Pauline

"What?" Monica said when she caught me staring. "Your children are the closest we're ever going to get to being grandparents. Get used to having us around."

Both sets of grandparents went house shopping and found them a property less than ten miles away. They moved in over the next few months after the repairs and modifications they wanted to the house were done.

I came by one day to find Monica sitting in a rocking chair, holding my youngest daughter, with tears in her eyes. She was looking at a photo of Pauline.

*****

Rob called me one night in a panic. "Jason, can you come? Something's happened."

I heard a great deal of pain in is voice and my first thoughts were of Monica. "Is everything all right?"

"No. Pauline died last night."

They would tell me snippets about her life from time to time. She continued to see her therapist regularly and seemed much improved. Three years later, she remarried and was very happy for a couple of years. There was even talk of trying for a child even though she was almost forty. Then she caught him cheating. Twice. The third time she started divorce proceedings. The man thought he was going to get a gold mine in the split, but everything important was still in Rob's name. They ended up selling the house and splitting the proceeds, and Pauline had to pay alimony for three years.

The day after the divorce was final, Rob fired him. He tried to take Pauline back to court, but his lawyer told him it would go nowhere fast and cost him a good bit. He left the area and no one cared where he went.

Pauline went into a downward spiral of depression. She told Monica it was cosmic revenge for what she'd done to most of the men in her life and she'd just have to accept it. A year later she seemed to be coming around, and then she didn't show up for work for two days. Monica couldn't get her on the phone so she went to her house and found her on the floor.

There were no drugs in her system other than the normal amount of her prescriptions and the autopsy showed it to be a heart attack. No one could explain it because she was in fairly good health.

Marta and I helped make the arrangements. There were a lot of people at her funeral, many from the charity organizations she had sponsored. Most were there to express their condolences, but a couple wanted to make sure the money kept flowing. By the look in Rob's eyes, I had the feeling the company sponsorship for those organizations would be coming to an end shortly.

Bob and his wife Gina were there and we talked a bit at the wake.

"It's a shame," he said. "She was rich, beautiful and had a charmed life except for her romantic struggles. I talked to her about six months ago and she seemed to be on the mend, talking about a new program I'd started to allow materials to flow more freely. She seemed really upbeat. I hope she was happy, there at the end."

So did I. She was only forty-three when she passed. I wondered what her last thoughts were, if she had time. What did she regret? What had given her joy?

Rob and Monica carried on for a while, but the joy was out of their lives. Then we had the twins and the decision was made.

Ten years later, when Rob was almost seventy-five, he and Monica invited us over for a talk.

"We're getting old, son. Our time on this earth is about over. We've talked it over. Our will has been updated and I don't want to hear any arguments. The kids will get half our estate, with Marta as executor. Between your parents and your businesses, they'll never want for money, but we want them to have it. The rest will be in a charitable trust, The Pauline French Foundation. You two will be on the board of directors."

What could we say?

Monica went first, two years later, and Rob puttered around like an old engine slowly running out of gas before he followed her in nine months. We flew back to Ohio to lay him to rest beside his wife, in the same cemetery that held both their parents and Pauline in a family plot.

Andre and Mom went shortly afterwards. Andre had left us a letter saying how much he'd enjoyed having a family again after his children had passed, and how the kids had kept them alive. I did part of his eulogy and talked about how lucky I was to have two excellent fathers over the course of my life when so many never got to experience that joy, while Mom wept softly in Marta's arms.

When Mom passed and the will was read, we were stunned. We had no idea what Andre was worth, and Mom had an estate worth three million. We got the estate in England and the villa in Tuscany, as well as some very valuable commercial property in four countries. After the proper taxes were paid, we still had an amount in the tens of millions, so Marta and I retired.

We still kept busy. Marta still sponsored her schools but now that she had serious money, she expanded it to three times the former size. I took over the administration of the Foundation.

There's a large painting of Pauline in her thirties, elegant and smiling, that hangs in the entranceway of the building that houses the charity, along with lesser portraits of Rob, Monica, Andre, and Mom. I'd commissioned the paintings as a tribute to them.

May they all rest in peace.

We lived in Tuscany another two years, but with everyone gone, the place was haunted with too many memories, so we moved to our cabin. Their cousins go crazy listening to the kids talk. One minute they're speaking perfect French or Italian, the next it will be Oxford inflected English, and the next they'll be slinging "ya'lls" around. And if they start speaking Haitian Creole, they just walk off.

*****

I'm pushing sixty now and look it, while Marta has that ageless beauty that defies time, looking as hot at 54 than she was at 34. I bet people wonder why she's with the old geezer. She says it's because I may as well be made of money, and my equipment still works. Very well.

I contracted a famous painter that had specialized in animals through most of his career to paint portraits of Carmella, Leslie, Marta, and me, after we pass, so we can hang in the little gallery at the charity headquarters. He painted a portrait of two children sledding, seconds before their senseless death, as a favor for a friend. It's not publicly shown, but I had an opportunity to see it. It will leave you with tears in your eyes when you realize the joy on their faces are just a few seconds away of being gone forever. He also painted a picture of his future wife, a successful writer specializing in children's literature, that is so well done it's like she's about to step off the canvas.

His fee is pretty steep but worth it, and I just wrote him a check when he quoted a price.

I organized my desk and left for the weekend. The kids were at the cabin. All of them, along with our five grandchildren, so far, and their spouses or lovers. It'll be a pretty full house. They're all there for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and I have a special surprise for Marta. I'd gone by the Creole restaurant, now run by the children, with a request, that resulted in a small vial of white powder. It looked a lot like cocaine, but was more than likely baking soda or something along those lines. Whatever it was, it would be all over my wife by the end of the night. I considered it to be a booster shot. It'll make her halo of stars shine a little brighter.