Daddy's Girls (7)

“Can you come home?” Kate asked, sounding like a child. She felt as though her whole world had caved in. He was the center of her universe.

“Of course. I’ll drive up tonight,” she said quietly, and then hesitated. “I love you, Kate. Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said, feeling confused. “I love you too, Gem.” They both knew that Gemma had been his shining star and his favorite, but it didn’t matter now. They had all lost him, and all they had now was each other.

After they hung up, Gemma went to find the director to tell him what had happened and that she had to leave and they’d have to shoot around her for the next few days. They were going on hiatus soon anyway. He told her how sorry he was about her father. She thanked him and left the set a few minutes later in jeans and a T-shirt. She had to go home to pack a bag. She drove to the Hollywood Hills, not even sure where she was going. Everything around her was a blur. The father who had adored her was gone.



* * *



—

    Kate called Caroline after that. She answered on speaker in the car. “Where are you?” Kate asked her youngest sister.

“Morgan forgot her lunch. I’m taking it to her at school. Why? Is something wrong?” Kate sounded odd, like she was sick or stoned or drunk, which she never was.

“Yeah,” Kate said, choking on the words again. “It’s Dad.”

“What happened? Did he get hurt?” She didn’t see her family often, but she loved them. She just didn’t want to be with them all the time, or even very frequently. She had always felt out of place with them, she was the invisible person no one ever saw and never knew, and didn’t try to. She was no match for her father or sisters. They were all stronger than she was. And so was Peter. Caroline had been meek all her life.

Kate told her what had happened, and Caroline pulled over off the freeway, and they both cried.

“Does Gemma know?” Caroline asked, feeling breathless. Whatever his failings, he was still her father.

“I just called her,” Kate said, and it wasn’t lost on Caroline that Kate had called Gemma first, and her last. It was always that way. She was the afterthought, even to their father. Even now. “She’s coming home later.” It would take her about three hours from L.A.

“I’ll fly down with Peter and the kids tonight. I have to wait till he comes home from work. I’m sorry, Kate.” Caroline said it as though he was Kate and Gemma’s father, and not hers, and in some ways it was how she felt. Kate loved him, he loved Gemma, and she was always left out. It was why she had left so long ago and never gone back, except for very rare visits once every few years. She had asked herself, What difference would it make to them if she ran away and never came back? She had often pondered that question while she was growing up. And then she’d done it. Ran away and never came back to the ranch to live. She had never regretted it. And now she had to go home, and he was dead. She felt even worse when she realized it had been three months since she had called him. He never called her either, and now he never would again.

    Kate was waiting in her house when Gemma arrived at six o’clock. She had wasted no time in L.A., and got on the freeway heading north as soon as she packed a bag. She found Kate sitting in her kitchen. She hadn’t wanted to wait in their father’s house, and intrude on Juliette. Kate had called her to see how she was and she didn’t pick up. She was a very private person, and very French. She needed some time to recover from the shock and grieve on her own, and Kate respected that.

Kate and Gemma sat in Kate’s kitchen and cried about their father again. They each realized that they were mourning entirely different men. The effusive, all-approving, all-forgiving father who thought Gemma could do no wrong, no matter how often she fought with him, or how vicious their fights were, and their words. And the father who had expected Kate to step up to the plate every time, back him in all things, second his decisions, and whom he forgot to praise except when someone reminded him, like Gemma or Thad or Juliette. They also knew that Caroline would be grieving an entirely other man, the father who had let her down and ignored her for her entire life. He loved her, but he didn’t understand her, so he didn’t try.

They were still talking when Thad picked up Caroline and her family at the airport. Her children had been inconsolable when she told them when they came home from school that their grandfather had died. No one had expected it. Peter was equally stunned when he got home and Caroline was packing. She hadn’t wanted to call and tell him at the office. He had to pack in less than half an hour, and cancel his appointments for the coming days.

    The three sisters hadn’t spoken of it, but Caroline assumed that the funeral would be within the next few days. She didn’t see any point to dragging it out, and she was sure her sisters wouldn’t either. She hated the current trend of private family services, and then a memorial six months later. By then, she hoped to have put the grief behind her, and gotten on with living. What was the point of waiting? But she didn’t know how Gemma and Kate would feel or what they would want.

They’d each had a glass of wine late that evening when they talked about it. Caroline and her family were staying in the guesthouse her father had built for her after she got married, hoping to inspire her to come home more, with Peter. But she never had. She had only used it a few times in the sixteen years since he built it. Gemma was staying in the guesthouse she occupied on her infrequent visits.