One Day at a Time

by Danielle Steel

  “It was. How can anyone live like that?”

  “He'll figure it out so it doesn't happen again. It must have been a hell of a wake-up call to him. Everyone is a little nuts in L.A. I'm actually thrilled to be going back to San Francisco. It's more exciting down here, but I think it's a hard place to bring up kids. It's all about showing off. The values seem all wrong. It just wouldn't seem right to me to raise a child here.”

  “Yeah, and look how they turn out,” Coco teased her. “I'm a hippie, and you're gay.” Jane laughed at that and hugged her.

  “You're not such a hippie anymore. Maybe you never were, I just thought so. And I'm glad you're thinking about going back to school. You could go to UCLA if you live down here with him,” she said practically, and Coco looked panicked, so Jane backed off. She just hoped Coco didn't give up on him entirely. It made her sad for both of them. And she was actually sorry when Coco left. It had been a wonderful Thanksgiving, and Gabriel was even a pleasant addition. He had promised to come to Christmas in San Francisco with Florence. They were going to stay at the Ritz-Carlton and bring his daughter.

  Coco was thinking about all of it as she flew back to San Francisco. She had left her van at the airport, and was relieved to drive back to Bolinas. It had been nice to see her family for two days, but she needed time to herself. She was still too sad about Leslie to want to be with people all the time. She needed time to mourn. She appreciated what Jane had said about him, but she knew better than anyone, after what had happened in Venice, that she couldn't lead that life. It was one thing to be the girlfriend of a movie star, it was another thing to be attacked by thirty men who could have killed them. She still remembered the feeling of terror as they surrounded them in the back alley, and later when she fell into the boat. If loving him meant living that way, she couldn't do it.

  She let herself in to the cottage and looked around. It looked familiar and comfortable, like crawling back into the womb again. The weather was cold, and she wrapped herself in a blanket and went out to sit on the deck. She loved the beach in winter, and there were a million stars in the sky. She lay on the deck chair, looking at them, remembering when she'd been there with Leslie, and a tear crept slowly down her cheek.

  Her cell phone rang then, and she dug it out of her pocket. It was from a blocked number, and Coco wondered who it was.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello.” There was a small funny voice at the other end. “This is Chloe Baxter. Coco, is that you?”

  “Yes, it's me,” she said, smiling. “How are you?” She wondered if Leslie was with her, and had made it for Thanksgiving. Maybe it was a ploy to talk to her. But if so, she didn't care. She loved talking to Chloe. “How are the bears?”

  “They're fine. And me too. How was your turkey?”

  “Very nice. I had it with my mom and my sister, in L.A.”

  “Is that where you are now?” She sounded very interested, and as usual, very grown up.

  “No, I'm at the beach. Looking up at the stars. It's late for you. If you were here, we could toast marshmallows and have s'mores.”

  “Yumm,” she said, and then giggled.

  “Did you have Thanksgiving with your daddy?” Coco couldn't resist asking, although she didn't want to pump her for information. She wondered if he was standing there or even knew that she was calling. Chloe had a way of doing what she wanted, without prompting from anyone else.

  “Yes,” Chloe said with a sigh. “He brought me a dress from Italy. It's very pretty. He just left for L.A. tonight.”

  “Oh.” Coco didn't know what to say.

  There was a pause, and then Chloe went on. “He says he misses you very much.”

  “I miss him too. Did he tell you to call me?”

  “No. I lost your number. I got it off his computer but he doesn't know.” Coco smiled at what she said. It was so like her to do that. “He says you're mad at him, because some very bad men attacked you both and you got hurt. He said you broke your wrist when they pushed you. That must have hurt a lot.”

  “It did,” Coco admitted. “It was pretty scary.”

  “That's what he said too. He said he should have stopped them, but he couldn't. And now he's very sad, because you're so mad at him. I miss you too, Coco,” she said sadly, and tears filled Coco's eyes again. This was hard. It reminded her of the wonderful time they had shared with her in August.

