They both got an email from Kate a week later. With Gemma leaving the country in December, she wanted to be sure that they would all come home for Thanksgiving on the ranch. It was going to be their first one without their father. But ironically, now they would have their mother with them for the first time, which was not lost on any of them. He had exited, and she had entered. It was a constantly shifting scene. Juliette was going back to France in December, and Kate wanted her with them on Thanksgiving too.
“Your family seems to be on the move these days,” Thad said when she told him about it. He was working on the plans for his house, their house, and Kate was going to freshen up her father’s house and redo some things before they moved in. Everyone had a project and was busy as life continued to happen, and people came and went.
“It’s kind of like a TV series,” he commented, and Kate laughed.
“Yes, it is. Especially with my family.” Caroline didn’t know if she wanted to get divorced, Gemma was leaving for Africa and moving to London after that, and Juliette was going home to France.
“I’m glad you’re not going anywhere,” Thad said, as he wrapped his powerful arms around her in bed that night. At least the ranch was a constant they could all count on, even now that their father was no longer there. But his legacy lived on in each of them.
Chapter 14
Thanksgiving at the ranch was a joyous affair, far more than any of them had expected. It was the first time their father wasn’t there, which they knew would be hard. But it was also the first time that all the girls had been together for the holiday in a long time. Gemma and Caroline had assiduously avoided holidays at the ranch for years, and this year, they were all there, and Caroline had brought her children. Peter was going to have them for a week over Christmas, so he had let her have them for all of Thanksgiving. He was going home to his parents’ in New York.
Scarlett and Roberto were there, which was the most dramatic change of all. Not in their wildest imagination could they have thought a year before that on this Thanksgiving their father would no longer be there and the mother he had claimed was dead for nearly all of his daughters’ lives would be with them instead. She added a happy presence and was thrilled to share the holiday with her daughters and grandchildren. Scarlett had brought all of the desserts, and kept looking at her daughters in wonder, as though unable to believe she was really there. Roberto was a welcome addition to the group, and male company for Thad in a heavily female-dominated environment. It was Juliette’s final gathering with the family before she left for France on Sunday. Her bags were packed, and she was sad to leave, but excited about going back to France.
Kate made a toast to their father at the beginning of the meal, that without him they wouldn’t be there and none of this would be happening. They were enjoying the home he had provided them, and the family, and she warmly welcomed Scarlett, who had turned out to be the best gift of the year. She acknowledged Juliette and how much they would miss her as the woman who had stayed for the longest summer in history, and they all laughed. She wished Gemma well on her exciting new journey and adventures and reminded her to Skype and FaceTime whenever she could. They were going to miss her so much too. They drank to all of it, and the champagne poured liberally through lunch. And everyone said that the pies Scarlett had brought were delicious. They were everyone’s favorites, pumpkin, apple, pecan, and mince. That way there were no hard decisions to make. Everyone had a slice of each with whipped cream or homemade vanilla ice cream, provided by the cook Kate had hired to make their Thanksgiving meal.
“This is the best Thanksgiving I’ve ever had,” Thad whispered to Kate, sitting next to her. He took on the role of host graciously, and Gemma smiled as she watched them. They made a handsome couple and looked happy. They were planning some improvements to the ranch that their father wouldn’t have liked or approved of, but that Thad and Kate thought were necessary. The next generation was in control now, and Juliette agreed that it could never have happened while he was alive. He never would have let anyone run it or make changes, except himself.
Caroline was planning a trip with Morgan and Billy, to visit Gemma in London, and they promised Juliette they would come to France on their next trip. But she was coming back to the Valley in May anyway, for the unveiling of a memorial monument to Jimmy for all to see at the center of the ranch. They were putting it up on the anniversary of his death, and Juliette had promised to be there. She said she’d be starving for some good barbecue by then, and everyone laughed, but she seemed happy to be going home. She was ready, and the ranch no longer seemed like her home without him. His absence was as powerful as his presence had been, and Kate felt it too.
“I used to hate holidays as a kid,” Thad admitted to Kate. “They were so bad in some of the foster homes I was in. People just took in foster kids to work them like slaves. A few of them were nice but not many. They took us for the money the state paid them. I never had a real Thanksgiving or Christmas or a birthday.” But that had changed now, and he finally had the family he had dreamed of all his life, with Kate, not as the foreman, but as her partner in life. They had so many good things in store for them. Gemma was trying to convince them to come to London too, but they said they were too busy on the ranch to go that far and stay away for long. Gemma wasn’t going to give up easily, and intended to harass them until they did. She was going to be back in time for their father’s monument installation too. They agreed to delay it a few weeks until the end of May, so she could be there during her summer break.
* * *
—
Everyone was so full they could hardly leave the table at the end of the meal, and the weekend went by too quickly. It had seemed sad to Morgan and Billy at first not to have their father there. But Thad and their aunts kept them so busy that by the day after Thanksgiving they were in good spirits and having fun. Peter had called from New York, and had finally admitted to his parents that he and Caroline were separated. He told them that he was entirely to blame and didn’t go into detail. He called Caroline and the children on Thanksgiving, and they talked to their grandparents.
