Ruminations : A Santa Barbara story
By Kevin Hardy						Accueil   Home

June 15, 2023

Santa Barbara, California

The opulent grounds of the Capwell Estate dazzled in bright white light. This was largely artificial in the days of the waning crescent moon, but it was still oh so beautiful, those thousands of twinkling LEDs. The air was alive with the clinks of crystal, conversations, and live music courtesy of U2, this being the band’s first show following the COVID crisis. It seemed that even Bono could not turn down a favour requested by C.C. Capwell, both men legends in their own way.

A contented Cruz Castillo was seated at a black skirted cocktail table with his great friend, and now sister-in-law once more. “Great tunes, hey, Kell?” the man questioned, his tonality leaning towards the rhetorical. “Your daddy don’t fool around.”

Kelly Hartley sat loosely, her left leg crossed over the right, golden taffeta brushing against her smooth flesh. “True,” the lady concurred. “But is All I Want Is You the best song for your freshman wife and my sophomore husband to be dancing to?” she added with a chuckle.

On the dance floor, this framed by Chinese lanterns, the newly christened Eden Castillo was tripping the light with a surprisingly energetic Nick Hartley. While the two moved well together, it was clear each was a placeholder for another.

“Perhaps not,” Cruz said merrily, “but I think we can trust ‘em.”

Cruz’s expression turned suddenly serious as he took Kelly’s left hand and craned his neck towards her. “You know, I’m really happy that you and Nicky found each other again, Kell,” he put forth.

“He’s been really good for me,” Kelly gratefully established, as she spun a fountain poppy between the slender fingers of her free hand. “I never admitted it back in the day, but I suppose the age difference was getting in the way for me. Now it feels just perfect, we really seem to be in sync.”

Cruz nodded, a feeling of serenity washing over him.

"But more importantly,” Kelly continued with a touch of romantic whimsy, “now that you and Eden are all in, the civilized world can rest easy knowing the love affair of the century is back on track.”

Cruz smiled gaily and squeezed Kelly’s hand tighter. “Two centuries to be accurate,” he joked.

"Well, we do want to be accurate,” Kelly chortled.

"It is a true blessing,” Cruz confirmed, his heart full. “You know, we went down some paths that weren’t meant to be travelled, you and I, but I have no regrets. Those paths led to here and what could be more right than this?”

"No argument there," Kelly concurred absently, her mind suddenly drifting. “You know, there’s more to this date than your wedding, special as that is,” she imparted.

In silent understanding and perfect unison, the old friends raised their glasses, the golden liquid within sparkling in the white light. The subtle clink of the crystal sounded a perfect middle C. “To Joe,” Cruz toasted with great love.

To my dear Joe, Kelly mouthed. “He would have been 65 today, can you believe it?” she asked.

Cruz’s eyebrows climbed. “Taken way too soon,” he noted. “I was afraid to mention it, with Nicky…”

Kelly shook her head forcefully, as she tapped Cruz on his cheek, a light layer of stubble fighting its way back in the ebbing hours of the day. “Nick knows how important Joe was to me, Cruz, and he knows what today is. That’s one of the reasons I love him so much.”

Cruz’s lips curled slightly, as his gaze dropped. “I still remember the day I first saw Joe,” he mused.

"Tell me,” Kelly appealed, her mind already drifting through the emotional ether.

"I told you about that once before, remember?” Cruz gently recalled. “It was the night of Joe’s funeral, if memory serves. How he gave up his bigot friends to come to my aid and we whupped their sorry asses? How about I spin the tale of the second time we met?”

Upon seeing a pensive Kelly’s nod, Cruz lifted his head and stared straight ahead, as Eden’s fine form danced across his line of vision. “I was a few years ahead of him in school,” the man began. “Like me, Joe was big into football, all that jock jazz. I was in my senior year, and hanging in the field outside the school waiting for football tryouts. Just a formality, you understand.”

"Oh, of course,” Kelly playfully agreed.

"Reese and I were our typical cocky selves,” Cruz recollected, “goofing on the newbies like idiot teenagers are prone to do.”

"No arguments on Reese,” Kelly quipped.

