The Challenge(13)
“It must be confusing for Juliet to have you both leading such different lives, with such different goals and values,” Anne said. She realized how lucky she and Pitt had been to stay on the same path after so long, and she was grateful for it.
“It is,” Tom agreed, “but I don’t know what to do about it. Her mother wants Juliet to have all the advantages she has in New York: good schools, Ivy League college, a race for success in a tough job. That whole world nearly destroyed me, and I don’t want that for my daughter. But her mother wants to see that she gets on the fast track to success. I don’t believe that’s what success is anymore. I love my life here, and I want Juliet to see the value of it and make her own choice one day.”
“We can’t make those decisions for them,” Pitt said. “We’re lucky. Peter wants to stay here and run the ranch one day, after he gets an education. That’s what I did, and what he thinks he wants at fourteen. Bill Brown’s son, Matt, can’t wait to get out of here. He wants to be in the tech world in Silicon Valley. I don’t think they have a chance in hell of keeping him here. This is a special kind of life. It suits some people and feels like a death sentence to others. Some of our kids will stay, and some won’t.” Bill Brown came up and heard the tail end of the conversation and agreed with Pitt.
“Matt won’t be able to get out of here fast enough. It breaks my heart not to have him take over the ranch one day, but it wouldn’t be fair to stop him,” Bill agreed. “My youngest, Benjie, who just turned six, swears he’s going to live here forever. He says he’s going to be a rodeo clown one day and ride the bulls. He just might. But probably neither of them will want to run the ranch when I’m too old to do it. If I’m lucky, one of them will come around. If not, neither of them will, and I’ll have to sell when I get too old to run it. There aren’t a lot of boys who spend their youth dreaming of being a sheep farmer, and running a dairy,” he said, and the others laughed. “I never dreamed of it either, but it suits me to a T, and thank God Pattie loves it here too. But this is a very different life. It’s not for everyone. I don’t think any of us can predict what our kids are going to do. It depends on who they wind up with as partners too. That makes a big difference.”
The conversation moved on to how Marlene Wylie was going to manage without Bob. They had been a perfect couple, and then he got sick. They were all dreading what would come next for her and their boys. Tom hadn’t met the Wylies yet, but it sounded like a sad story to him, for their two sons as well, and they seemed like good boys.
The evening ended late, and Tom commented to Juliet on the way back to their house how much he liked their new friends, and what nice kids all the boys were. He told her how proud he was of her too. He was really pleased to have met the Pollocks and their friends, and despite Pitt Pollock’s enormous success as a rancher, and all that he had inherited, he and his wife were simple, warm, unassuming people who had no interest in showing off. They had no need to, and had good, old-fashioned family values.
It was night and day compared to the people he had worked with in New York, and the coldhearted greed and arrogance he had had to fight through every day. He liked the clients he had now. He had handpicked them when he set up his consulting business. He couldn’t understand how Beth could still want to live with that kind of shameless greed and inhumanity all around her in order to say that she was successful. To Tom, it was the epitome of failure as a human being—selling your soul to the devil for monetary success. He might not be setting the world on fire in Fishtail, but he was happier now than he had ever been, even though he didn’t like being alone. But he had been alone with Beth anyway. They had become strangers to each other long before he left and enemies once he did. They weren’t even friends anymore. Every contact he had with her was hostile and painful. The only bridge to each other they had now was Juliet, and it was a hard position for her to be in, as Anne had said that night. Juliet lived on the firing line between two parents who had come to hate each other, and had completely opposite views of life now. Beth wanted to keep her firmly in her camp, and Tom wanted to show her something different. As Anne had said, it had to be confusing for her, but so far she seemed to be weathering it. Tom felt guilty every time he thought about how hard it must be for Juliet to have parents who were so completely different and opposed to each other.
“Did you have fun tonight?” he asked her on the ride home, and she smiled and nodded.
“They’re nice. I like Peter’s mom a lot. Matt’s mom, Pattie, seems a little more frantic, but Anne seems really happy.” He knew now that Anne was happy because she and Pitt loved each other, genuinely and sincerely. It changed everything and blessed everyone around them. He thought it was what marriage should be but too often wasn’t.
Juliet went up to bed a few minutes after they got back, and was already half asleep as she fell into bed. She liked Peter a lot and she thought he liked her too, but she didn’t want to tell her father. For now, it was a secret. She wondered if he was going to kiss her before she left Fishtail, and she hoped he would. Then she drifted off to sleep, smiling. It was nice having a secret which no one knew.
Chapter 4
A few days after dinner at the Pollocks’, Tom came downstairs in the morning and found Juliet making stacks of sandwiches, and putting them in plastic bags. She added some fruit and cookies and power bars. She looked like she was preparing food for an army.