  “I miss you too, Chloe. And I'm very sad too.”

  “Please don't stay mad at him,” Chloe said sadly. “I want to see you when I come out. I'm spending Christmas with him in L.A. Will you be there?”

  “I'm spending it with my mom and sister in San Francisco. My sister is having a baby pretty soon, so we have to stay here.”

  “Maybe we could come up,” she said practically. “If you invite us. We could come to see you at the beach. I'd like that.”

  “So would I. But it's kind of complicated right now, because I haven't seen your dad in a while.”

  “Maybe he'll call you,” she said hopefully. “He's going to be working on his movie. He's moving back into his house in L.A.”

  “That's nice,” Coco said noncommittally but she was touched that Chloe had called. She had missed her too.

  “I hope I see you soon. My mom says I have to go to bed now,” she said with a yawn, and Coco smiled.

  “Thank you for calling me,” Coco said, and meant it. It was almost as good as hearing from him.

  “My dad says he can't call you because you're so mad at him. So I thought I'd call you myself.”

  “I'm glad you did. I love you, Chloe. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  She made a gobbling sound, and Coco laughed. She was truly the perfect combination of child and adult. She had just turned seven. “Happy Turkey to you too. Night-night,” Chloe said. And then she hung up. Coco sat holding her cell phone, looking up at the sky, wondering if the call from Chloe was a sign or a message for her. Probably not, but it had been very sweet. She sat on the deck and thought about it for a long time.

  Chapter 19

  Leslie didn't call her when he got back to L.A. As Coco was, he was still feeling traumatized by what had happened in Venice. And he loved Coco too much to ask her to risk her life for him. He knew how much she had hated it when her father had been threatened years before, and the nightmares she'd had as a result. He couldn't ask her to live that way forever, for him. But his heart ached every minute of the day. All he could think of was her.

  And Coco didn't call him, either. She berated herself every day for her cowardice. She had a broken heart, which ached every time she thought of spending the rest of her life without Leslie. But now, living with the risks it entailed seemed worse. She wanted a normal life with him, not a permanent diet of the insanity they'd lived through in Venice.

  As a result, the silence between them was deafening, but there was nothing left to say. The fact that they loved each other wasn't enough anymore. It didn't protect them from the dangers of his world and fame. Their lives were incompatible, so there was no point torturing each other by staying in touch. And she knew she didn't need to explain it to him again. They had both said it all the last time they spoke, the day after she got home. And she knew he understood and respected her fears. Coco was trying to let it drift away but the feelings were still there and probably would be for a long time. Maybe forever. And the pain of losing him.

  She ran into Jeff at the trash cans one day and he commented about what a nice guy Leslie was, how he acted like any other normal guy, and didn't put on airs because he was a big star. He said he liked him a lot, and had missed seeing him. Coco nodded agreement with him, and as she listened, she was trying not to cry. She had had a bad day. Every day was hard now. She was dreading Christmas this year. It was going to be so lonely without him. They had planned to spend it together. And now he'd be spending it with Chloe in L.A. And she was going to be with her mother and sister, and their significant others.

  Even the house in Bolinas looked sad to
her now. Everything looked faded and tired. And she finally put Ian's diving gear away. It depressed her seeing that too. And she had put the photographs she had of Leslie in a drawer. The only one she left out was a photograph she had taken of him and Chloe the day they built the first sand castle. Chloe looked adorable in it, and she didn't have the heart to put that one away too.

  Chloe hadn't called her again. She had thought of buying her a Christmas present, but she thought it was mean to try and hang on to her. She had to let go of both of them now, no matter how cute she was, or how much she loved him.

  By the time Christmas Eve came, Coco hadn't spoken to Leslie in seven weeks. She tried not to keep track of it, but she always knew. It had been exactly fifty days. She hated herself for remembering it. One day she would no longer remember how long it had been, just years.

  She was planning to stay at Jane's on Christmas Eve. They had already turned the guest room into a nursery and they were putting her in a smaller guest room downstairs. She knew that it was going to be hard to stay in the house again. Everything about it reminded her of Leslie now, and the months she had lived there with him.

