“Do you think she sold us to him for three thousand dollars?” Gemma asked them both, and Kate winced.
“That’s a hell of a way to put it. There must be some explanation. Dad wouldn’t have lied to us. He may not have told us the whole story, but he wouldn’t lie. And three thousand dollars was a lot of money to him then, probably all he had saved up. That was a lot for him to pay her. So it must have been important to both of them.”
“Is her death certificate in there too?” Caroline wanted to know. Kate went through all the papers again, but it wasn’t.
“She must have died after she signed these papers, because this is eleven months before we moved to California.”
Gemma looked at them both then, with a thunderstruck expression, and almost didn’t dare say what she was thinking. “What if she didn’t die? What if she’s alive somewhere? What if she’s been alive all this time, and he told us she was dead?” Suddenly, she was suspicious of him, more so than her sisters.
“Dad wouldn’t do that,” Kate defended him immediately. “There’s got to be an explanation. I wonder if he ever said something to Juliette about it.” They went through the file again and the only significant documents were the divorce decree and the relinquishment of Scarlett’s three children. They opened and read the letter then, it was from their mother to Jimmy, telling him how sorry she was, and that in spite of the papers she had signed, she hoped to see the children soon. She had written the letter a few days later, and must have died almost immediately after. Gemma’s suggestion that she hadn’t died was just too outlandish to consider. A man like him would never have told his children that their mother was dead if she wasn’t. They all agreed that he wouldn’t do that. But there was a terrible nagging feeling in Kate’s stomach. He hadn’t told them about the divorce and the relinquishment of her rights either. And what if Gemma was right, and their mother had sold him custody for three thousand dollars, a thousand for each of them? Selling the custody of children was illegal, but nothing on the check indicated why he had paid her the money. Only the timing of it had made them wonder.
Kate carefully put the yellowed papers back in the envelope, and decided to take them with her to her house. She wanted to read them again carefully. Maybe they had missed something. It was a mystery she wanted to solve quickly, to put their minds at rest. What they’d found raised questions for each of them about their father.
“Let’s do an internet search and see what turns up,” Gemma suggested, after Kate locked the safe and they left the office.
“Why? I’m sure she’s dead,” Caroline said in a whisper. She didn’t want to know. It was just too painful questioning their mother’s death, while trying to adjust to their father’s.
They walked to Kate’s house. Her computer was sitting on her desk. She turned it on, and without consulting her sisters, she typed in her mother’s name for a national search of her whereabouts, or death records.
“This is crazy,” Gemma said, as Caroline walked away and stared out the window. She was exhausted from the emotions of the past few days, and now they had added their mother’s death to it. All she wanted to do was go home to Peter and her children. Coming to the ranch always made her unhappy, especially this time. The father who had always put her in last place was gone. It was never going to get better now, he was never going to “fix” it. She wasn’t a star, and she didn’t run the ranch for him or do his bidding, so for him she had never existed. Even when she was a child, he always overlooked her, because she was bookish and a good student, which Kate and Gemma weren’t. They were more like him. Bright, but with a more limited scope of interest. Gemma only cared about her Hollywood life, and Kate the ranch. Caroline cared about art and literature and history and other intellectual pursuits in a broader world.
When Caroline turned around, she saw Kate staring at her computer screen, and Gemma gave a sharp gasp, when she saw it too.
“Holy shit, that’s not possible.” But her name and date of birth matched up. It was clearly the right person. She had given up the name Tucker, and was back to using her maiden name, Scarlett Jane Carson. A profile showed up on the screen, with a photograph of an attractive older woman with white hair.
“What does it say?” Caroline asked them both. She was on the other side of the computer. “Is she dead?” She hoped she was, she didn’t want to have to deal with a monumental lie on top of everything else, and a mother who had abandoned them thirty-nine years ago and given them up, not died, as their father had always told them.
