Author's note: As usual, guys, I appreciate your patience with my less-than-timely updates. It's been a tough year, but I'm back in my writing groove. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thursday, September 10, 1998

Cole

This was going to be the most awkward ride of my life.

I wasn't used to the smell of newness, after I'd spent my life jetting from old money to Old World. My universe was worn leather, Carrara marble, musty books. The first time I held my son on the side of the road in Ojai, I'd never smelled anything so new.

But the new car smell of Gregory's Mercedes M-Class was something heinous. I was wearing a suit, glad it had been in the back of the closet for a while at the Waffle Shop. Anything to counteract the chemical burn in my nose.

Olivia and I were in the back of the SUV, AJ and Gregory in the front. Alanis Morriessette's four personalities. I knew AJ didn't want Olivia riding shotgun with her ex, so the two of us in the back were seen as a harmless arrangement. Yep, and that was ironic enough to make me want to climb out the window and get taken out by a low overpass.

Where do we go from here? was a recurring question for Olivia and me, but I didn't know why the kiss seemed more insurmountable than grieving a secret child.

Maybe the fact that I kept mentally referring to it as THE kiss was the problem.

Of course, we kept our gazes fixed out the windows at our sides. In my mind, the glass was covered in rain drops.

My hour of fitful sleep had left me so tired, my head kept drifting to the right. Once the highway traffic returned to an average speed of 70, Gregory felt in his element again and spoke. "It was a wonderful idea to carpool, Olivia, champion of the environment that you are."

"Cole shouldn't be driving," she said, but didn't look my way. "And besides, what's the point of having this petrol-guzzling monster, if you never even fill the seats?"

"I like to be alone someplace spacious. Cavernous. There's nothing like it. "

"My son and I know all too well how terribly lonely it can be," AJ said.

I wished everyone would stop talking about me like I wasn't there. "But you can't beat the acoustics," Gregory said, turning up the CD player. Two loud drumbeats and *Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you!* crashed down on my eardrums.

"Jesus, Gregory!" I groaned, pinching my forehead.

"How nice of you to join us, Cole," he chuckled after turning the music down. "Sorry to interrupt your very convincing catatonia."

"Oh, please," AJ snapped. "You've defended enough homicidal widowers to know actual grief when you see it."

Their back and forth began to slip beneath Rod Stewart's gritty voice singing about his older lover. I thought the tension crushing me would transmit to Olivia somehow, but she didn't look my way. When I finally saw two blue fireflies my periphery, I was too paralyzed to look back. *You stole my heart, and that's what really hurts.*

"-Oh, right right," Gregory shot back. "He told the old bag exactly where to go last year, then runs to the will reading in a suit, with dollar signs in his eyes. Well, I didn't plan on kicking off the weekend at the Neverland Ranch, but it'll all be worth it when my fees exceed Cole's inheritance."

"No," Olivia said. "There are no fees. They're on me."

"I see," Gregory said. "Poor Cole, the ward of Olivia's guilt."

"And I should mention that the Deschanel jewels are in my mini-rucksack, every last piece."

Gregory swerved the car involuntarily and we all gasped. AJ whipped around and I was sure Gregory would've done the same if he wasn't driving. There was an all-male chorus of "What?"

"I'm returning them to the estate, where they belong. Yes, I own them legally, tra-la-la, but we all know they weren't Del's to bequeath in the first place."

"Olivia," I began, the first time I'd said her name since last night, and her eyes registered it. "I appreciate that, but you can't just put them down on a mantel somewhere and say 'Here you go.'"

"You don't understand, Cole, I can't set foot in that house without them. I've made up my mind and it's final."

"Darling, it's not as if the roof would cave in on you," AJ said. "Ana's domain is far from a church."

"I gotta hand it to you, AJ, you never waiver in your commitment to hating the woman. 'Ana's domain,'" Gregory repeated with a laugh. "I'm not even sure why you're here, other than to aggravate me and play Olivia's bodyguard. Your old stomping ground doesn't even know you're alive, not that they probably ever did, anyway."

