“I was nineteen when I met Jimmy. He was twenty-one. He was an itinerant ranch hand, going from ranch to ranch and town to town. My father was a minister, and he didn’t want me to be with him. He said he’d never amount to anything. He was wrong about that. I married him anyway, and had you ten months later,” she smiled at Kate, “and Gemma a year after that. I worked at an all-night diner when your father came home from work, and he took care of you while I worked. Times were hard in Texas then, there had been a drought, crops were bad, money was tight, we could barely afford to feed you and ourselves. They used to give me leftover food at the diner. Most of the time, that was all we had to eat. We were dirt poor, with no future on the horizon. And your father…he wasn’t an easy man. He had a vision and he expected me to follow him. He expected me to live by his rules, and do what he said. When you got sick, we couldn’t take you to a doctor. My parents helped when they could. I never met Jimmy’s family. They were from another part of Texas, and most of them were dead or in jail. His father had died in a bar fight. Jimmy was no different from most ranch hands, except that he was smarter and stronger and tougher, and he expected me to follow him blindly. I was madly in love with him. It was hard not to be. He was dazzling and he expected me to follow him off a cliff if he said so, without questioning him, and I got scared. I was terrified about what would happen if one of you got really sick, or he did. We should have been on welfare but he was too proud. He tried to save every penny he could, which meant we had even less to live on. I washed your clothes every night before I went to work so you’d have something to wear the next day.” It was hard for them to imagine the kind of poverty she was describing, but she did it well. They could almost taste her desperation and the dust of Texas as they listened raptly to every word.
“I got pregnant with Caroline when Gemma was a year old, and Kate was two. We didn’t have enough money to feed ourselves, let alone another child, but you were born and you were beautiful.” She smiled at Caroline, who had tears in her eyes, listening, trying to imagine what it would be like if she were that poor and had to take care of her children, with little food, few clothes, and no medical care. “We lived in a one-room shack on one of the ranches he worked on. We couldn’t have paid rent. We had one crib for all of you, which Jimmy built himself, and a mattress on the floor for us. He said things would get better one day, but I didn’t believe him. I was twenty-three years old and exhausted, after four years of desperation. I felt like I couldn’t hang on anymore. And I met someone one night at the diner. He was just a boy my age. He’d saved up a little money, and was heading to California. He used to come see me in the daytime when Jimmy was at work. He was no better than the man I had, or not much, but Jimmy never listened. He didn’t want to hear what I was saying. It was just too hard. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was too scared. I wasn’t as strong as he was. I thought it would never get better, and we’d just starve to death or lose you to the state if they found out how we were living with three kids. My father threatened to tell them, so you’d have decent lives and have food and medical care with foster parents. Jimmy swore we’d make it through, and I’m not sure when but I stopped believing in him. I got sick of being told what to do, and to stop complaining and just do what he said. He could be a hard man, although he meant well. He worked as many jobs as he could get. Once I fell in love with someone else, it was all different. Bobby, the other man, wanted me to go to California with him, and said we’d come back for you later. I refused to go with him and leave you, but it made me see that I couldn’t stay with Jimmy anymore. It’s hard for love to thrive in that kind of atmosphere of deprivation. I felt like a slave, harnessed to a hard man I thought didn’t love me. I don’t know if he did or not by then, but he wouldn’t divorce me. He said we were hitched forever.” Traces of her old Texas accent came through as she talked about the distant past.
“I begged him to divorce me and he wouldn’t. I wanted to take you with me, but I didn’t have the money to do it. And I couldn’t afford a divorce myself. Bobby pleaded with me to go with him to California, and swore we’d come back for you as soon as we could. I told Jimmy what I was going to do. He borrowed the money for a divorce from the rancher he worked for. He liked Jimmy. He divorced me, on condition that I give up all custody and rights to the three of you. He said he’d pay me three thousand dollars if I did. That was a fortune to me then, and I thought with that money, I could set up a life in California, come back for you, and a judge would cancel the relinquishment. It was the only way I could get enough money to leave, and set up a life for you, and I never believed any judge would uphold the paper I signed, if I said I didn’t mean it and came back. I was young and stupid,” she said humbly. “And I figured Jimmy would mellow eventually too. So I signed the papers and got the money and left. I figured I’d be back in six months.