“No. Dad lied to us,” Kate said in a strangled voice. “She’s alive, and living in Santa Barbara.” Less than an hour away. How long had she been there? For all these years? Less? They had lost their father suddenly, and now their mother had returned from the grave. Caroline bowed her head with a devastated look, as Kate and Gemma stared at each other.
“I want to go see her,” Gemma said immediately.
“I don’t.” Caroline was adamant. “Whatever the reason was she gave us up is their business. I don’t want to know. And I don’t want to see her. We don’t know her. She’s been dead to us for thirty-nine years, whether it was true or not.”
“You don’t have to see her,” Kate said quietly, trying to calm them both. She wanted to slow Gemma down, and reassure her youngest sister, who looked badly shaken.
“What about you?” Gemma asked Kate.
“I don’t know,” Kate said, staring at her computer screen again, and then at her sister. “I honestly don’t know what I want to do. I need some time to digest this.”
“Then I’ll go alone,” Gemma said in a strong voice. “I want to know why she gave us up, and why she never saw us again. Did she sell us? Did he pay her off? And why did he tell us she was dead, when she isn’t?” They were important questions, and in her heart of hearts, Kate wanted to know too. She just didn’t know if she could face the mother she had never known and had mourned all her life, on the heels of losing her father too.
They asked Juliette that afternoon if she knew anything about it, and she said she didn’t. They believed her. Their father didn’t share everything with her. And the answers to their questions had died with their father, and if they wanted answers, they had no choice. They would have to go and see their mother. For right now, it was more than any of them felt ready to deal with. The fact that they might have a living mother was shocking news to all of them. It made a liar of their father, and if true, they had been deprived of a mother by someone’s choice, either his or hers. She hadn’t been stricken by an early death, as they had always believed. Had she given them up willingly, or had he forced her to? The answer was important to each of them, even as adults. Was she a drug addict, a terrible person, a criminal? And why had he hidden it from them? To protect the memory of their mother, or to cover some foul deed of his own?
Caroline knew better than either of them that no woman walks away from three small children easily, unless she has no choice. What it told her was that none of them knew their father as well as they thought they did. Gemma’s hero, and the man Kate had given up her life for, to serve and protect, was the same man who had dismissed Caroline all her life because she was different from him. If this was true, he had a cruel side to him too.
Caroline had always thought him controlling and domineering. He knew how to manipulate all of them, and even Juliette, who loved him so deeply. He got them all to do what he wanted, supposedly for their own good. Had he taken the children from Scarlett, a young, innocent girl in Texas, who was probably no match for his strength and willfulness? They had each paid a price for not having a mother. Their lives would have been so different if she’d been there. Caroline could remember easily all the times she’d missed having a mother growing up, and fantasized about her. Girl Scouts, dressing for prom, becoming a woman with only Kate to explain it to her. And not being the son her father wanted or wanting to ride in the rodeo like K
ate. It had taken years of therapy to find herself after she married, and even while she was in college. Now it turned out that their mother was alive all along? Was she a derelict of some kind? It took Caroline’s breath away just thinking about it. She and Gemma went for a walk that afternoon, before starting an inventory of their father’s belongings, which was painful enough, without adding this to it. Kate went back to their father’s house to see Juliette again. She was trying to make sense of it too.
Juliette was wearing jeans and an old black sweater when she opened the door to Kate. She looked like she’d lost weight in the last few days, and she’d been thin enough before. Her mane of red hair, which she sometimes wore in a braid or a bun, was loose, and made her look a little wild when she let Kate in. She was intrinsically feminine and sexy, and very French, although she’d been in the States for twenty-four years. She spoke English well now, but had never lost her accent. She offered Kate coffee or wine, and had a glass of red wine in her hand. She wasn’t a heavy drinker, but she liked good wine, especially at a time like this. From one moment to the next, the bottom had fallen out of her world.