"Don’t think I was above the fray, sweetie. Anyways, while we were deadly serious about the game, we didn’t take the tryouts quite as seriously, you know? I shut up pretty quickly, though, when our guy took the field. I’ve never seen a grade nine student make the senior football team before, but JP was no ordinary cat. He was a big guy for his age and perhaps the most gifted athlete I’ve ever met, which led to our taking the CIF championship that season. But more importantly, he was a real stand-up dude, loyal as the day is long. We truly became brothers that year.”

“It was similar for me,” Kelly validated, “you just felt his presence even before he walked into a room.”

"Amen,” Cruz exclaimed.

"You know it’s funny my letting Nick’s age get in the way the first go-around,” Kelly chuckled, “because as a teenager, I was mesmerized by Joe. Absolutely fucking mesmerized. In fact, I may have even lied to him about my age a little bit when we first met, otherwise he would never have even noticed me.”

Cruz laughed. “Well, there are often a lot of inconsistencies in our stories, Kell, especially as we get older,” he acknowledged, “but it’s the heart of us that matters.”

“I often wonder if I deserve to be happy now,” Kelly reflected, her tone dropping. “When Channing died and Joe went to prison, I was so confused.”

Cruz’s head bobbed up and down twice. “Definitely a travesty of justice,” the man cited, “but no one, especially not Joe, blamed you. You were a teenager, your world broke in half that day.”

Kelly’s gaze went blank, as she struggled for words that would not come.

"Truth be told, I always felt like I abandoned him,” Cruz disclosed.

“Really?” Kelly spoke, as she uncrossed her legs and shifted her body towards Cruz. “How’s that?”

“After I graduated, back in ’72, I just had to get away,” Cruz admitted. “Life at home wasn’t great, perhaps it hadn’t been since my daddy left. There was a lot of bad blood with Ric, I had a fight with my girlfriend, Jodie, all the typical high school crap. So I decided, as all dumb 18-year-old jocks do, to get a job in the Texas oil fields.”

“That’s when you worked with Red Adair,” Kelly intuited, “putting out oil rig fires?”

Cruz nodded, as he remembered the long-passed man who would become a great friend and mentor. “That came later, but yeah. I roughnecked for a couple of years, and sadly lost touch with a lot of people, including Joe.”

“What brought you back to Santa Barbara and the police force?” Kelly questioned.

Cruz pondered this for several moments, he not having dug this far back into his complicated past in years, if not decades. “Talk about a long and winding road,” he thoughtfully began. “I was searching for meaning, I suppose. I thought I found it with the agency, they scooped me up less than a year out of the police academy, somewhere around 1975. But it wasn’t long before I was back on the rigs as part of my cover. That was when I connected up with Red.”

"Once a danger junkie, always a danger junkie,” Kelly concluded. “You know, I still can’t picture Nick in that world.”

Cruz snickered. “It definitely was not Nicky’s bag,” he opined. “Not mine either, not in the long run anyways.”

"How’s that?” Kelly inquired.

"It’s just a dark place, and it cuts you off from everything important,” Cruz elucidated. “I remember sitting in the parking lot outside the Santa Barbara County Jail, Joe was in mid-trial at the time. I had just hit town back in the fall of ’79, after the end of a two-year-long deep cover assignment. I had been in the worst pits you could imagine, one hellhole after another. It was an ugliness I don’t even know how to put into words, and I just needed to experience anything decent. My first day back I was planning to visit with Joe and then hit my madre’s for dinner, but that went out the window real quick. Joe refused to see me, and I never got to Mamá’s as I was yanked right back into the field.”

"I’m sorry, Cruz,” Kelly consoled. Despite their 40-year history, this was a part of himself he had never shared with her before.

"That time it was a silver lining actually,” Cruz enthused, “as after a brief stop in Texas, my assignment took me to France and in mid ’80 I hooked up with Eden. Pepé liked what he saw.”

"Pepé?” Kelly explored.

"Private joke,” Cruz reminisced. “But those few days with Eden were pretty intense. It was one of those situations where you put your entire being into something so hard, and the emotions burn so bright, how can it last, you know?”

Kelly bumped fists with Cruz, knowing exactly what he meant.

"But your sister was burned into my heart and I knew I had to find her,” Cruz continued, “so it was Santa Barbara bound for me, fuck the INID. I didn’t find her, she was still somewhere in Europe, but that’s when I realized I needed to reconnect with my family and with the Perkins clan. So I took on a local assignment, which turned out to be a colossal mistake.”

