“I think it’s pretty unlikely,” Kate said to calm them both, “that she’s a murderer. Maybe just a bad mother.” The discussion was getting heated, and she could see that Caroline was feeling cornered, which was how discussions between the three of them often ended up. Caroline was no match for Gemma, just as she hadn’t been for their father. Kate didn’t want her packing up and going back to San Francisco because Gemma badgered her, which was the way Caroline handled unpleasantness. She ran. “Look, Caroline doesn’t have to go. This is a free choice. Why don’t you and I go, and look around on an exploring mission,” she said to Gemma. “We might not see her or find her. She may have moved. She might not want to see us,” Kate said calmly, as Gemma nodded.
“Are we going to call and ask to see her?” Gemma inquired. Kate had been debating about that herself.
“I’d rather not. Why don’t we just drive by her house and get a feeling for where and how she lives? We can always call her if we want to, and ask to see her. If she looks like a total mess, or is falling down drunk in the street, we may not want to see her, and let it go at that. That would at least explain why Dad kept her out of our lives. Or maybe she kept herself out of our lives. Maybe she didn’t want to see us, and Dad was trying to protect us from that rejection. I know he wasn’t an easy person, but this can’t be all Dad’s fault. She has to have played a part in it too. Maybe she abused us, or neglected us, or just didn’t want to see us for all these years. She could have shown up by now. That’s all I really want to know. What happened and why did she leave? And why did she never come back later? Why he lied is his part of the equation, and he’s not here to tell us. Maybe we can figure it out ourselves from her side of the story, and then we’ll feel better about it now that we know about her. I’d never have gone looking for her. It never occurred to me to check it out, or doubt what he told us. Now that we know there’s a discrepancy, and she’s less than an hour from here, I want to go and find out what I can,” Kate said.
“So do I,” Gemma said, nodding at Kate. She agreed with everything she’d said. Caroline didn’t.
“Well, I don’t have that kind of curiosity. She wasn’t here, and I don’t need her anymore, so I’d rather let sleeping dogs lie.”
“And let us do the dirty work,” Gemma reproached her again, and Caroline stood up.
“You don’t need to do anything for me, Gemma. I don’t need to know about her, and don’t even want to. If it’s what you need, fine. But leave me out of it. And if you decide to meet her, don’t bother to include me. I won’t go.” She had made herself clear and Kate respected it, and didn’t want to push her. She could see that her younger sister was way out of her comfort zone, and they were crossing her boundaries, and Kate didn’t want to do that and make her feel ganged up on. Gemma had a powerful personality, like their father, and Kate didn’t want to add to its impact on Caroline. As always, she was the peacemaker, and enjoyed that role, which suited her personality.
“That’s fine, Caro. Don’t stress about it. Gem and I will go, and fill you in later, IF you want us to.” She turned to Gemma then. “What about tomorrow?” Gemma nodded agreement. “We can leave around ten?”
“Works for me. I have nothing to do here.” The dinner lasted a few more minutes, and then Caroline left, with the excuse of checking on her children at her house. Gemma stayed to help Kate put the dishes in the machine.
“Wow, she is sensitive. I forget how fragile she is sometimes.” Gemma looked surprised.
“So did Dad. He didn’t know how to handle her, so he ignored her. I’m not sure what was worse, bullying her, or ignoring her. He never knew how to handle people like her.”
“I don’t think I do either,” Gemma admitted. “She just crawls right into her shell, and refuses to engage.”
“It’s who she is. I think Peter is more like Dad than she realizes. He makes most of her decisions for her, and she lets him. But she’s stubborn once she makes up her mind.” Gemma nodded agreement. It was the opposite personality from hers and her father’s. Kate was kind of a hybrid between the two. She wasn’t forceful, but she had her own opinions, and confronted things head-on, but in a gentle way. Caroline had been in hiding for most of her life. And Peter’s early criticism of her hadn’t helped. He loved her, but had been vocal about not liking where she came from, and his parents had added to it. They had wanted their only son to marry a debutante. Caroline was smart and loving, but not that.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Gemma asked her. Kate thought about it and then nodded.
