Daddy's Girls (21)

    They went through his clothes, his desk, his papers. Kate boxed up what they needed to send to the office. They packed up his clothes for Juliette so she didn’t have to, and the girls took a few things they had given him or made for him, including the ceramics Caroline had made for him in camp. She was surprised that he still had them. They did the inventory that the lawyer wanted for the appraisal. The only things of any value were those Juliette had had sent from France, a rug of her grandmother’s, a small desk, some horn chairs. The girls only took things that were of sentimental value to them. They didn’t want to disrupt his house. It was Juliette’s home now too.

They drove into town for lunch afterward, and ate at a cowboy bar their father had liked. It reminded them of him, and they had always liked it too.

“I never thought he’d die so young,” Gemma said softly halfway through lunch.

“Neither did I,” Kate agreed with her. It still seemed unreal to all of them, especially here on the ranch, where they were used to seeing him walking around, riding his horse, or coming out of the barn, talking to Thad. The ranch seemed empty now without him. Kate was happy that Caroline’s children were enjoying being there. They added new life to the place, and another generation. Thad was keeping them busy on horses all day long, and had them mucking out stalls, and hooking up milking machines in the dairy.

“If you came more often, you could write here,” Kate suggested. It’s a good place to walk and think, and get back in touch with yourself.”

    “Is that what you do here?” Gemma asked her and Kate laughed.

“No, I work my ass off. It’ll be different now without Dad,” she said. “I’ll have to work even harder and so will Thad. He already is,” and so was she, but she enjoyed it.

“Yeah, maybe you’ll get to do things your way, for a change,” Gemma commented. “Is there anything you want to do, now that he’s not looking over your shoulder telling you that everything you do is wrong?” Gemma always got right to the point, without frills.

“He came around eventually. It just took some talking to him,” Kate said gently, still making excuses for him, as she always did. She rarely criticized their father.

“He only came around if it suited him. I’ve never known anyone more headstrong, stubborn, and self-centered, except maybe me,” Gemma said, and all three of them laughed. There was some truth to it. “I always think I’m right too.”

“I wish I did. I always think everyone else knows better than I do, like you two,” Caroline said wistfully. She was the meekest of the three of them, and yet she had gone after what she wanted too, fearlessly, and with determination, but quietly. She just had to get away from the ranch and her father to do it.

“We don’t know any better than you do,” Gemma assured her. “In fact, you’re smarter and better educated. You have a master’s degree,” she reminded her. “What’s Peter up to these days? I hardly spoke to him at the funeral.” Peter was never overly chatty with Caroline’s sisters, but Gemma usually managed to draw him out.

“He’s working on a big deal. He’ll only be with us for a week in Aspen. He has to go back to San Francisco. The kids don’t know yet, he just told me. They’re going to be disappointed. Billy loves to go fishing with him. So I guess I’ll be the one going fishing, and putting the worms on the hooks,” she said with a grimace and her sisters smiled at her. She really was the perfect mother; and now their own mother had turned up. She had been far from perfect if she’d given up her parental rights and abandoned them. What she’d done was worse than dying, and Gemma and Kate wanted to know about it, and how she justified it. Caroline said it didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, she hadn’t been around for them, and it was too late for her to make up for it now. She particularly had hated growing up without a mother, which was why she was so devoted to her kids and would do anything for them, and for Peter.

    They left the restaurant and went back to the ranch, and the kids were just coming out of the barn with Thad. They’d had a long, full day and they were tired. They were city kids, and not used to all the fresh air and exercise. He had worn them out since early morning. He smiled at Kate when he saw her.

“They’re going to sleep well tonight,” he said, and she laughed. “We’ve been riding most of the day. They won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” he told Caroline, and she laughed too. She had known Thad since he’d come to the ranch at eighteen, when she was twenty. She’d had a crush on him for about five minutes, and then she got involved with Jock Thompson the summer of her junior year in college. They broke up at the end of the summer when she went back to Berkeley, and by Christmas when she came home, Jock had gotten a local girl pregnant and married her.

The girls reminisced about their teenage romances that night over dinner and laughed about them. Gemma had had a million boyfriends and flirted with everyone. Caroline had had two or three serious boyfriends in high school. And Kate had dated the captain of the football team at the local high school until she left for college. He’d gone to college in the East and never came back to California, then his family had moved away, and she’d lost track of him.

    “So who are you dating now?” Gemma asked Kate. She hadn’t heard about a man in Kate’s life in a long time.