"What assignment was that?” Kelly asked, her interest piqued.

Cruz shook his head, as he ran his hands over his face. “It was a drug trafficking case,” he started, “which the INID was partnering on with local law enforcement; my name came up as I had been with the Santa Barbara P.D. So I took a job on a local construction crew, where the lead suspect was working part time, along with his sister, who was the bookkeeper. I had known them both in high school, so the powers that be thought it was a perfect setup, but I got in over my head real fast. My first mistake was reconnecting with an old high school flame.”

"Jodie?” Kelly reasoned.

"No, Tori Lane,” Cruz clarified.

Kelly tilted her head and placed folded hands under chin, acting in the guise of a southern belle. “Why Mr. Castillo, you lothario you.”

“Yeah, me and my machismo,” Cruz stated flatly, this not meant to be the least bit whimsical. He cocked his head, as his right cheek tightened, images of Katie Timmons’ lifeless body flashing through his mind. Her pale, bloated corpse was not a picture easily forgotten and certainly one that could never be reconciled. “I did a lot of things I wasn’t proud of during that assignment,” he revealed. “I followed a bunch of orders blindly and told so many lies, lies upon lies that haunted me for years to come. Not the least of which was leading a fragile young woman on to get to her shady brother.”

Cruz looked off into the distance and unconsciously pulled away from Kelly’s sympathetic touch. “Wow, I haven’t told anyone the story since Joe,” he remarked, “not all of it anyway.”

"What happened?” Kelly pressed nervously.

"Things went south, and my controller, Richard, pulled me out; we never made the case. All I can tell you is that Katie was dead and her drug dealing brother went free. Free to embark on a life of crime he was never suitably punished for.”

“Wow, you have lived a life, sir, I’ll say that,” Kelly claimed softly.

“After Katie’s funeral, Tori left me to go back to L.A. I was devastated, and even crashed my motorcycle into a wall trying to stop her," Cruz confessed. "I decided to skip town myself after that. I know I should have stayed, found a way to help Joe, but I just had to get away, lose myself in the shit. So I went to San Quentin to say goodbye to JP and then linked up with my partner, Harry, in Istanbul.”

Kelly leaned forward and took both of Cruz’s hands, pulling them onto the top of the table, on which was the faint outline of a margarita she had spilled earlier. “But you did help him, Cruz,” she asserted, “so much. You may not have been able to get him out of prison, but you sure kept him out and were instrumental in helping to clear him.”

Cruz reflected on this. He felt Kelly’s words in his mind, but as much as he wanted them to, they were not able to penetrate his heart, not fully.

“No, if anyone did him wrong, it was me,” Kelly contended.

July 29, 1979

The whitish waves of the surf came crashing onto the shore of Butterfly Beach. 21-year-old Joe Perkins held the delicate form of his one true love tightly to him, revelling in her beauty and her warmth.

"I love you so much, Joe,” the blue bikini clad girl shared. “You want to know one of the things I love? I love the way your muscles kind of flex when I rub my fingers over them. It’s as if you can’t help yourself. I run my fingers over your back and, one by one, I feel the muscles move; they’re responding to me, to my touch. I love to touch you, Joe.”

The muscular man smiled and turned, he absently rubbing the wet sand from his white swim trunks. A nervous Kelly set her hands on his bare freckled shoulders, her toes pointing sharply into the sand.

"Have you decided?” she challenged, “will you run away with me?”

Joe shook his head, this an action of great contradictions. “I can’t, Kelly,” he divulged.

“Why, Joe?” Kelly demanded, turning him forcefully towards her. “Is it because of my age? Look, I’m sorry I lied to you when we met, but I am 17 now, I can make my own decisions.”

Joe stroked Kelly’s face with his young, yet weathered hands, his fingers getting lost in her golden hair, which was tied loosely back. “Our love will outlive a thousand generations,” he promised, his words painfully real, “but we just need to wait. You have one more year in high school, and I need to save up some cash. I'm not exactly getting rich working the docks.”

“Ahh c’mon,” Kelly laughed, “Capwells don’t have to work.”

Joe’s face turned deadly serious, as he gripped her upper arms. “I am not a Capwell!” he shouted. “And I believe in working hard, Kelly, I don’t know any other way.”