"Gregory, I am here for one reason only: my son. La fin." He turned around. "Cole, how are you, truly? You don't have to be strong around us."

I knew he was going to start smothering me at some point, but I didn't think it would be this soon. "AJ, right now, I'm just sitting in a car listening to Rod Stewart. That's all. One step at a time, please."

"Fair enough. Please tell me you talked to Caitlin?"

"Yeah, early this morning." The mandolins on "Maggie May" slowly faded. The conversation came back to me, even though it seemed like dawn was a a week ago.

"Babe, I'm so sorry," Caitlin said. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you got the news."

"It's okay."

"I'm going to help Elaine tie up a few things at the restaurant, and we'll be up on Friday. Keep us posted on what happens today, alright?"

"Can you put Trey on?"

"He's still asleep, actually. I wish he would sleep this late at home."

"Kiss him for me."

"I always do. Cole…it's just so hard for me to know we almost lost you…because of someone who would've stolen your cufflinks if you'd turned around long enough."

"Cait…Phillip was like a father to me and I betrayed him with his wife."

"She was married the whole time you were together?"

"…Yes. He dragged Frankie- Francesca, on that cruise because of me."

"Frankie? As in Frankenstein's monster, I hope."

"Sometimes, she was. But she still deserved to walk away from the ship."

She sighed. "You have to talk to Dr. Estrada about this need to rescue women who aren't your responsibility, Cole. Like, devote a whole session to it. I thought I was the one who couldn't get over your past, but it's you."

"Sweetheart…"

"…this isn't the time, I'm sorry. Listen…your grandmother really left an impression on me. I've never heard anyone tell stories the way she did. I loved being at her house."

"Of course you did. You were a fugitive with little options."

We laughed together a little. "This is the first time we've talked on the phone lately without choking up," she said. "I'd better give you back to Elaine now."

It suddenly hit me. This was the first time my parents would see each other in 24 years. AJ always changed the subject whenever Elaine was brought up. My mother never waxed poetic about him anymore, once seeing him was an actual possibility. I couldn't blame her for not wanting to spoil the legend. "So, AJ…Elaine is coming up."

"I'm sorry?"

"Elaine. Coming up to the funeral."

"Oh. Oh- of course. I hadn't even thought of that."

"Aw, playing parent trap, Cole?" Gregory chuckled. "You going to dance around with a guitar and sing 'Let's get together, yeah yeah yeah?'"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" AJ grumbled. "Well I'm sorry, Gregory, but my future is right here." He extended his hand to Olivia, diagonal to him, but the SUV cabin was too vast for him to reach.

"Gregory, pull over at that 7-Eleven," Olivia said.

"No stopping. I don't stop on road trips, you know that."

"Gregory, stop. We left so early that no one had time to eat! Cole looks like plaster of Paris."

"Fine." He pulled in and put the car in park. "I'm staying here- you all have five minutes. Four minutes and fifty-nine seconds!"

The rest of us got out. "Ooh, is that a threat, Dad?" AJ grinned into his open passenger window. "Can't exactly get paid without a client to represent, can you? I think I'll go to that record store across the way, and get Cole a walkman to block out your taunts." He started in the other direction.

"Will you all stop talking about me like I'm not here?" I called out.

The next thing I knew, Olivia took my hand and dragged me into the convenience store. The bright florescent lights stabbed my eyes. The place was empty except for the husky goth cashier who didn't seem the type to be listening to Natalie Imbruglia.

Olivia picked up a few boxed sandwiches, saying nothing, her little leather backpack with the Deschanel jewels in it swaying as she moved. I rolled my eyes. "What," I sighed. "We're alone now, so…what?"

"Hm? There's no what. Feeding your hollowed out face is what," she said, fanning out a handful of boxes. "They have all manner of sandwiches here, I wasn't sure what you'd like."