“Yeah, I am. What if she turns out to be a weirdo or a creep, or a really terrible person?” Kate responded.
“That would be sad, but at least we’ll know. Now that we’ve found her, I’m dying of curiosity. We don’t need her anymore, but she’s still our mother. I wish she’d turned up a long time ago. I could have used a mother then. Having just a father wasn’t enough. He tried to cover all the bases, but he was all guy, and pure testosterone, and Juliette didn’t really get deeply involved with him until we were in college. It was too late by then, and she was careful not to step on Dad’s toes and get too engaged. It was smart of her, because he wouldn’t have liked it if she had, but it didn’t do much for us. I’m past needing a mother now, unless she’s fabulously wealthy and would like to pay off all my debts.” Kate grinned. She worried about Gemma and the pinch she was in.
“How’s that going?” Kate asked her.
“Okay. The rent I’m getting for the house will pay my mortgage, but I’ve got a lot of debts, more than I realized. I’m going to need to take all the money jobs I can get for a while, to try and make up for the show getting canceled. I hate to do it, but I may need you to buy out my share of the ranch by the fall.” Kate nodded. She didn’t like it, but she wasn’t surprised. Gemma needed money, and soon, if she didn’t find another big job. She had an expensive lifestyle, and wasn’t shy about running into debt. Their father had complained about it to Kate before.
“Thad said he’d be willing to buy it if it comes to that,” Kate reminded her.
“How do you feel about that?” Gemma asked her.
“I’d rather not,” Kate said, “but I probably wouldn’t have the money fast enough to help you out. We don’t have that much liquidity. As Dad said, land rich and cash poor. If you want to cash out, I’d have to sell off some land to someone. It might as well be Thad, who has the best interests of the ranch at heart, and won’t encroach on us, or try to steal more.”
“I hate to do that to you.” Gemma felt badly about it but she had no choice. “We’ll see how things look in September. There’s almost no work in summer. Everything’s pretty dead.”
“Good, then you can relax here.” Kate smiled at her. They had finished cleaning up the kitchen by then. “I like having you here, Gem,” she said warmly and Gemma hugged her. “I’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow, and we’ll head out.”
“Too bad Caroline doesn’t want to come too.”
“She doesn’t need to,” Kate said easily. “You and I should be able to handle one mother between us.” Kate grinned and Gemma laughed.
“Hell, yeah. We handled Dad, didn’t we? The human tornado. Shit, our mother will be a piece of cake,” she said, and Kate laughed, as Gemma left. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day, meeting the mother who had supposedly been dead for thirty-nine years. And now she was alive.
Chapter 7
Kate got all her morning chores done, and spent an hour in the office, returning calls, sending emails, and signing expense reports, before she got in her truck to pick Gemma up. When Kate got there, Gemma was standing on her porch in black designer shorts, a white T-shirt, and Italian sandals that laced up to her knee. She looked ten feet tall and very stylish, as she slung a white bag over her shoulder and ran down her porch steps and got in the truck. Her shining dark brown hair was tied in a neat knot, and her b
lue eyes were the color of the summer sky, as she put on dark glasses that Kate suspected cost more than the bag on her shoulder. Gemma always looked fabulous and spent a fortune to do it, which was part of why she was in debt now.
Kate was wearing jeans and a plaid work shirt. She’d ridden for two hours that morning with Thad, while they talked ranch business and checked the livestock. She had on battered cowboy boots she’d had for at least fifteen years, and one of her father’s straw Stetsons she’d grabbed from a peg in the barn, since she’d forgotten her own at home.
“Do we look like stereotypes or what?” Gemma laughed, looking them both over. “The cowgirl and the Hollywood slut.”
“Not slut, ‘star,’ ” Kate corrected her. “Can I have your autograph?”
