has failed.

"But if something happened to me-" Olivia whirls back, taking my arm at the wrist and pleading with my eyes. "Annie wouldn't do what's best for Trey. She'll take his money and squander it. I know Gregory's opinion of Bette wasn't always the highest, but she's honest and she loves Trey."

It doesn't take much effort to look unconvinced and Olivia tries her second choice. "What about Ben Evans? Gregory always respected him, and he's good with money. He has enough of his own that he wouldn't touch it. I know if you asked him he'd say yes, for Trey's sake." I want to grab her chin and demand she confess why she's suddenly so interested in leaving the estate to someone else, but it would be out of character.

"Is this what's bothering you? The thought that Annie might get the estate?" Olivia doesn't answer and for the first time I realize how thin she looks, how delicate the skin of her hands has become. "I would keep it myself before I let anyone hurt Trey." I squeeze her hand and wonder where her worries are coming from. She wouldn't abandon Trey, she couldn't.

"I just don't know if you want to spend the rest of your life in Sunset Beach." Olivia covers weakly, she has to know how foolish it sounds. "Certainly you had a life in London-"

"A quiet one." I offer with a light chuckle. "That will still be there for me whenever I get back to it. No one's missing me in London my dear."

She looks at her watch, suddenly surprised at the time. "I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive me for cutting this short. I have an appointment I can't be late for."

I keep my grip on Olivia's arm and insist on escorting her back to the house. "Who are you meeting in such a hurry?"

"Matthew Carradine." Olivia explains as she rubs the sand from her bare feet with quick fingers.

My attorney. What would Olivia need with my attorney? "Isn't that the young man who's managing my nephew's will?"

"Yes, I have some things I need to straighten out." She slips her feet back into her shoes and catches her appearance in the mirror. "I'm sorry for being so emotional. It's just-"

I casually wave off her apology. "No need my dear, no need. I feel like my nephew is still alive when I talk to you."

Olivia grabs her cell phone to alert her driver. "Sometimes I wish he was." She covers her sorrow with a quick smile, but I can see through it. She snaps her phone shut and looks around for her purse. She puts her hand over her mouth in surprise as she realizes she left it upstairs.

"Would you do me a favor and tell the driver I'll be right with him? I have to get my purse, it'll just be a moment-"

She runs upstairs and I take advantage of the situation. Peter, the pleasant young man who replaced the misfortunate Tim Truman, waits patiently at the rear door to the elegant black Mercedes.

"Mrs. Richards will be out in a moment." I inform him courteously and he nods, comfortable in his suit as the day promises to remain cool.

"It's a nice day to wait." Peter offers with the easy smile of a young man without a care in the world. "Don't mind it at all."

"She went out this morning already, didn't she?" I ask with the ease of small talk.

"Yes sir, Mrs. Richards had a doctor's appointment real early this morning." He uses his sleeve to polish away a spot on the chrome handle. "Didn't get any news though."

"How can you tell?" I ask with real curiosity, wondering just how perceptive this young man can be already after only a few months with my wife.

"She was just as jumpy afterwards as she was on the way. Kept fidgeting with her hands, playing with her purse." Peter opens the car door as he hears the door to the house open. "Had to call the doctor twice to confirm when her test results would be in on the way home. Maybe you should talk to her about a vacation. Seems like she could use one."

He quiets as soon as Olivia could have heard him. He knows enough not to be caught telling tales to me of Olivia's health. I can't help wondering why he'd tell me at all, but after a moment that answer is obvious. Olivia has that way of invoking the concerns of those around her. Especially well-meaning young men.

She takes the split second to smile at me before she ducks into the darkness of the car. Reassurance has always been something she's so careful about. Wouldn't do to have me worry about her. I have better things do to.

A few days of following Annie taught me what I needed to know about the darker side of her manipulations. The elusive Mrs. Moreau may be able to frighten the weak-minded with her tricks, but she'll never be able to touch me. She doesn't know what fear is yet. Tobias isn't the sort to be prowling the wrong side of the tracks, but no one gives me any trouble as I advance on her apartment.