Kelly shrunk back, seeming suddenly child-like. “I’m sorry, Joe,” she apologized meekly.

“Shh,” Joe murmured, while kissing away a freshly formed tear. “I never want you to feel sad my sweet Kelly,” he swore as he savoured the slight saltiness settling on his tongue.

“Will you at least come to my brother’s party tomorrow?” Kelly queried. “You don’t want to let that form-fitting tuxedo rental go to waste.”

“I don’t know,” Joe answered, as he shielded his eyes from the sun that had poked out from behind a chain of clouds, “your family’s not too fond of me. And my meeting with Channing was not terribly pleasant. A part of me wanted to kill him.”

“Did you hate me when he told you?” she probed, referring to the two years she had added to her age.

“I could never hate you Kelly,” Joe vowed, “but I will never gamble with our future.” As more tears welled in Kelly’s eyes, he cupped her face once more. “Don’t worry, I can be pretty patient when I need to be.”

"I wish I could say the same about me,” Kelly disclosed. “Now c’mon, come to the party, pretty please! How about if I said there was a way you could come without anyone ever knowing you were there?”

July 30, 1979

“I can’t say this is what I had in mind,” Joe remarked as he brushed some straw from his tuxedo jacket. He and Kelly were in a partial embrace, they being framed by bridles and saddles in the Capwell stable.

"You’re always telling me I should learn how to rough it,” Kelly reminded him.

"Somehow I don’t think even the Capwell horses have ever roughed it,” Joe cracked, “although Mustard over there has done his share of roughing up.”

"Good grief, it’s jokes like that which keep you out of the main house,” Kelly groaned.

"Speaking of grief, have you been catching any in there?” Joe wondered, his head sloped in the direction of the Spanish Mediterranean themed estate.

“You know, I don’t think Channing has said anything to Daddy,” Kelly speculated. “He’s been acting pretty weird. Elated one minute, furious the next, I even thought he might break into tears at one point. I have a feeling there’s a lot he’s wanting to say, bursting at the seams actually, but I can’t get anything out of him.”

“Well, he’s under a lot of pressure,” Joe understood, “there is a lot to live up to in that house. I’ve been thinking I should go talk to him again.”

“What could that accomplish?” Kelly grilled.

“I never really got a word in when we met yesterday,” Joe illustrated, “he was so irate about us.”

“We are no one’s business,” Kelly asserted.

“That’s not true, Kelly,” Joe insisted, his passion almost frightening. “You are your family’s business, never forget that. If anything ever happened to Jade, Amy, Mom or Dad, it would kill me.”

“I just think we should give him a little space,” Kelly maintained, “let him have his day.”

“You’re probably right,” Joe conceded.

“I should go check in, I suppose,” Kelly suggested. “Daddy wanted all of us there for the grand entrance.”

Joe smiled. “You go ahead.”

“Promise me you’ll wait,” Kelly petitioned, while resting her left palm against Joe’s chest.

“I promise not to leave this estate without seeing you,” Joe guaranteed. “By the way,” he added, as he admired Kelly’s ruffled pink off-the-shoulder gown, “you look amazing.”

Kelly squeezed Joe’s hand and smirked. “You know it, babe,” she boasted, as she glided across golden straw to the exit. To Joe, her movements were visual poetry of the grandest order.

Once Kelly had left, Joe too stepped out of the stables and looked to the Capwell ancestral home, which was bedecked in balloons and a huge banner celebrating Santa Barbara’s favourite son. It was then, beneath the red-tiled roof, that he caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man in Channing’s upstairs room. “Is that Lionel Lockridge up there?” Joe asked himself in uncertainty, as a tuxedoed man moved quickly, and nervously, away from the casement window. Having grown up in Santa Barbara, Joe knew very well there was no love lost between the Capwells and the Lockridges. Despite the bitter words shared with Channing, Joe would one day be part of his family and he did not want to see the polo star’s party ruined, so he decided to investigate. Slowly, he walked towards the ornate estate, he too not wanting to be seen. He moved through the low arch of the servant’s entrance and made his way down the hall. As he was turning the corner, he heard the sound he least expected to hear, a gunshot. “What the hell?” he mumbled.

In the hall, a nervous Joe came across a bearded man, who was in mid puff of his freshly lit cigarette. “Did you hear something?” Joe snapped.

