“What about travel? How much of that will it entail? I don’t want to get into a position where I am traveling all the time and leaving my family. Tina and I want to try to have a baby later this year. I need to be here for her during the pregnancy and for our baby after he or she is born.”

“You will be. There is some travel involved, but that would have been the case even with the gallery. The beauty of it is as Director you’ll have a corporate jet at your disposal. You can set your own schedule. You’ll have a staff to do the scouting so the most you might travel for is to present the grant or do some PR work for the foundation.”

“Peggy this is huge. Obviously, I will need to talk to Tina and Kristen. You are right Kristen is a gem. I feel very confident about her taking full responsibility for the gallery. I think she’s ready now, but like you I still want to keep my hands in it. Let’s get together tomorrow. I can ask Tina to take the kids to the center with her if you like. That will keep them occupied so we can work.”

“That would be perfect. Thank you for at least considering it.”

“How could I not. I know the great work that the foundation has funded over the years. I would love to be a part of the decision-making process. Yes, I will give it very serious consideration. Thank you.”

“I guess we better start heading back. If Tina agrees I can arrange for my driver to bring the kids here in the morning. He can drive all of them to the center. If you don’t mind being my chauffer for the day, I can leave him at their disposal.”

“It would be my honor. Do you want to also visit the gallery tomorrow?”

“That would be great if we could do that. I’d like to get the place emptied out as soon as possible so we can turn it over to the real estate people. The current manager has taken full inventory and he has photographs and descriptions, artist’s bio’s, price etc. Everything is categorized so we can do a quick walk through and then take the information with us to review more closely later.”
“Great. Why don’t I plan to pick you up at the beach house at say 10:00 am? We can spend a couple of hours at the gallery then have lunch and spend the afternoon working on the foundation stuff. Then we can arrange to meet Tina and kids for dinner. Maybe we can take them to Santa Monica Pier. Angie loves it there. They have these bumper car rides and now that she’s tall enough to ride by herself she’s always challenging me. She’s won the last two times, so I want an opportunity to win back my title as the Bumper Car Champ.”

“I don’t know if you want to try that with Wilson and Jang Yin along. I’m afraid you might end up losing to all three of them. Can you handle that?”

“Probably not, but of course now I can’t resist taking on all three.” Peggy laughs at Bette and takes her arm by the elbow as they walk towards home.

“You’re too special. I’m really going to love living here.”

“Speaking of the kids. How are they handling the idea of you moving across the country? They won’t see you as often, will they?”

“I’m trying to convince Winnie and the kids to move out here with me. She’s one of those die-hard New Yorker’s but she really doesn’t have any other family. Of course, I will still have the kids when they are on school breaks and for the summer vacations. I’ll make frequent trips to New York to see them and to celebrate the milestones and such, but once I get settled here and we get the foundation running I will work on getting them relocated.”

“Well if anyone can convince her it’s you. You just have a way about you that makes it so hard to deny you anything. Believe me I speak from experience.”

“That sounds to me like you’ve just accepted my proposition…”

“God you’re worse than my daughter. I can’t deny her anything either. Don’t ever gang up on me OK?”

“I don’t think I can make that promise. I have a feeling Angie and her grandma are going to be co-conspirators on a lot of occasions from now on.”

“Did I say I was happy that you were moving to LA?”

“Come on smartass. Let’s get back to our family.”

“Yeah. Let’s.”