It was one of the older houses along that section of Malibu beach, but it had a beautiful, traditional style Alice loved, and she and Otto had renovated it just three years before. The property was another of her possession that likely would go on the chopping block.

Her day had started early, at just past 7:00, and to her surprise, Eli was waiting when she reached the beach an hour later. The passenger seat of her car held a boxload of cleaning supplies, but the real mission that day was to assess how much damage Clancy had done to the place ... and to ascertain what was missing.

Most people have a difficult time bonding with dad's new wife, and Otto's kids were no different, especially given the three were nearly as old as Alice. Clancy, the youngest, had been the Cyril child with whom she'd had the best relationship, so she'd not protested when Otto gave the man the beach house keys for "a few weeks while he's in between apartments." That had been just over a month before Otto died. It had taken her six contentious months and the services of two pricy lawyers to get him to leave.

"I'm sorry for the smell," she told Eli not long after they arrived. He'd given her an amused smile the moment they'd opened the door and caught the pleasant aroma of stale ganja and urine.

"Who did you say was staying here?"

"Clancy," she nearly groaned. "Otto's youngest." She didn't have the strength to explain the whole ordeal at that moment. Instead, she went over and leaned affectionately against his shoulder. "There's a box of things in my car. Do you know how to, um ... change a lock?" She almost cringed.

"Sure," he said. "Just point out anything you need done. What I don't know, we can figure out."

As he reached the door, she called out. "I think they're the right kind . The guy at the hardware store said it's what I needed.'

She desperately had wanted to hire a locksmith and a cleaning crew to do all this. There were any number of tradesman she would have liked to engage. But money had been tight. Property taxes, lawyers' fees, mortgage payments, insurance, and sundry other expenses had tapped deeply what little ready cash was left to her. Even stabling fees for her two horses had become something of a nail-biter. And, of course, Otto's estate clearing probate had done little to diminish her problems. So, while she was getting things sorted out, she would have to continue to make do.

The kitchen seemed the ideal place to start. It was an unrecognizable warren of grease, filthy dishes, fast food containers, and other debris. The inventory would wait or, better, could just as efficiently be taken as she cleaned. She ducked her head and was soon lost to her work and her thoughts, emerging only some time later when hunger pangs got the better of her. By that time, several rooms were the better for her efforts, and the place looked as it should. Everything had been filthy, with trash piled throughout.

There was no clear indication of how much time had passed when she went looking for Eli, but she reached the living area just in time to meet him coming in the door with several plastic bags in his hand. It came to her that he'd poked his head inside the bath some time earlier to say he was stepping out. Glancing at the clock now, she saw it was nearly 2:00 pm, and through the window, several sawhorses and various power tools were visible in the driveway. The sudden thought that Eli had spent most of the day laboring away unbeknownst to and ignored by her caused tears to well up.

"I'm so sorry," she croaked. "I ... I didn't mean to drag you out here and ...." A thick wave of emotion snatched away her voice. Much of her upset was just hunger and fatigue—that was clear even to her—but knowing that didn't make her feel better. It did calm her enough that when Eli pulled out a kitchen chair and led her to it, she didn't resist.

It was obvious he'd run out for lunch. The smell from the two plastic bags was delightful. But she felt like a child, too angry and upset with herself to eat yet hungry nonetheless. She relented when Eli made a plate, placed it in front of her, and gently coaxed her with a friendly but firm, "You just need to eat something and rest a little. You'll feel better."

Picking at the lovely Thai food he'd brought and still fighting off the occasional tear, she just couldn't bring herself to enjoy it. But she ate and, twenty minutes later, after having made a respectable dent in her meal, joined him on the couch, where she stretched out her full length. There was another ten minutes virtual silence between them before a nagging inner voice told her she shouldn't be lying with her head in his lap, which was exactly the case. The whole thing was simply too intimate.

But she ignored the voice and its warning. There was no strength in her to fight, and when his hand next came down to give her arm a comforting pat, she took it in hers and interlaced their fingers.

"I'm sorry about that," she said quietly, but in a voice that otherwise approximated normal. It wasn't just the hunger and exhaustion. It was everything. Clancy and his brother and sister weren't even the worst of it, but they were the low-lying fruit that day, the proximate target of her ire. "Otto's kids are a bunch of butt-fuckers," she spat vehemently. She'd never said such a shocking thing. When he began laughing, she gave his captive hand a gentle swat.

"How many does he have?"

"Three .... Clancy isn't even the worst."

"Who would that be?"

"Amanda ... or Lewis, the oldest. Otto junior they call him. It's hard to tell."

"Do you still have to deal with them?"

"I don't think so. They tried to challenge the will, but that finally got sorted out. They seemed to think they should get everything, and I should be working a street corner in East LA. Butt-fuckers." It was obvious he was laughing again. He had the right, so she didn't protest. "It cost a fortune in lawyers' fees to get him out of here."

She sighed and finally found the strength to sit up. Her new seat was still far too close to him, and their hands were still intertwined. One thing at a time. She blew a raspberry and began to speak.