  Her mother and Gabriel and his daughter had arrived in San Francisco that afternoon. They went straight to the Ritz-Carlton to get organized. They hadn't brought a nanny with them, and Gabriel was going to take care of her himself. Florence was a little anxious about it, she had admitted to Jane. She hadn't been around a child that age in a long time.

  “Well, that's what you get for having a young boyfriend, Mom,” Jane teased her, and she laughed about it with Coco when she arrived.

  They were spending Christmas Eve together, as they always did, and Christmas Day, and that night everyone would go home. Her mother and Gabriel were going back to L.A., since they were leaving for Aspen the day after Christmas. And Coco was going back to the beach. But for twenty-four hours, they would be a family, however unorthodox they were. And they seemed to be getting more so every year. Now Liz and Jane were going to have a baby, and her mother had a boyfriend young enough to be her son, and his two-year-old who could have been her grandchild. “We're not exactly your standard family anymore,” Jane commented, as she walked Coco to her room downstairs. “Maybe we never were.” And then she looked at Coco strangely, as though thinking back to the days when they were growing up and their father was alive. “I was so jealous of you then,” she said in a quiet voice. “Dad was so nuts about you. I always felt like once you came along, I didn't have a chance. You were so little and so cute. Even Mom was excited about you for a while. She had so little time to give either of us, there just wasn't enough of her to share. I hope my kids never feel that way about me.”

  “I always thought you were the star, and there was no room for me,” Coco confessed. She had said it to her therapist two years before, and it almost felt better saying it out loud to Jane.

  “Maybe that's why I was so hard on you.” Jane looked at her apologetically. “There was hardly room for me in that house, and then you came along. There was never enough love to go around.”

  “They were both such busy, important people,” Coco said thoughtfully. “They never had time to be parents.”

  “And we never got a chance to be kids. We both had to be stars. I bought into it. You didn't. You just said to hell with it, and threw in the towel. I've been trying to impress them all my life. And in the end, who gives a damn? Who cares how many movies I produce? This baby is more important than that,” she said, rubbing her belly, which got bigger every day. She almost looked like a cartoon of a pregnant woman now.

  “It sounds like you're on the right track,” Coco said gently, and gave her a hug. It was more than she could say for herself. They all had partners, she didn't. She had walked away from the man she loved. “Are you thinking of having more kids?” Coco asked her then. Jane had just referred to “kids,” plural, instead of one.

  “Maybe,” Jane said with a smile. “Depends how this one goes, and how cute he is. If he's as big a brat as I was, I may have to send him back. You were pretty cute though. It just made me hate you more.” Leslie had been right. Jane was jealous of her, and what she was saying now was finally letting the air out of that balloon. The air was pretty stale by now. They were no longer competing for their mother's attention, and their father was gone.

  And these days, their mother was more interested in Gabriel than in them. She had already told Jane that she and Gabriel would be in the Bahamas when the baby was born. They would come to see it when they got back. It was who their mother had always been. The men in her life had changed, but she never had, and at her age, there was no chance she ever would. They had both made their peace with that.

  “Liz and I have been talking about another baby,” she admitted to Coco. “Next time we might do a donor egg from me, if mine are holding up, and donor sperm, and let Liz carry it. I'm glad I did it this time, but to be honest, I hate being fat. I'm turning forty in two months. Being fat on top of it is just too goddamn much. Maybe I am like Mom,” she laughed. Their mother was the vainest woman in the world. Jane turned to Coco with a hesitant look then and sat down on the guest room bed. The weight of the baby was too great now to allow her to stand up for long. She could hardly walk. “Is there any chance that you'd like to be with me when the baby is born? I've been wanting to ask you, but I didn't know how you'd feel about it. Liz is going to be there, but I'd love to have you there too.” There were tears in her eyes as she asked, and Coco sat down on the bed next to her and hugged her with tears in her eyes too.