“Hello, Kate, come and sit down. It sounds like you found some big surprises in the safe. It’s strange. I always wondered about your mother, but Jimmy wouldn’t talk about her. He didn’t even say how she died. Only that she broke his heart when she died, and he couldn’t stay in Texas, so he came here. But I never suspected she was alive. You were so young when you moved here. What woman leaves three babies that age?”
“Maybe she was crazy or on drugs and he was trying to protect us,” Kate said, looking pensive. She preferred to think the best of him, especially now that he was gone. “Are you doing okay?”
Juliette shrugged in answer in her very Gallic way. “Not so okay,” she admitted. “He was too young to die. And he was so strong. I don’t understand. Life is so fragile. What about you? What will you do now about the ranch? Will you sell it?”
“Never,” Kate answered immediately. “I’ve got Thad to help me…and you.” She smiled at the woman who had been a friend but not a mother to her. Juliette was more of a woman than anything, and had no maternal instincts, and said so. She had never wanted children with him, although she loved him passionately, and hadn’t pretended to be a mother to his. She and Jimmy’s daughters were just good friends. Maybe it was why they got along with her. She never tried to displace the memory of the mother they fantasized about and had never known. Jimmy liked that about her too. She wasn’t someone who interfered, or imposed her will on him. She went with the flow, and had survived a loss of her own. She had been very much in love with the husband who had died in France when she was twenty-nine. She shared a more mature love with Jimmy, and a deep physical passion that had lasted until the end.
Juliette had read her copy of the will that morning, and Jimmy had left her a very respectable amount of money, without leaving his daughters wanting. He always said that he was land rich, and cash poor. He sank all his profits back into the ranch, which was how he had grown it into such a lucrative operation, with Juliette’s help, managing the money he made. She was smart about it, and had worked as an accountant in France. The same principles applied, although the ranch was a new experience for her. But she had given Jimmy solid advice that had served him well.
In addition to the money he had left her, he had given her the use of his house on the ranch for as long as she wished to live there. It was a handsome gift. She had family in France, but had made her life in the States with him, and hadn’t gone home in years. Her home on the ranch was secure, unless Kate sold it, which she was free to do, but she had no desire to sell. She wanted to preserve the empire her father built. And she had never wanted to live anywhere else.
“What are you going to do about your mother? Are you going to contact her?” Juliette asked, curious, lighting a cigarette. Occasionally, her brother still sent her the brand she had smoked in France. They were pungent and seemed a part of her, along with the subtle, musky perfume she wore.
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Gemma wants to see her. Caroline doesn’t. I haven’t made my mind up. The idea that we still have a mother is a major shock. There has to be a good reason why Dad never told us. He wouldn’t have lied to us if there wasn’t. And she gave us up.”
“He wouldn’t want the competition,” Juliette said in her soft voice. She knew him well. “Perhaps he wanted you to himself.” He was a selfish man and she knew it, but loved him anyway. She had no illusions about him, and loved him as he was, which was the strength of their relationship. She made no excuses for him, to the world, or to herself. Jimmy always had to be in control. Kate knew it too. It was at the root of Gemma’s battles with him. She refused to let him control her. So did Caroline, but she had tiptoed away. Gemma regularly slammed the door in her father’s face and stopped talking to him, and it only made him love her more, for the sheer guts of it. They were cut from the same cloth. Kate always tried to find a peaceful compromise, and gave in to him more often than she liked. But now she had the ranch to run the way she wanted. She hadn’t figured out what that meant yet, and for the moment, there was nothing she wanted to change, except maybe to enlarge their livestock auctions, which Juliette had been suggesting for several years. It was one of the biggest moneymakers in their business, and people came from all over the state, and as far away as Wyoming, Montana, and Texas. Kate had a lot to deal with now, without her father making all the decisions. It was both exciting and frightening. She hadn’t thought his time would come so soon. No one had expected it, and Juliette hadn’t either.
