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 asked.

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.