”“I’m sorry about your dad, Cole. I thought he was a fine man. That’s not what’s driving you to this, is it?”“No sir. I admit that Dad�...s passing has made me aware of exactly how vulnerable we all are and how fragile life is. And I don’t want to waste a minute of it. But I want Ashley here by my side as my partner in running this ranch. I promise I’ll support her in school and we’ll both finish, though we might not be able to do it as quickly as we’d have liked. This is a critical time and an. You’ll see the entrance on your left through the French doors.”The floor of the stuccoed hall was covered with large terracotta tiles. Light came from a number of wrought-iron chandeliers. There were frescos on the walls - mostly fanciful pastoral scenes in a primitive style - of smiling Latinos in colorful costumes harvesting grapes under a perfectly blue sky – a painted sky that stretched across the high curved ceiling. Case paused when to his right he noticed a wide archway that led into a. “Eight years on, though and I’m not sure he understands much about either art or me. He knows what he likes though… and he knows what he likes to be seen to like. And who he likes to be seen with. Style over substance, that’s him. Of course, maybe that describes me as well. I did abandon all the ambitions I professed to have, so that I could be … whatever this is.”“Lady Tabitha of Downton Abbey?”“That’s right,” she said with a wry grimace. “A version of that. Nouveau riche royalty.” She tried. Chalk it up to peer pressure, I guess. We all reached outside and Claire hailed a cab to take us all home. She got us a mini-van cab and we all jumped in. Bobby sat in the back, Jacob laid his head on my lap in the middle row, with David and Claire in the front row. They lived the closest and would be dropped off first. As we were driving to David and Claire's house, Jacob was knocked out. Everyone joked on how much of a lightweight he was, but I defended my baby saying he just over did it.