Daddy's Girls (13)

“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 helped 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.

    Gemma’s home in L.A. was filled with French antiques that reflected her taste. Life was simpler on the ranch. Jimmy had never liked showing off, and used the old Texan expression “All hat and no cattle” to describe people who did, but Peter had the income to back it up, and so did Gemma with her starring role on the show. She even got to keep her character’s expensive designer wardrobe per her contract, was always dressed to the teeth in L.A., and got a new sports car every year. She said she needed it for her image. Kate had no image to keep up. She had a ranch to run.

“It depresses me to come here,” Caroline said about using the house on the ranch. And Kate knew that Peter wasn’t a big fan of their father. They were two powerful male egos colliding, with Caroline trapped in the middle, squeezed by both. But that would be different now, with their father gone. Kate wondered if it would make Caroline more independent and freer, or more dependent on Peter.

“It would be fun for your kids to spend time here,” Kate said gently.

“Maybe,” Caroline said noncommittally, as they cleared away the dishes, and headed for their father’s house a few minutes later. Kate made notes for the inventory. Gemma wanted one small cowboy painting as a souvenir. She had always loved it. Caroline said she didn’t want anything. It was all part of an unhappy memory for her, of her childhood in a place she hated where she didn’t fit in.

“You need to go through his papers here,” Juliette reminded Kate before they left. “And his clothes. I can’t do it. It will make me too sad.” Just hearing her say it made his absence suddenly all too real, to be giving away his things.

    “You should just give it all to Goodwill,” Gemma said. The very thought of it tore at Kate’s heart, all the familiar well-worn plaid shirts, his vests, his battered cowboy hats, his roping chaps he’d worn at the rodeo. She wanted it all to be there forever. More than anything she wanted him back.

“Do you two want to come for a weekend and go through his things with me? There’s a lot of our old childhood stuff too in the back barn. We could go through it at the same time.”

“Mostly yearbooks and Barbie dolls,” Gemma said with a wry grin. “I guess we could come for a weekend,” she said hesitantly, and Caroline nodded but didn’t comment. She didn’t really want to unearth those memories and remember the past. “Maybe we could go to Santa Barbara and check out our mother then,” Gemma suggested.