For the record? No one knows that. But back to Paris.

I remained in adventure mode, indulging in very satisfying but safe naked times with beautiful boys, traveled all over, painted whenever the muse struck, and just lived. Lived in that way you can only live in your early twenties, when nothing truly epic has happened yet, and it’s time to just dance.

But then my father had a heart attack, which sobered me up fast and brought my traveling ass home. Seeing my strong, invincible father falter like that brought everything into focus. Family trumps everything, and soon after his recovery, I was back in the fold as if I’d never left. I’d had my adventure, I was now twenty-three, and math was calling. I’d actually missed the certainty that came from working with numbers. Safe, solid, wonderfully complex simple numbers.

I retained some of my independence, though. Early on, I got lucky with a computer program I’d written, and used the money from selling that license to fund my own start-up. So I was within the realm of the family business, but on my own two feet. Which were still clad in combat boots. And though I liked my comfortable life, sometimes I caught myself holding my pen like a brush, mimicking brush strokes when I was puzzling out a particularly tricky problem. Sometimes I missed that romantic, wild, carefree lifestyle.

So hearing Simon talk about where he was and what he was doing made me a bit wistful. “Sounds amazing,” I said with a sigh. I was dying for an adventure!

“What’s up, Viv?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“Tell me everything you know about Mendocino,” I said.

“Mendocino? As in California? As in, three hours north of where I live?”

“That’s the one.”

“Um, it’s on the beach.”

“That’s descriptive.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

“I just found out that my Great-Aunt Maude, who I barely knew, passed away and left me her beach house, her ranch, and everything that comes with it.”

“Holy shit! So when are you coming out?”

“Not sure yet,” I replied, chewing on my fingernail, then sat on my hand. Nasty habit.

“What’s your family say?”

“I literally found out thirty minutes ago. My family knows nothing about it,” I answered, chewing on my fingernail. Again! I grabbed a sock from the dresser and put it over my hand.

“Wait, wait, so this is, like, all yours?”

“Apparently. The attorney said I can go out there to sign everything and take possession, or he can handle selling everything for me.”

“Don’t sell it,” he said instantly.

“Oh, I’m totally not. At least not until I’ve seen it again.” Huh. Looks like I was going.

“Cool,” Simon said.

I agreed. Very cool.

Now I just had to tell my family. Me going off on an adventure? These conversations traditionally never went well.

I took the sock off my hand.

Two weeks, three fights, and four packed bags later, I was ready to fly across the country. Telling my family had been interesting, especially my mother. It was her aunt who had passed away, albeit one she had no contact with. Aunt Maude had pulled away from the entire family toward the end of her life. My mom called a family meeting with her sisters, Gloria and Kimberly, spoke with our family attorney, spoke with Aunt Maude’s attorney, and realized it was all very clear. Maude had died without wanting anyone to know except me, her sole heir.

My brothers—Michael, Jared, Greg, Kevin, and Chris—were divided on how it all went down. Michael and Kevin were pissed that they didn’t get anything, while Greg, Jared, and Chris just chalked it up to crazy Great-Aunt Maude. What they all agreed on, including my father, was that I shouldn’t be heading out there.

“Peanut, do you have any idea what land like that, especially right on the beach, is worth? Why in the world are you not selling it?” my father asked, after all the details of the will had been explained and analyzed.

I rolled my eyes. He’d been calling me Peanut since I’d been the size of an actual peanut. But if by twenty-nine the nickname hadn’t gone away, I would be a peanut now and for always.

“Maybe I will sell it eventually. But for now? I just want to get out there, see what’s what. Then I’ll decide.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Who knows, maybe I’ll just stay out there.”

I went from Peanut to young lady in 2.2 seconds.

“Young lady, would you care to explain to me exactly how you intend to run your business from California?”

“Dad, I’m hardly pulling up stakes and moving to California. Although technically I can do my job from anywhere, that’s beside the point.” I tamped down the internal thrill I got from just saying those words out loud. I could work from anywhere in the world, one of the perks of owning an online business. But I needed to focus on the Right Now. This was a fact-finding mission, not an adventure.

It’s totally an adventure! Internal Carefree Happypants Viv was dancing a jig of excitement. But External Serious Viv had to keep it together, especially in front of her father. So even though I couldn’t keep my mouth from turning up at the corners, I tried to convince my father that this was not like when I ran off to Europe.

“So you’re coming back soon, then?” he asked pointedly.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” I interrupted as he continued to sputter. No one ever interrupted my dad, except me. My father owned a computer software company that had been around since the seventies. He got in on the ground floor of the emerging industry and had been smart enough to stay ahead of the pack. He’d built his business from scratch, and now two of my brothers ran different divisions, two were software engineers working on new programs, and one was being groomed to take over for my father when he retired. Which he swore would be never, but my mother had other ideas.