They left on Sunday morning to go back to San Francisco. Gemma left shortly after, to go back to L.A. and finish packing. The movers were coming that week to remove the furniture she was keeping and put it in storage with her art, and she was leaving for Zimbabwe in two weeks to start work.
That afternoon, Juliette left to catch her flight to L.A. and then Paris. It was a deeply emotional moment when she left the ranch, as she and Kate clung to each other with tears running down their faces.
“Take care of yourself,” Kate said through her tears, “and come back if you’re not happy there. We love you. You always have a home here.”
“And you too. Come to visit me.” She patted Kate’s face as the two women cried. “Be happy, Kate. Your father didn’t understand many things and he was a stubborn man, but he loved you, and he wanted all of you to be happy. I don’t think he ever knew what he did to you, telling you that your mother was dead.” Kate nodded. She thought that too, and wasn’t as angry as her sisters about it. “Be happy with Thad. There is nothing more wonderful than the love of a good man.” She smiled through her own tears then. “I have no regrets with Jimmy. It was everything we wanted and needed. He was my world,” she said softly, “and my sun and moon. I wish that for you and Thad.” In a way she had been Kate’s role model for how to love a man, with gentleness and loyalty and pride, and forgiveness for his failings. They had been good for each other, and she hoped that she and Thad would be too.
Kate stood and waved as the car drove away with Juliette, with Thad standing next to her with an arm around her shoulders. Kate hoped that she would be happy now, even without Jimmy, and that his love would carry her into the future, with the years they had shared.
“I’m going to miss her so much,” Kate said, still crying when the car was gone. Her quiet p
resence had been a blessing to all of them, not only to her father. He had been a lucky man to have her.
“I’m here for you, Kate,” Thad said gently. And they walked slowly back to Kate’s house. They were moving into her father’s house in a few weeks, after they gave it a fresh coat of paint. They would be officially living together then, until they moved into his house in a year, when it was ready. They had much to look forward to. And Juliette’s warmth and daily presence on the ranch would be long remembered.
* * *
—
Gemma’s arrival at Harare international airport in Zimbabwe, after a thirty-six hour trip from L.A., with stops in London and Johannesburg and a switch of airlines, was more rigorous than expected. It took them an additional hour to find one of her bags, which had mysteriously gone in with the freight. The customs officials were astounded by how many suitcases she had brought and she had to explain that she was not selling clothes, she was planning to wear them. Finally, in frustration, she told them she was a movie star, and luckily they believed her. They were fascinated by her. She had an armload of bangle bracelets on, and they wanted to know also if she was a jeweler. She knew that someone from the crew was coming to meet her, to take her to another flight which would bring her closer to their high-end camp where they would be shooting among elephants and other animals in a national park.
She came through customs feeling a little deflated and disoriented. The trip had been endless, and she suddenly realized that she was on the other side of the globe in a totally unfamiliar world. There were people in elaborate costumes, riotous colors, exotic sights and smells, friendly looking locals, and African dialects being spoken around her. She was fascinated by all of it and felt a little lost too. She looked around to find someone holding a sign with her name, not sure whether to laugh or cry or scream when a man holding a monkey smiled at her, and the monkey leaned out and patted her face.
“He friendly, ma’am,” the owner said, and she whispered to herself with a grin, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Far from it, as three porters struggled with the eleven suitcases she’d brought. She wasn’t sure what the dress code would be at night or when they weren’t working, so she brought everything she could think of, including an entire suitcase full of PowerBars, bug-bite medicine, and insect repellent. She glanced around and saw Rufus, the director, leaning against a post, smiling at her, looking relaxed, as though meeting her at the airport with her mountain of bags was the most normal thing in the world.
“You came to meet me?” She was deeply touched. No director had ever met her at an airport before, but she’d never filmed on location in Africa before either.
“It was on my way to the supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread, so I thought I’d swing by.” He grinned at her. He was even taller than she remembered, and his beard was neatly trimmed. He was wearing a safari jacket, khaki pants, and heavy work boots, and had a jaunty look about him, totally at ease in the exotic setting. “How was your trip? Other than ridiculously long? It took me forty-two hours to get here when I came, with delayed flights.”
“I made it in thirty-six.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for meeting me.” She looked at him gratefully. It was nice to see a familiar face, even if she didn’t know him well.
“Be careful of the monkeys, by the way. Some of them bite, or they grab your wallet and run up a tree. The perils of Africa.”
“Better than snakes,” she muttered, as he looked at her bags and explained to the porters that there was a truck outside to take them to a chartered plane waiting at another part of the airport. He must have tipped them well because they all bowed and thanked him and gave him a thumbs-up, and headed outside to load her bags into an old truck waiting for them with a driver. Gemma had followed Rufus out of the airport.