"I-I don't…after last night…why are you so calm?" I imagined her trudging back to Bette's condo in the pouring rain…or did she sleep in the cave? "This just isn't like- Italian with hot peppers please-" my stomach answered for me before I could finish. I slapped my forehead. "What's wrong with us, Olivia? How do we know so much about each other, but don't even know what kind of lunchmeat we like?"

"Those sort of things aren't important," she said, and continued to fill her basket. "That kiss…answered the important questions."

My breathing spiked instantly as I remembered her healing tongue, the heady smell of her skin in the rain. I grabbed some caffeinated ginseng drink that would probably give me palpitations. "About that…" I cracked the can open and chugged down the words I couldn't say. Then I choked and dribbled when she added a pack of condoms to her basket.

I coughed, wiping my chin. "Olivia?" I whispered.

"What. I'm not taking any chances with my Guinness Book fertility this weekend, that's all."

I balled my hands into fists and my trimmed-to-the-quick nails felt sharp in my palm. "Hey, why not? AJ is father of the year, right? Why not add another unwanted Deschanel to the family?"

"AJ had a vasectomy in 1979, Cole."

"A-ha!" I said with a deranged grin and with a pointed finger. "Because he never wanted kids. Of course! Wait…then who are those for? Don't even tell me for Gregor-"

"Cole, get your head out of the grotto moss, they're for us."

Luckily I wasn't swallowing the energy drink just then, but I dropped it, the volcanic green foam bubbling everywhere as the can shot under an endcap. I puffed air out heavily. "Nope, nope, I'm sliding into another dimension right now. What's gotten into you? Why are you being so casual about this?"

"I've realised it's easier to just accept it. You and I. I care for you in a way I don't feel the need to justify. Inevitably, it will happen at the estate- being lovers. No one will be hurt, nor will our intention be to hurt anyone. We will be happy in our other lives, but we needn't torture ourselves. It'll be like trying not to breathe if we don't tend to each other."

The dull pain in my chest agreed. The soft, velvet tone of her voice had drawn me closer, my stomach pressed into her grocery basket. "I...I can't deny that, Olivia, but…why now?"

"All any of us might have is now. Juliana is gone. I nearly lost you."

"I could say the same about you."

"I'm fine. It's the look in your eyes that kills me. And when I see you in pain, I have to touch you."

"OK, so you're touchy-feely, you lived in London in the sixties, I get it. I-it doesn't mean we have to, like, do that."

She hooked her arm around my elbow. "Your sudden onset of bashfulness is charming. But I stand by my theory," she said, and we walked up to the checkout counter.

"Well if it isn't Cleanup in Aisle 3," the large goth cashier frowned at me.

"Yeah…sorry about that," I said.

"No, it's okay. I live to pick up after suits like you."

"He doesn't always dress like this," Olivia said as she set down the items in her basket. "He's a construction worker. Normally very capable with his hands."

"Olivia. I've had it with this 360, OK?" I snatched the condoms off the counter. "You're not getting these."

"I'm sorry, is there a problem, Jock?" the cashier asked, pounding his fist into his other palm and cracking his knuckles. "I didn't know there were still rubber objections in this day and age. Let me guess, 'it just doesn't feel the same?'"

"No no no, I'm not anti-safe sex, I'm just anti-sex with her. I'm married." Goth man took the condoms from me and crunched my fingers as he did so. "Ow!"

He rang them up. "I don't care if you're a televangelist, shithead. When a woman buys you extra large, you bow down."

Olivia paid and smiled at him before turning to leave with the bags. "Good day, sir."

"If you care about me, don't put me in this position," I mumbled as I followed her out the door. "And don't giggle about how I just worded that!"

She stuffed my sandwich box into my chest. "Eat, Jock."

She returned to her seat in the car, and me to mine. AJ climbed into shotgun again and fumbled with the plastic bubble around a Discman. "How in the world are you supposed to get your finger into such a tight enclosure?"

I must have had a lake of sweat on my brow, a haunted look in my eyes as I gorged on my sandwich silently. I was losing it. All I could think about was this concept that rebooting an affair with Olivia was "inevitable." All I could think about was sex, for that matter, as I alternated between cold cuts and chokes of air. God, I had to get my strength up.

