Daddy's Girls (2)

She had been starving for culture while she lived in the Valley, and all her hopes had come to fruition once she left Santa Ynez. She went back as rarely as possible, and occasionally felt guilty about it. She loved her father and sister, but found visiting the ranch oppressive. Just being there made her feel anxious. It was a déjà vu of her youth, which wasn’t a happy memory for her. She had felt overlooked and out of place for all seventeen years she’d lived there until she left for college.

Peter was from New York and they visited his family more often than hers, although her kids thought it was fun to go to the ranch. Caroline loved going to New York, catching up on the latest museum exhibits, the opera, theater, and everything that the city offered. She took her children with her whenever possible.

    They thought their maternal grandfather was a colorful person, full of charm, and a real cowboy. He had ridden in the rodeo when he was younger, and done well. He had even survived being gored by a bull in a roping contest, which fascinated her children. But they saw very little of him. Caroline, Peter, and the children usually had something else to do. She had quietly disconnected from her own family in every significant way over the years. It was just better for her, and Peter didn’t press her about it. He wasn’t fond of the ranch either, and he knew how much she hated going home, which gave him a valid excuse not to go there and to discourage her from going. She hadn’t been back in three years.

In the early days of their relationship, Peter had teased Caroline mercilessly about growing up on a ranch. He called her a cowgirl, and referred to her “redneck origins” until she finally told him how it hurt her and got him to stop. It had taken years to win his parents’ respect, and they made it obvious that they would have preferred it if he had married someone from their world. In time, they came to appreciate her value, and how much she loved their son. Their acceptance had been hard won.

Peter valued her intelligence, good judgment, sound advice, and solid values too. But in heated moments, the difference in how they had grown up still caused them to clash. She wasn’t a New Yorker and didn’t have the sophisticated upbringing he did, but she was a loving mother and a wonderful wife. The rare times he called her a cowgirl now were meant only to ruffle her feathers, not to wound her, although sometimes it still did anyway. She wasn’t proud of her origins and still sorely felt the opportunities she had missed in Santa Ynez, with a father and two sisters who thought intellectual pursuits were a waste of time. She had more than made up for it as an adult.



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    Gemma didn’t go home much more often than Caroline did. She had gone to L.A. as soon as she’d graduated from high school, without bothering with college. She was a striking, tall, beautiful, exotic-looking woman with dark hair and blue eyes. She’d done some modeling, paid for acting lessons herself, and started out with small parts on TV. At thirty-one, she had landed the starring role in a successful TV series, and was still firmly ensconced there. Now forty-one, she had had her eyes done, and enough Botox shots and fillers to look ten years younger than she was, with makeup and good lighting. She never seemed to age on the show or in real life. She was very decidedly a star, and lived that way, with a gorgeous house and pool in the Hollywood Hills, and a glamorous life. She had dated some of the best-known Hollywood bachelors, and fallen seriously in love once. Her romances were usually brief and tumultuous, and were reported in the tabloids. Her one serious love had left her for a more famous actress and broken her heart. She had kept things light ever since, never caring deeply for the men in her life. She was more dedicated to her career than to anything else. Her father loved reading about her, no matter what the papers said. Gemma could do no wrong in JT’s eyes, though their battles were legendary and fierce. They were too much alike to get along, headstrong, stubborn, and determined to have their own way. Neither Gemma nor Kate had ever married, and Gemma claimed she didn’t care. She was having too much fun to get tied down, once she got over her one and only broken heart. Kate worked too hard to meet a man and spend time with him. She was at her father’s beck and call on the ranch day and night. If anything went wrong, he called her, at any hour.

    Their father liked to say that he had a workhorse in Kate, Gemma was his star, and Caroline was the brain and suburban housewife, once she grew up. He never understood her life or her interests, and didn’t try, but he was impressed by her husband’s success, and he thought his grandchildren were great. They were smart and inquisitive and loved his stories when he occasionally saw them. He never went to San Francisco. He never left the Valley. He was always working. He loved it.

JT Tucker was a cowboy to the depths of his soul, and so was Kate. She worked hard to be the son he’d never had. She had lived up to all his expectations, even if he didn’t acknowledge it often. She lived for one thing, to please him. Her life in the Santa Ynez Valley suited her to perfection. When she was younger, she assumed she’d marry, but as time went on, the men she dated fell by the wayside. They wanted more than she had to give. Her father and the ranch consumed all her energy and time. She was always canceling dates or standing men up to tend to a sick horse, help deliver a calf, or because her father insisted he needed her help with a project only she could do. It got harder and harder to explain, and eventually she stopped trying. She was married to the ranch now. Her father expected it and didn’t realize what a sacrifice she’d made for him. It was what he expected of her. And she loved her father, the ranch, and the valley where they lived, with her whole heart and soul, more than she’d ever loved any man. The men in her life had gone on to marry other women, while her father continued to depend on her.