“Yes, I did,” the man responded in an overly raspy voice, this sounding almost unnatural.

“I thought it sounded like it came from the study,” Joe stated.

With the stranger in tow, Joe charged through the empty corridors, these filled with valuable paintings and potted Hoya plants. He burst into the richly appointed study, the door of which had been shut, but unlocked. He was horrified to discover Channing lying on the ground, a tiny circle of blood soaking through his white twill weaved shirt under the left breast. Blood was pooling at the corner of his mouth.

“Channing!” he cried, as he knelt down next to the body and unconsciously picked up the gun positioned against the young man’s right thigh. “Call an ambulance,” he calmly directed the bearded man, “phone’s on the desk.”

“Is he alive?” the stranger inquired, his tone betraying a familiarity and a worry that Joe’s mind would not process until many years later.

“I don’t know,” Joe answered, as he felt for a pulse. He then cradled Channing’s face, this an almost tender action, while he waited anxiously for the paramedics. Yet it was not a paramedic he would see next, but the face of his fair Kelly, the young woman’s visage opened up in shock and horror. He would never forget the brokenness in her voice as she screamed his name. Nor would he forget those still to be spoken words that would on some level haunt him for the rest of his life.

"It was awful,” Kelly wailed to a packed courtroom. “I came into my father’s study and I saw him. He had a gun in his hand and my brother was lying on the floor. He was dead, Joe had killed him. He’d killed him!”

The first time Joe heard those words, before they were etched so deeply within his mind, was three months later. Kelly had looked so lost, despite her carefully prepared appearance. She seemed so prim and proper in that grey and cream-coloured sweater, with her blonde hair brushed and pinned back. That was all he really remembered from those weeks of depositions, of testimony, of tears and of rage. Those 38 words that had sealed his fate.

October 16, 1979

A 53-year-old C.C. Capwell sat rigidly in a small room of the Santa Barbara County courthouse. He, like Joe, had spent the last few months in a daze. He was not a man prone to feeling powerless, but something deep had shattered within him upon first seeing Channing’s lifeless body, a screaming Santana by his side. Something that had started with Sophia’s death 10 years prior.

“Dad?” Mason Capwell questioned with surprising concern, the young lawyer’s right hand gently squeezing C.C.’s left shoulder. C.C. did not respond, instead laying his trembling hand on his first-born’s. As much as both men would have liked, it was not a moment of comfort for either of them.

Across the room, Jack Lee was talking to his office in Phoenix, as he unconsciously smoothed his dark brown moustache. “The verdict should hopefully be in momentarily, Julia,” he was saying to his assistant, a lady who was destined to become a brilliant lawyer herself in the not too distant future. “Yeah, I love you too,” he added, this a whisper only Julia and Ma Bell could hear.

Jack hung up the phone and sat next to Mason, who had been his trusted second chair throughout this painfully long process. Jack had to admit that despite Channing’s stature in this community, it had not been an easy trial. The Perkins lawyer had put up an enviable fight despite his having been court appointed. This would not be the time to vocalize it, but Jack was very seriously considering this Jason Jacobson for an associate’s position within his firm. Although not at his Santa Barbara offices of course.

“What do you think, Jack?” Mason pushed tiredly, as he smoothed out a wrinkle on the vest of his charcoal suit. The three men were anxiously awaiting the verdict. The jury had been sequestered the day before for deliberation and a representative of both the defence and prosecution were required to be in the courthouse between 9-5 daily until the verdict came in. This was per the very strict orders of Judge Larson.

“It doesn’t get more airtight, Mason,” Jack theorized, although the impressive confidence he had shown in the courtroom was not as evident between these wood-panelled walls, which were decorated only with a lone picture of Jimmy Carter. “Weapon, motive, witness, we have the trifecta. But I always get a little bit nervous when dealing with blue collar families, the jury does tend to empathize with them. Those Perkins women were certainly compelling from an emotional perspective.”

In the next room, this a carbon copy, hopes were not running as high, although its occupants were trying their best to remain stoic. “Everything will be fine, Joey,” Marissa Perkins spoke softly, albeit unconvincingly. The plainly dressed mother was facing her son, her hands squeezing his so tightly as to cut off his circulation.

“Mom’s right, Joe,” Amy Perkins echoed, her hands rested on the conference table. The middle Perkins child was not able to control the quiver in her voice or stop her legs from trembling so wildly, that the table shook.