AJ was silent for a beat, which was long for him. "Who would've thought…that technology like this would exist, and that my mother would live to see it? Do you remember the night you met my family, Olivia?"

"Oh. How could I forget," she snickered between bites of turkey on rye. "Most Americans love an English accent, but not Auntie Theda, Oxford grad. She could smell the Essex sand in my shoes. I was terribly nervous."

"There was no need to be. Cole, your mother-in-law was as graceful as a swan that evening, enchanting and kind. Regardless of what our dear maiden aunt thought."

"I'm sure she was," I said.

"Was Theda just as overprotective of you?" he asked me.

"Nope. She didn't even think I was your son because I was 'so hairy,' as she put it."

"Wow," Gregory said. "Obstinate, judgmental…I think Aunt Theda and I will get along just fine."

When AJ finally got the Discman free, he put a CD in he'd bought called "Pacifying Pachelbel." When he gave the player to me, I replaced his disc with a rap one of Sean's I found wedged in my seat. Headphones on, I bobbed my head to lyrics about being a big G, even though I felt like the furthest thing from it.

I fell asleep for a little bit and woke up to Big Sur unfolding around me- the Santa Lucia mountains, the sea as royal blue as a certain someone's eyes. The road to the mansion was lined with cypress and redwood trees. Finally, we turned down Leffingwell Court and up the long, arched driveway with the crunch of broken shells that Grandmother had imported from Rhode Island.

"Well, it's not Hearst Castle," Gregory said as we got out, "but it will do."

Tobin the butler appeared from the front door and nodded at me, "Master Cole." He gracefully accepted Gregory's keys to park the SUV.

Gregory snorted, shaking his head. "A butler? This place is probably bankrupt."

"Except for the recently returned Deschanel jewels," I rubbed in quietly.

"That transfer of property is about as legally binding as you being married to that 7-Eleven sandwich."

When Tobin returned, he looked at AJ and turned gray. "My God…Master Armand Junior?" He touched my father's hands.

"Yes, Tobin, it's me."

"Here we go," Gregory sighed. "He'll explain his twenty-four years of 'mystery and intrigue,' later, my good man." He slapped Tobin's shoulder as we walked into the grand foyer. Gregory looked around, marveling at the paintings, Fabergé eggs and ornamental furniture. "Definitely not child proof, is it?"

"No," said AJ. "About as conducive to a proper childhood as Scientology."

"I figured out some workarounds." Les fossettes, I half smiled to myself, the French word for dimples. I guess I was feeling a little more in my element as we breezed through the hall, a shaky Tobin leading the way. I wanted to rumble into the kitchen on Rollerblades and have Saoirse, the cook, playfully chase me out. Pretend the stained glass around the grand doorways could decode invisible ink. "Mémé, I'm home!" I wanted to call out.

But, she wasn't going to come around the corner this time. She wasn't going to call me her bijou or promise to straighten things out with the headmaster at boarding school. "All just a misunderstanding, darling," she'd say, though it never was. Every once and a while, she'd go into the kitchen and have Saoirse teach her how to bake me things. "Gracious sakes, I feel like I'm in Amish country!"

Her creations didn't look very good, but they tasted good, because she made them.

I slowed down, bombarded with memories. Drowning in them. Even ones that didn't exist. I pictured her holding the great-grandson she'd never met, singing the song she'd always sung to me. "*It is only a paper moon…sailing over a cardboard sea. But it wouldn't be make-believe, if you believe in me.*…Oh, my little Trey…"

The bitter water on the ship was closing in on me again. I wasn't supposed to outlive my grandmother.

I wasn't supposed to outlive my grandmother.

It was only when Olivia turned and saw me lagging behind, and coaxed me on with nothing but a nod and her long-lashed gaze, that my watery grave turned to only rain.

I watched them go into my grandfather's office suite, and finally filled my lungs enough to join them.