“I charge for that nowadays,” Gemma said, as they both saw Caroline run out of her house, waving her arms. She was wearing a denim skirt and espadrilles and a crisp white shirt. Kate stopped the truck to talk to her.
“Something wrong?”
“No, I decided to come. Thad said he’d watch the kids,” she said, as she opened the door and hopped into the backseat of the truck. Kate and Gemma exchanged a glance and didn’t comment. They were both trying not to smile. But at least Caroline had come out of hiding to get a glimpse of their mother. Gemma was amused to see that she looked like the suburban housewife she was, all prim and proper and squeaky clean, with her blond hair in a ponytail. Kate was wearing her hair in the familiar braid down her back, so it didn’t get in her way.
Kate turned the radio on to ease the tension. She chose a country music station, and Gemma flipped the dial to rap. Caroline groaned from the backseat.
“God, Gemma, you’re as bad as my kids. They listen to that crap all the time. Peter yells at me about it, but I can’t stop them. It’s all kids listen to these days.” Gemma mimicked it and knew the words to the song, and did such a good imitation of it that she had them laughing for the next several songs, as she got more and more outrageous, and then turned the music down. It had helped to relax all three of them. Gemma was a born clown.
When they got to Santa Barbara, they took the Montecito exit, which was the posh part of Santa Barbara where the expensive homes were, and some very famous people lived. Hollywood types who bought houses in Santa Barbara usually lived there.
“Shit, I hope she’s rich,” Gemma said to break the tension. “Maybe we can blackmail her or something. I wonder if she has a husband and other kids who don’t know about us.”
“We weren’t illegitimate, for heaven’s sake,” Caroline said to her. “We’re not like those people who show up on someone’s doorstep and say ‘Hi, I’m your daughter. You gave me away when you were fourteen. Remember me?’ And then the mother drops dead from the shock, right after the husband says ‘Who’s that, honey?’ ” Her sisters grinned. All three of them were nervous, and had no idea what they were getting into, whether they’d even see her, or what kind of reception they’d get if they did. She might refuse to speak to them, throw them out, or call the police. “Maybe she has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember us,” Caroline offered as an alternative. Kate slowed the truck. They were on a street of handsome homes, not the fanciest in Montecito, but pretty houses of human scale, the right size for a family, with neat landscaping and attractive gardens. Then she stopped.
“That’s the house.” Kate pointed. It was a medium sized, fairly elegant traditional house, with a flower garden in front and well-trimmed hedges. It was attractive and well kept. It looked like proper people of comfortable means lived there.
“Now what do we do?” Gemma whispered, as though their mother could hear them if they talked too loud.
“I don’t know,” Kate answered. “Do you want to sit here for a while and see if someone comes out?” She hadn’t formulated a plan for what to do when they got there. All her energies had been focused on finding the address, which had been easy.
“Yeah, let’s wait for a while,” Gemma said. Her heart was pounding and Caroline was staring at the house and not saying a word. Kate found a parking place by backing up, just a few car lengths from the house. They had a perfect view of the front door and the garage, in case anyone entered or exited.
They’d been there for half an hour, and were just starting to relax, when the front door opened, and a well-dressed older man came out, opened the garage, got in a silver Mercedes sedan, and drove away, and the garage door closed on its own a few minutes later.
“Are you sure you have the right address?” Gemma asked Kate.
“How many Scarlett Jane Carsons can there be in Santa Barbara, or the whole country, with the right birth date?” she responded, and Gemma nodded.
“Good point.”
A few minutes after the man left, the front door opened again, and a tall older woman walked out. She was wearing white jeans, a pink silk blouse, and white running shoes. She dug in her bag for her keys, locked the house, and used a remote to open the garage. She looked right at them in the truck for an instant, as though she knew they were there, and there was a collective gasp. It was the woman they’d seen on the Internet. She looked exactly like Gemma with white hair, and a little bit like Kate. She had their height and their build, and her face was an older version of Gemma’s. She was still beautiful at her age. They knew that she was sixty-two years old. And as though pulled out of the truck by a magnet, Kate got out of the car, walked a few steps, and just stood there to get a better look at her. She couldn’t take her eyes off her, and as the garage door opened, Gemma got out of the truck too, and went to stand next to Kate. They didn’t have the courage to approach, but just stood there, watching her. There was a white Mercedes station wagon in the garage, but instead of getting into it, the woman stopped and turned, and looked at them again. No one moved for an eternity, and then she slowly walked toward them, with a stunned expression. Both Kate and Gemma wanted to turn and run, but they couldn’t. She stood a few feet from them in her driveway, and Kate spoke up in a choked voice.