“I’m afraid you’ve got another short flight ahead of you. This one will be easier, to Victoria Falls. From there, it’s about an hour’s drive to the main camp. It’s very comfortable and quite civilized. It was a Swiss colony at one time, so there are even chalets. But we’ve put everyone in the main building. We’ll drive out from there to film with the animals. But we wanted everyone in the most agreeable accommodations we could get.” He helped her into the truck, and they headed toward a remote part of the airport, and drove onto the tarmac, where an old cargo plane refitted for charter was waiting, and the pilot waved and smiled in greeting when he saw them. “This won’t take long,” Rufus assured her. The pilot loaded her bags and she saw sandwiches and biscuits set out for them and cold mineral water once they stepped into the plane. The seats were large, they had chartered the plane for the duration of their shoot to ferry the crew and equipment back and forth to Harare.
Rufus took a seat next to her, and a few minutes later they took off, and were in the air very quickly, cleared by the tower. The pilot said it would take them just under an hour. It was her fourth flight of the trip, and Rufus chatted with her as they flew toward the northwest corner of Zimbabwe, their ultimate goal being Hwange National Park. Rufus explained to her that there was an “Intensive Protection Zone” in Sinamatella, about seventy miles from their camp, where they would be shooting too. And the park had one of the largest elephant populations in the world.
“This is definitely premium service, the director picking me up at the airport, and flying to the camp with me,” Gemma said with a grateful smile. She was tired, but excited to be there, and she had slept on the last flight.
“I told you we were desperate to have you.”
“I get the feeling you’ve been to Africa before,” she said, from his descriptions of the area.
“I’ve shot a few films here. And I spent some years in Africa as a boy. My father was a career diplomat. We got some of the worst posts imaginable until they finally took mercy on him and sent him to Rome and Barcelona, and I had a ball. But I enjoyed the time in Africa too, more than my mother did. I think she bribed the Foreign Office to send us back to Europe.” He smiled and she laughed. “It’s useful knowing some of the customs and the history, though. I think you’ll enjoy shooting here. We try to make it as easy as possible,” he said, “and Victoria Falls is spectacular, the largest natural falls in the world.” He was already making it easy for her, meeting her, and accompanying her on the last leg of the trip in the comfortable chartered plane.
“I don’t know how I got so lucky. My agent was sending me out for teenage vampire movies when my show closed.” He laughed, and she ate one of the cookies and offered him some.
She was curious what the camp would be like, and the rest of the cast. She had recognized some of the names as well-known British actors, particularly one woman and two men. It was an all-star cast. Their young star was new, but the others were well seasoned and had been in many successful shows and movies. It was the hallmark of his work. He used big name actors in his series, including her.
They flew for a while without speaking, and then he asked her where she grew up.
“In the Santa Ynez Valley, on the ranch I mentioned. My father was a cowboy from Texas. He built it from nothing. I hated it growing up. I thought I’d been switched at birth, and was meant to be a princess somewhere. One of my sisters thought that too. She was sure that intellectual parents had lost her at the hospital, and she wound up in a hick town with no culture, and a bunch of rednecks. You have to have a strong identity and ambition not to get stuck there.”
“I used to feel that way about England. Now I’m happy to be back. But it took a while to readjust. I thought I was Tarzan’s son, meant to swing on trees, or the son of a rajah in India. I was certain that boring British parents and freezing winters were not in my genes. But apparently they are. The older I get, the more I enjoy my roots. There’s something comforting about it.” She smiled at him.
“I just discovered that. I spent the summer on our ranch for the first time in years, and Thanksgiving there wi
th my sisters. I loved it. My father just died in May, and it’s brought us closer together. I thought it would have the opposite effect, but it hasn’t. I think he’d be pleased. He had to die to get us back there.”
“It often works that way. I’ve inherited my grandparents’ crumbling manor house in Sussex. My parents are gone now. I detested going there as a child. Now I kill to spend weekends there, and go shooting like my father, which I swore I’d never do. It’s all so predictable and so British. Nothing ever changes there. I love that now. My children hate the same traditions and swear they’ll sell the house the hour I die.”
“How old are they?” She watched him carefully. He was fascinating to talk to.
“They’re grown up, twenty-five and twenty-eight. I married when I was in diapers myself. Lovely girl, we grew up together. It seemed like a fine idea. It took us three years to come to hate each other. We divorced, she’s been happily married to someone else for twenty years, with masses more children, married to another boy we grew up with. I never remarried, and have been happy ever since. I’m a bit of a renegade. I can manage the crumbling manor house, but not the lady of the manor that goes with it. So I run around the world, making movies and flying and chauffeuring glamorous actresses around. I can hardly wait to see what glorious costumes come out of those suitcases.”
“Mostly blue jeans and insect repellent,” she said, and he laughed.
“No toilet paper?” he asked, and she looked embarrassed. He had guessed.
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