Daddy's Girls (11)
“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 Kate. 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?”