“I’m sorry,” she fumbled, “we were just admiring your house….We’re tourists…from L.A.” But Kate looked more like Wyoming than L.A. in her plaid shirt and cowboy boots.
“I know who you are,” the white-haired woman who was Gemma’s lookalike said softly. “I gave up hope years ago that this would ever happen.” Kate nodded, not knowing what to say, since they hadn’t hoped for it. They didn’t even know she was alive until their father died in May. There was a long, awkward pause, and they could see her hands shaking as she held the remote and her keys. She looked very pale. She was even prettier up close, and when she smiled, she looked even more like Gemma. It was like looking in the mirror. Gemma could see it too. “Would you like to come inside?” They hesitated and both nodded, and Kate felt obliged to say something.
“Yes, thank you. I’m Kate, and this is Gemma.” The woman smiled broadly then.
“I know. I can tell. You haven’t changed since you were two and three. Not much anyway. How did you find me?”
“We didn’t know you were alive until our dad died last month. We found your divorce papers in his safe. We didn’t know about that either. I did an internet search, and there you were. Have you always been here?”
“For about twenty-five years. I lived in L.A. before that. I came to California about a year before you did.” She had been this close. As they were talking, Kate sensed some movement behind her, and turned to see Caroline standing behind her and Gemma.
“This is Caroline,” Kate introduced her. Caroline looked paralyzed for a moment, like a deer in the headlights, and then nodded.
“You’re all here. I’m sorry about Jimmy. I didn’t know.”
“It was very sudden,” Kate said, and Scarlett nodded, with a pained look on her face. It was clearly not a happy memory for her, hearing his name.
“Let’s go inside,” she said gently. She led them
into a front hall that was beige and white marble and led into a living room with a spectacular view, all the way to the ocean, with a terrace outside. There were comfortable seating areas and an outdoor fireplace for chilly nights. She led them outside, invited them to sit down, and offered them something to drink, which they refused. She excused herself for a minute, called someone on her cellphone, and canceled a lunch date. She said something important had come up and she was sorry, and then turned her full attention to her daughters.
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say, I’m so stunned to see you. I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you again. I thought by now, you’d forgotten me,” she said in a wistful voice. She seemed like a gentle person, but who knew what she had been like in her youth. She might have mellowed with age.
“We thought you were dead,” Gemma said with her usual bluntness. Their mother nodded and wasn’t surprised.
“I know he told you that when you were younger. I thought by now he’d have told you the truth.”
“It would have made him a liar. I guess he didn’t want to admit that,” Kate said more diplomatically. “We found your divorce papers in the safe after he died. We never knew you were divorced. That’s what made me look for you online. There was no death certificate with the other papers.” It was obvious why not now. “And we found the relinquishment papers,” she said more softly. “It was too late to ask Dad what really happened, so we wanted to see you. We would have wanted to meet you anyway,” she added, “now that we know you’re alive.”
“I made a terrible mistake. The worst mistake of my life,” she said, referring to the papers she had signed. She went to an outdoor bar then, and poured them each a glass of water, and one for herself, and sat down with them. “I suppose you want to know what happened.” She was grateful for the chance to tell them herself, and was suddenly glad they hadn’t heard it from their father, who might have told them a different version of the story. The gospel according to JT. She knew he had never forgiven her for what she’d done, and the punishment had been severe, a life sentence for her, which he thought appropriate in the circumstances, and most of it had nothing to do with their children.
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