“Dad with Jade?” Joe asked bitterly.

Marissa nodded. “He wants you to know how much he loves you.”

“Yeah, right,” Joe snickered.

Marissa tilted her head and held up Joe’s chin with her right hand. “Joey, it’s hard for your father to express his feelings, but he will be there for you,” she promised.

“I know, Mom,” Joe lied. The words rang hollow in his head and his speech, but he was too tired to sound anything less than completely authentic. John Perkins was ashamed of him, end of story. This man who had devoted his life to his family could not bring himself to give his son even an ounce of his faith. The man whom Joe had worshipped as a child, the man who taught him the importance of hard work, of integrity, of putting family first. It was a tall perch to fall from in such a short time, but John Perkins had done so like a master.

Before Marissa could respond, the room’s four occupants heard a rapid, and obnoxious, beep. “It’s time,” Jacobson instructed, after briefly looking down at his pager.

Once Joe and the attorneys had entered the courtroom, they were quickly followed by a controlled zoo of spectators and finally Judge Larson, who was formally announced by the bailiff.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached your verdict?” the judge queried, she not wasting a second of time.

“We have your honour,” answered the jury foreman, a tiny, bespectacled man who had not shown the slightest hint of emotion throughout the trial.

“What say you on the count of first-degree murder?” the judge prodded.

The foreman cleared his throat and looked down at the piece of paper in his small hands. “We find the defendant, Joseph Evan Perkins, not guilty.”

Ripples went through the crowd. For the first time in weeks, emotion roared inside of C.C. as his eyes snapped open and he moved to rise. Mason had to hold his father down, with Amy doing the same for her mother.

“What say you on the count of second-degree murder?” the judge asked sternly.

The foreman looked summarily at Joe, his face completely flat, and then back to the judge. “We find the defendant guilty,” he pronounced.

Joe’s eyes widened and his head fell forward. His attorney, on the other hand, seemed greatly relieved. It was Jacobson’s first criminal case, and he was certain Joe would be California’s inaugural lethal injection.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service,” Judge Larson spoke, her voice chilled. She then turned to face Joe, a subtle sneer forming. “I see no reason to prolong the sentencing, Mr. Perkins,” she announced, as much to the courtroom as the man. “This, in my opinion, was a heinous crime. A young man of great worth and even greater potential was shot down in the prime of his life. For that, you will receive the maximum sentence this court can give; life imprisonment with no eligibility of parole for 15 years. Bailiff,” she called out as she banged her gavel down so hard that she missed the block and left a deep indentation on the bench, “take the prisoner away!”

“No!” Marissa cried. She reached for Joe as he was dragged off but was not able to get close to her eldest child.

"It’s okay, Mom,” Joe bravely declared, “piece of cake. Take care of her, Ames, and watch out for Jade.”

Amy nodded to her beloved brother, an impossible volume of tears streaming down her face.

On the other side of the room, C.C. looked to Mason. His expression was stone-cold, and his voice at as low a timbre as Mason had ever heard it. “That monster is never to get parole,” he commanded.

Mason looked to his father, unsettled by the man’s unhinged expression. “He won’t, Dad,” Mason assured him.

In the hall, where flashbulbs were blinding him, a shackled Joe was being led away by two bailiffs. Before they had been able to move more than four metres, the three men were intercepted by a manic Kelly Capwell. She seemed to have aged 30 years in the last few months. She no longer looked innocent, and no longer looked broken. “I hope you die in there,” she spat. “I will never forget how much I hate you, even if I live for more than a thousand generations.”

Joe’s blue eyes clenched shut, these rimming with tears, as would Kelly’s be nearly 44 years later.

June 15, 2023

“Kell, are you okay?” a concerned Cruz prompted, as he placed his hand on his sister-in-law’s bare shoulder. Despite the warm air, her skin had exploded in goose flesh. The woman grinned weakly, as Cruz nodded knowingly. “You made up for it in spades,” he assured her, “surely you know that.”

Kelly’s smile strengthened. “Thanks, Cruz,” she murmured.

“Hey, hey, hey, break it up,” sounded a spritely Eden Castillo, as she approached the pair with Nick Hartley by her side. “We have something to worry about here?” the woman challenged, her playful fists balled into her silken waist.