Grandfather's huge desk was the size of a conference table, and the chairs surrounding it looked like the first folding chairs ever made. Aunt Theda was already there, of course, mink around her neck, cane by her side. As always, she looked like a much less attractive Angela Lansbury, waiting for a juicy murder to happen in her presence. She eyed me for a tense moment before her eyes melted all over my father. "AJ? God in heaven!" She threw a hand to her chest. "There goes my atrial fib, oh zut!"

"See, AJ? It'll be a wonder if you don't kill anyone," Gregory said.

When Aunt Theda was done squeezing AJ's face, she noticed Olivia. "Oh no, not that devil-eyed minx!"

My eyes burned holes in my aunt but Olivia was unfazed. "Hello, darling," she waved.

"Junior, you ran away with HER all these years? I should've known!"

"Theda, dear, it's a long story, and I'd rather proceed with the proceedings. After you politely acknowledge my son?" he said, patting my back.

"So he IS yours!"

"And I suppose you never noticed he's the spitting image of your late brother-in-law?" AJ asked, arms folded.

"Armando Senior simply wasn't this…dark," she whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.

"Be sure to study Auntie's Color Swatch of Worthiness, everyone, there'll be a test later," I smiled facetiously.

"You, young man, are an ungrateful renegade who deserves to view my sister's will as much as the maid! You're still that same little brat who threw a basket of Easter grass everywhere."

Gregory kneaded his brow. "Can we all be seated, please?"

Grandmother's lawyer Dussault came in and he and Gregory introduced each other, sizing each other up. Dussault moved a TV stand on wheels where we could all see it. "What I have here is Juliana Marcelline Deschanel's last will and testament. It was her wish to be videotaped, and it was recorded here in San Simeon, California. It was signed, sealed and notarized on January 27, 1998 and has been at my firm ever since."

My 24th birthday. After we were no longer on speaking terms.

She was sitting in her favorite wing chair. "Hello. If you're watching this…well, that means I've given up the ghost. I'm sure this is a tad unsettling, but I've always considered myself to be a modern woman, so a VHS cassette it is."

I smiled, swallowing the sand in my throat.

"At this very moment, I look upon my inevitable passing with little fear. I've led a full life. I've also prayed for absolution from my sins…notably, in driving away my dear son AJ, with my stubbornness, and by burdening him to live up to my late husband. Also…in taking my grandson away from a kind, hard-working lady, who has more moral integrity than I ever will."

AJ cleared his throat with an incriminating dampness to the sound. I felt Olivia's hand chastely take mine under the table. "However…as much as I hate to say this in the same breath, I will never regret bringing Cole's larger-than-life spirit and heart into this house."

Olivia squeezed my hand.

"Well…I suppose you're waiting for me to get to the good part, but one more thing. Never doubt that I loved my family. Whether I was under-doing it or overdoing it…I loved you. Pure and simple."

She paused. "I, Juliana Deschanel, being of sound mind and body, and revoking all prior wills and codicils, hereby bequest my properties and interests, a sum to the tune of seven million dollars…to my grandson, Cole Antoine Deschanel, my sole beneficiary."

You could hear a pin drop. You could hear the pins in Theda's hip drop. "Blasphemous…!" she choked.

Gregory said nothing, then finally uttered, "His initials actually spell CAD?"

"Son…" AJ breathed quietly, his eyes like quarters. "You just became a very rich man."

"But," Grandmother interrupted, "I am also naming an executrix to control the fortune, knowing Cole isn't the greatest with money."

"ExecuTRIX! Oh, hallelujah!" Aunt Theda cried. "It's me, it has to be me, Ana darling, please…"

But, as Grandmother continued, Theda's face wilted. "As I've read in the Orange County papers for years, she is a savvy business woman, but has lead a difficult life. No doubt because of the guilt from her involvement in my grandson's kidnapping. I hope that helping him find his way will ease her conscience and bring her peace. Her name is Mrs. Olivia Richards."

A/N: Songs: "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton, "It's Only a Paper Moon," by Harold Arlen.