She opens the door as soon as I touch the knob. Evil can sense its own. Her eyes widen as she takes in my costume, but the whites grow with fear as she sees through to the real me beneath. "That's not your face." She begins as she takes a step back to keep her distance from me. "You're a dead man."

I pick up one her trinkets, something of clay and feathers that seems to have some kind of significance. I shrug, letting only a trace of malice into my tone. "You know what they say about the dead. They have nothing to loose." I drop the trinket to the floor and crush what remains of it beneath my shoe.

She winces as if I had struck her physically as I close the distance between us. "Tell me about Annie and Olivia."

She puts up her hands, muttering in a tongue too ancient to be understood. I reach out and slap her across the face, ending whatever magic she's trying to invoke. "Annie and Olivia." I close my fingers around the warmth of her throat. "You should talk now. It'll only get harder to speak the more you delay."

Fear has a delicacy to it that fires my appetite. Her fear is electric because she's unused to being challenged, and even less so to being beaten. I back her towards the wall, barely feeling the my hand dig into the pulsing life in her neck. Her hand slams into her desk, knocking a stack of papers to the floor. One of them looks up at me, it's Olivia. One of the photos I kept in my study, something Annie must have stolen.

"Nothing should have been able to save her from the potion. Nothing-" The bones of her neck pop as I bring my fingers together.

The picture is burned on the edges, but even as I watch it seems to be healing itself, putting itself back together. The burnt edges are her doing, but the light on Olivia's face is something else. "That's something beyond either of us." She spits as she rubs her neck and collapses back from me. "Something neither of us have any right too."

I take the picture and tuck it into my breast pocket. I kneel on the ground before her, dragging her eyes up to mine. "Cross my path again, or tell anyone I was here and you will wish I had killed you now."

I don't even have to look back. She'll never bother me or Olivia again. Annie will have to go somewhere else for her mischief, but new schemes are the least of my problems. Olivia's the one sneaking around with doctor's visits and trips to my attorney. She's the one asking me to consider leaving my estate to Ben Evans.

But I don't have to look for her when I arrive back to five Ocean avenue. I duck into my study to call the young Mr. Carradine and get the specifics of Olivia's visit. I'm busy replacing the picture with the strange burned edges in the silver frame Annie left in my desk drawer when the door to the study opens and closes quickly. Olivia's changed since her trip to the attorney. The white blouse and pale grey pants only make her seem more surreal. Nearly insubstantial.

"I need to see Gregory." She demands with preamble. "I know he's alive and you know where he is. I-" Her fingers close white over the back of the chair and only the desperate fire in her eyes is keeping her on her feet. "I have to see him. I don't care if he doesn't want to see me, I don't care if he's in Antartica-"

I hurry around the desk to guide her into a chair. Her weakness is too painful for me to watch.

"I have to see him." Her forehead rests on my chest as I try to force my emotions aside and be rational. I thought I'd been so careful. Certainly she was too intoxicated to know I was real that night. But somehow she knows I'm alive. Should I lie? Tell her she's out of her mind? But that would destroy her. There's nothing left inside of her but the desperate desire to see her family again. Any of her family, even the man who caused her this pain.

"I'll need some time." I respond against my better judgement. Why is it that my heart speaks loudest whenever Olivia's involved? "Why don't you go pack some clothes? We can leave in an hour."

Olivia looks at me but makes no effort to get up. "He's really alive?"

She didn't really believe it, all of her bravado a moment ago and she never really believed it. She can't move. It's all too much. I touch her shoulder, wishing I could risk everything and end this charade right now, in this moment. "I'll ask Rose to pack for you."

She brushes my hand with her own chill fingers. I'll have to leave her to her thoughts. She's moved up my timetable and destroyed months of plotting. It will require nothing less than my very best efforts to keep all my secrets but I've never been able to resist a challenge. I should have realized she was the one thing I've never been able to control but isn't that why I love her?