"After the services, I came back to the house ... the other house ... and there were people walking out with things, like ... expensive things." She wanted to scream. "'Uncle Otto would have wanted me to have this,'" she blurted in a silly voice. "God, it was like fighting off a pack of jackals. Otto's kids were the worst. I mean ... if there were any family heirlooms, and somebody came to me and said, 'oh, that's been in the family for a hundred years, I'd like to have it,' I would have said, 'fine, take it.' But everyone was so grabby, stealing things with no sentimental value because it might be worth something ... paintings, pieces of art, autographed photos. I still don't know where most of Otto's watches and jewelry are. He had scads."

She finally burst into tears. It took a few minutes to compose herself, during which he waited and occasionally gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

"Oh ...," she groaned after the waterworks stopped, "butt-fuckers."

She needed another few minutes.

"It's really a horrible thing to wake up one morning and realize your life wasn't what you'd thought it was," she said after she calmed herself. "Otto ... when I met Otto ...." She took a couple of breaths and began again. "When I met Otto, I'd been working for a few years and had a good start to my career. You know, 'girl in bikini,' 'beautiful bridesmaid,' ... those kinds of credits. My-a ... my biggest role was a recurring character on this cheesy sci-fi show you probably never heard of. I played the sometime love interest of a sweaty old, girdle-wearing spaceship captain. It has quite a cult following." She laughed aloud. "A couple years ago, captain watzit approached me about doing the convention circuit. I gathered he wanted to recreate some of our make-out scenes for a live audience. I said no thanks."

"Small wonder you forgot about Greg Bard."

"I owe poor Greg an apology," she said. "But maybe I should do the convention circuit. There's a little bit of money in it, and I still have a few admirers. And ... captain watzit really isn't all that bad of a guy once you get past the groping."

"So, why'd you quit? ... acting?"

"I just ... blah. Otto sort of helped my career in a way ... at first. He wasn't really a movie producer. He was sort of a deal maker. It's hard to explain. He would find scripts, attach actors, and get the ball rolling. Then he would sell it to a production company or a studio and usually get an associate producer credit."

"He knew a lot of people," she continued slowly. "After we were together, I ended up swinging a couple of small speaking roles in bigger films, and a couple of larger roles in smaller films ... but ... I dunno." She shrugged. "Slowly our lives became more and more about him and what he was doing. And I felt like I was an important part of that. We were always going to interesting places, seeing and being seen. Otto seemed to know everyone. It was always champagne and caviar and first-class air travel to you name a place."

"I didn't really get it until after he died ... what a ...." The tears returned in torrents, but without the deep and choking anguish of before. Her words were calm. "I helped a lot of people get their careers started. Or ... Otto did. It wasn't clear until later that I was just a handle to get to him. After he passed away, I reached out to a lot of those people, to people I thought were my friends, hoping to maybe kickstart my career, or at least get a little work." She sighed, wiping away the flow of tears. "I got a lot of free lunches and some attaboy speeches, but that was about it."

She paused and composed herself again.

"I don't know why I married him."

"It sounds like you had a good relationship," her former schoolmate ventured.

"Was it? I can't tell. I liked him, and I thought I respected him. But looking back ... who knows? You run across a lot of posers in Hollywood, a lot of guys who put on a suit and an attitude and hit the party circuit to try and BS some girl onto all fours. When Otto first asked me out, I checked up on him, and he seemed the real thing." She bit her lower lip for a moment and went on. "If you would have asked me a year ago if I loved him, I would have said 'absolutely.' But now? Sometimes I just feel like maybe .... I can't say. Did I love him, or did I fall in love with the whole idea of him? Maybe I was playing him. Maybe we were playing each other."

She got up and stretched. It was obvious at that point she was just babbling.

"This isn't what I wanted my life to be," she said flatly. She reached down, took him by the hand, and pulled him to his feet. "Thanks for listening. It made me feel better." It had a little. "Mostly, please accept my humblest apologies. I had no intention of dragging you out here and pressing you into service. This whole thing should have taken an hour, or two at most. You've been slaving away all day."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I like having an excuse to bust out the toolbox. And there were some things that needed doing that couldn't wait."

Over the next few minutes Eli showed her the shattered window and frame he had re-hung, the railing he had replaced on the deck, and the other odds and ends he'd repaired.

"I can't help but think the broken window was a clumsy attempt to fake a burglary," he said, and then, after some hesitation, "Is anything missing?"

"Ugh. As near as I can tell, quite a lot. A couple of televisions, some sound equipment, a few paintings I liked and some other odds and ends. What a butt-fucker."

That phrase seemed to amuse him, because Eli laughed at her every use of it.

"It just sounds funny coming from your lips," he pleaded when she challenged him. "But ... um, I got to poking around looking for paint and wood to do the repairs and found a storage shed outside that might have some of the things you're missing. This Clancy douche must have stashed it to come pick up later."

"Thank you," she said, putting her arms fully around him for the first time and squeezing. "Could you help me bring it in? Then I promise you are free from labor for the rest of the time you know me."

Clancy's well-known laziness had paid off. Not everything was accounted for, but most of the missing items were in the shed, and they found some others in a storage locker under the deck. It took about thirty minutes to move the items into the house and some minutes more to do a little last-minute cleanup and set the alarm with a new code.

"My place, tomorrow, 7:00," she said as he walked her to her car. She knew it was a bad idea, but he had worked far too hard to go without some sort of reward. "And to answer your question, 'no' is not an option."

The kiss on the cheek she gave him before she departed was more than just an LA peck.