  “I'd love that,” she said, and held her sister for a long moment. She felt honored that Jane would want her there. She wiped the tears from her cheeks then and laughed. “Hell, it may be the only chance I get to see a baby born, now that I'm committed to being an old maid.”

  “I don't think you have to worry about that yet,” Jane said, smiling at her. “I guess you haven't heard from Leslie?” she asked cautiously, and Coco shook her head.

  “I haven't called him either. Chloe, his little girl, called me on Thanksgiving. She says he misses me. I miss him too.”

  “So call him, for chrissake. Don't waste all this time.”

  “Maybe I will one of these days,” Coco said with a sigh, but Jane knew she wouldn't. Coco was too scared and too stubborn. She almost wanted to call him herself, but Liz didn't think she should get involved. It was up to them. Jane was dying to give them a helping hand.

  They went back upstairs then, and Coco laughed at her as she waddled up the stairs. She was excited about being at the birth. Jane told Liz as soon as they walked into the kitchen. She was putting the finishing touches on dinner for that night.

  “Thank God, you'll be there,” Liz said, looking relieved. “I have no idea what to do. We took Lamaze classes and I've already forgotten everything. This is such a huge deal.” Liz smiled at Coco as she said it.

  “Yes, it is,” Coco agreed, in awe of the whole process, and impressed by the noticeable changes in her sister. The atmosphere between Coco and Jane had changed considerably in the past two months. After years of resenting each other, and each of them feeling wounded, they were finally friends. It was what Coco had hoped for all her life.

  They sat at the kitchen table talking for a while, and Coco told them about the maple syrup incident the day she and Leslie met. Liz had hysterics as she listened, and Jane nearly fainted when she heard it.

  “Thank God I wasn't here. I would have killed you!” “I know. That's why I never told you. We were swimming in maple syrup until Leslie cleaned it up.”

  “Remind me not to ask you to house-sit again.” They finally went upstairs to get dressed, and Coco went downstairs to her room, relieved not to see the bedroom that she and Leslie had shared. They were going to show her the nursery later, but she was determined not to set foot in the master suite. It would just hurt too much. She was having a hard time getting over him, and Liz and Jane both knew it. Their mother still didn't know what had happened and never a
sked.

  She and Gabriel arrived promptly at seven, with his adorable two-year-old daughter in tow. She was wearing a red velvet Christmas dress with matching bows in her hair, and black patent leather Mary Janes. Gabriel had dressed her himself. And they brought a collapsible playpen with them so they could put her to sleep when she got tired. She seemed like a very well-behaved little girl. Their mother talked to her like a small adult, which reminded Coco of Chloe.

  Florence was wearing a very chic black cocktail dress, and Gabriel was wearing a dark blue suit. They looked smashing together, as Coco picked Alyson up and played with her, while Liz made her mother and Gabriel martinis. In a funny way, they were playing the role of the parents, and whenever she was around her mother, Coco felt like a child again. She used to feel that way around Jane too, but it had changed.

  Jane whispered to her in the kitchen that Gabriel dressed like a fifty-year-old man.

  “That's a good thing or they'd look ridiculous together,” Coco whispered back, as Liz shook their martinis, “because Mom thinks she's twenty-five.”

  “Shit,” Jane said out loud, “the whole goddamn world is confused.”

  “We certainly are,” Coco said, laughing. “You're married to a woman, and Mom's in love with a child.” The three of them stood around the kitchen table laughing, as Florence and Gabriel came to get their martinis, and Coco was happy to babysit for them. His daughter was adorable, and she was mesmerized by the Christmas tree Liz had put up in the living room. All Jane had been able to do this year was lie on the couch and watch.

  “I can't believe I've got another five weeks to go. I feel like I'm going to have it tonight. Or I wish I would. One of these days, my stomach's just going to explode,” Jane said as she walked into the living room with them and collapsed on the couch again.

  “Don't forget to call me as soon as you go into labor,” Coco reminded her, now that she was part of the team. She could hardly wait.