“What do you think you’re going to do now?” Kate asked her, although none of them had had time to figure it out yet.
“Maybe I’ll go to visit my brother this summer. I haven’t been back to France in ten years. It would be nice to see him.” Their parents were gone, and he owned the family home she had grown up in. He used it in the summer. She felt no deep attachment to it anymore, except that it was familiar. Her brother was a judge in Paris, his children were grown, and he was divorced, and had suggested that she come over now that Jimmy was gone. He had never been interested in her roots in France, had never visited, and had engulfed her in his life on the ranch. He hardly ever went to see Gemma in L.A. either, nor Caroline in Marin at all. His life was here, and so was Kate’s. Tucked in the Santa Ynez Valley. It was easy to forget that there was a broader world. To Jimmy, this was the world, the only one that mattered or that he cared about, and he was king in his world.
“We were going to start the inventory this afternoon,” Kate said to Juliette hesitantly, “if that’s okay with you. I don’t know when the girls will be back, and I’d rather do it when they’re here. The estate taxes would be due in nine months, and we’ll have to get an appraisal.” She wanted to know if there was anything her sisters wanted, but there was nothing of great value in her father’s home. It was all comfortable furniture of little worth. It was warm and cozy, with well-worn pieces he had had for years, and neither he nor Juliette paid much attention to the décor. Their life was mostly outdoors.
“The girls can have whatever they want,” Juliette said easily. She wasn’t attached to material things, and Jimmy hadn’t been either, although their home was friendly and welcoming. Kate glimpsed a hat stand in the hall, with her father’s battered hats on it, and it tugged at her heart a few minutes later when she hugged Juliette and left. She found her sisters back at her house, making a salad for lunch.
They had been reading the will and noticed that their father had left Thad a very generous bequest, in honor of Thad’s long years of dedication to him. It would allow him to buy a house somewhere if he wanted, or make an investment in a small ranch of his own. As with the bequest to Juliette, both Caroline and Gemma thought it was fair, and didn’t begrudge it to him. Kate was happy for him, and knew he deserved it. He had been her father’s right-hand man for nineteen years, and had he
lped him improve and grow the ranch in countless ways.
“What about you guys?” Kate asked them over lunch, before they went to their father’s house to start the inventory. “We own the ranch together now. How do you feel about that?”
“Fine, as long as I don’t have to live here, and you run it,” Gemma stated clearly. It would be a major windfall for all three of them if they sold the ranch. The ten thousand acres their father had accumulated over the years were worth a fortune now. And their livestock auctions were very lucrative. But neither of them was desperate for money. Only Kate had neither husband nor career, all she had were her years of service to her father on the ranch. “You could buy us out, if either of us ever want to sell,” Gemma said, smiling.
“If I have the money,” Kate reminded them. “Dad always plowed everything we made back into the business, or used it to buy more land,” she said. “Dad invested in bonds,” which was how Juliette and Thad would probably get their bequests. “We never have a lot of loose cash, except from the auctions. I’d have to sell bonds and some of the land to buy you out,” and she would hate to do that.
“I’ll have to talk to Peter about it,” Caroline said vaguely. She consulted him for all decisions, even the contracts for her books. Kate always thought that she had traded their controlling father for her husband, but would never say it to her. She just hoped that Peter would never push Caroline to sell her share, and want Kate to come up with the money for some other hot investment, and impact the ranch to do it. He had no great loyalty to her family or the ranch, and had never liked her father. He expected his wife’s first loyalty to be to him once they were married, and it was.
“You should come down with the kids now,” Kate suggested. “You never use the house Dad built for you.” It stood empty all the time, and had for years. “All it needs is a little furniture. You could furnish it in a day at Ikea. You don’t need anything fancy here.” They had expensive modern furniture in Marin, and had used a decorator to achieve the right look to impress their guests with how much they’d spent, particularly on art. Peter had a showy side to him that Caroline didn’t, and had grown up with fine things.
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