Cruz beamed broadly as he stood and embraced a wife who defied every standard measure of time. “How ‘bout we give our guests something to break up?” Cruz promoted slyly.

“Oh don’t you worry, sir, I plan to set off a few sprinkler systems tonight,” Eden commented, alluding to their previous honeymoon at Pebble Creek.

A smiling Nick stepped before the newly married couple, a couple who to look at, in this moment, could have stepped out of 1988 as easily as 2023. “Your chariot awaits,” he presented.

From somewhere on the grounds an ancient clock struck midnight. Adriana and Mikey had departed for their honeymoon a couple of hours before and it was just the core family and friends who remained. Even C.C. and Sophia were still up and about, both so desperately gratified by the day’s events. Cruz and Eden, even at this age not immune to nerves, crept in the back of the twice open doored stretch limo as their guests gathered around them.

“Chipper,” Cruz acknowledged from his seated position, while gently squeezing his son’s hand.

“Try not to break anything vital, Dad,” the younger man goaded.

“Just your head, son,” Cruz laughed.

At the other door, Eden was embracing Kelly. “I love you, sis,” the two Capwell women spoke in surprising unison. “And I love all of you so much!” Eden then shouted.

“Okay, okay, enough sap,” Mason Capwell insisted, as he moved towards the limo and, reaching across Eden, shook Cruz’s hand. “If I may leave you with a pearl?”

Pearl Bradford, Cruz’s best man, began to walk forward until Mason held his hand out to stop him. “Not you,” he remarked, this with a healthy dash of cynicism.

A jovial Pearl shrugged and stepped back as Cruz exhaled deeply and braced himself. “Do it, brother,” he granted Mason, “lay that wisdom on us.”

Mason grinned and looked upon these two cherished people who he considered friends as well as family. “The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life,” he preached eloquently and with great feeling, although this was not to last. “Men marry because they are tired,” he went on, “women, because they are curious – both are disappointed.”

“Mason, or Mr. Wilde if you prefer,” Eden addressed her elder brother impishly, as she drew him into a hug, “that was not helpful or beautiful in the least, but I do love you. Now move that aged face away before my husband closes the door on it. Blood on this fine white leather interior would not get Daddy his deposit back.”

Mason smiled brightly and blew an exaggerated kiss, as both Eden and Cruz closed their respective doors. Julia, meanwhile, grabbed her wayward husband’s hand. “Come Mason, time to put you to bed,” the vivacious lady ordered.

“See kids, every day is a honeymoon,” Mason joked to Samantha and Roger.

“Dad, don’t be gross!” Samantha cried.

“It’s okay, honey,” Julia naughtily whispered into Mason’s ear, “you can be a little bit gross.”

As the white Maybach Landauet sped away, Kelly, arm around Nick, stared wistfully ahead. She was so very content with the life she had lived and the life that was still to come.

February 1, 1985

Joe was standing across from the honeymoon bed, in the Capwell Hotel, holding an elated Kelly in his arms. “I can’t get enough of you baby,” he declared, as the smooth voice of Jeffrey Osbourne swelled through a small transistor radio.

“Why don’t you put me down?” Kelly counselled her husband of just a few hours.

“Any place in particular?” Joe wondered, “how about the sunken tub?”

“How about the floor,” Kelly proposed, “for now.”

Ignoring Kelly’s advice, Joe laid his bride down onto the silk sheets of the canopied bed. “Joe, this isn’t the floor,” she scolded.

“Well, it would be a shame not to use this big old bed, huh?” Joe asked playfully.

“Yeah, it sure would,” Kelly whispered as the newlyweds melted into each other’s arms.

June 16, 2023

“It sure would what, Kelly?” Nick questioned his wife, who seemed in an almost trance-like state, as she repeated 38-year-old words. They were standing alone on the long and winding driveway of the Capwell Estate, which was now empty of vehicles.

Kelly gazed upon to Nick, her eyes focusing on her husband, the man who, while he would never be a replacement to her first love, was certainly a worthy successor. “It sure would be a horrible thing to not have you in my life, Nicky,” she attested. “How about we call it a night?”

Nick held out his arms and scooped Kelly up effortlessly. “Your chariot awaits, milady.”

Based on characters created by Bridget and Jerome Dobson in association with New World Television and the National Broadcasting Company.