The Cottage

“I don't suppose I have a choice in the matter anyway,” he said, looking pained, with a glance at Taryn and Mark. “Something tells me we're going to be related sometime in the next few months. I will do anything you want, as long as you promise never to refer to me as your grandfather, step or otherwise. My reputation has taken a lot of hits over the years, but I don't think it would survive that. They'll be giving me parts for ninety-year-olds,” he said ruefully, and everyone laughed. But Jessica and Jason were slowly getting used to him. They were crazy about Taryn and willing to accept him as part of the deal. There was a possibility that they were all going to wind up related, one way or another, sooner or later, which was an exotic idea. Even he and Alex if she and Jimmy became a serious thing, and he and Valerie stayed together, which he hoped they would. It was all a little incestuous, but everyone seemed to have gotten something out of it, even Mark's kids.

“I hope the toilets flush this year when you get to Marisol,” Jimmy teased as they finished dessert, and Coop looked across the table at him with a puzzled expression, as Valerie scolded Jimmy for frightening Coop.

“It's not as bad as all that. It's just a very old house.”

“Wait a minute, back up Who is Marisol?” Coop asked with a strange look in his eyes.

“Not ‘who,’ ‘what,’” Jimmy corrected him. “That's my mom's house on the Cape. It was built by my great-grandparents, and it's a combination of their names. Marianne and Solomon.” Coop looked as though he'd been struck by a thunderbolt as he stared at them.

“Oh my God. Marisol. You didn't tell me that,” he said to Valerie, as though he'd just been told she'd been in prison for the last ten years. That might have been easier to absorb.

“Tell you what?” she said innocently, pouring him another glass of wine. Her dinner had been excellent, but he wasn't thinking about that now.

“You know exactly what I mean, Valerie. You lied to me,” he said, looking stern, and the others looked faintly concerned. Something was happening that none of them understood. But she did.

“I did not lie to you. I just didn't explain it to you. I didn't think it mattered.” But she knew it did, and was afraid it would.

“And your maiden name is Westerfield, I assume.” She made a kind of humming sound in answer, and nodded her head. “You fraud! Shame on you! You pretended you were poor!” He looked shocked. The Westerfield fortune was one of the largest in the world, surely in the States.

“I did not pretend anything. I didn't discuss it with you,” Valerie said nervously, while trying to appear calm. But she had been worried about his reaction for a while. It was a lot for him to swallow at one gulp.