“Things were harder in L.A. than I thought. I couldn’t find a job at first. Bobby blew through some of the money. He got into drugs. I didn’t. And a year after we got there, he was killed in a motorcycle accident, drunk. It didn’t work out with us once he got into drugs. After he died, I had a small apartment and some of the money was left, and I went back to Texas to get you, but your father had left with you by then. There was no trace of him. No one knew where he went. It took me a year to find you in the Valley. I went from ranch to ranch until I found him. I’d been gone for two years by then. I had a job as a waitress. I took him to court to overturn the relinquishment. Your dad was making decent money on the ranch where he worked. The judge upheld the relinquishment. He said I couldn’t have supported you, but your dad had told you I was dead, and the court-appointed psychologist said that it would be too confusing for a five- and four-year-old to be told that their mother was dead, and then she came back to life again. So I lost. I tried to appeal the decision, but I didn’t have the money to take it too far. I was twenty-six years old by the time I lost the last hearing, and I had lost my kids, and in my mind, I had nothing to live for. Jimmy was relentless. He wouldn’t let me see you, and the psychologist said you were all happy and he was a responsible father, which is true, he was. But I was your mother and wanted to be part of your life.
“After that, my life got ugly. I had been so sure the court would overturn the papers I signed giving you up. If I thought they wouldn’t, I would never have signed them. But I did. And after that, nothing mattered. I got into drugs for the first time. It was a way to escape everything, my hopes, my dreams, my past, my life. My parents had died and I had nothing left in Texas anyway. I just stayed in L.A., wasted on drugs, and in the gutter for ten years. I was homeless a few times, dealt drugs for a while, wound up in jail three times for possession. I never got into prostitution, but I did everything else, mostly involved with drugs, until I ended up in jail for a year for possession with intent to sell. Some social worker got hold of me, pulled me out of jail, sent me to rehab, and I slowly crawled back into the human race.
“I drove around Santa Ynez once or twice, hoping to see you, and hung around the school. I saw you once when you were about sixteen, fifteen, and thirteen. I saw Jimmy pick you up in his truck. He didn’t see me, or he would probably have called the police. I wrote to him and begged him again to let me see you. He said he wouldn’t, that I had made my decision and had to stick with it, and that there was no way he could tell you I had returned from the dead. Seeing me would make a liar of him. He said you didn’t need me. He didn’t know I’d been in jail, but I did, and I figured maybe he was right.
“I gave up then. I got a job working in a hotel, and met a nice man, and my life changed after that. That was twenty-six years ago. My partner is an architect and he’s Italian. He built this house and we moved here. We’ve been together for twenty-six years, and never married. We don’t really need to. I never wanted to have more children. I do some decorating for his clients occasionally, and we have a good life. He’s very good to me.” She wiped away the tears which had been pouring
down her cheeks when she told the story, and her daughters had cried as they listened. She smiled at Caroline. “I’ve read every one of your books. I saw them in a bookstore one day. They’re wonderful.” Caroline had written them using her maiden name. She turned to Gemma. “And I’ve watched your show every week for the last ten years,” she said proudly. The one she had never seen was Kate, working hard in the Valley for her father. “I want you all to know that I bitterly regret my terrible mistake giving you up. It was the worst thing I ever did. Nothing could ever make up for it. I thought I could undo it later, but I never could. Your father would never let me, and the court supported him. I have regretted it and missed you and loved you every single day of my life since. You were never forgotten,” she said, as she stood up and went to hug each one of them. Caroline sobbed as they embraced, and she had been the one who hadn’t wanted to meet her.
Gemma wiped the tears from her cheeks. “How could he not back down and let you see us, and how could he not tell us when we grew up? Who cared if he looked like a liar? It was always about him, how he looked, what people thought of him. What if you had died before we met you?” Gemma said, horrified at the thought. “We thought we had no mother all our lives, but we did. We had a right to know that.” But they all knew that was how their father functioned. He made the rules, and this was an extreme example of it.
All things considered, Scarlett was very fair about him, and willing to admit her own mistakes. He never had. He never did. And they had been cheated of a mother as a result, in order to punish her, and so he could be the only star in his daughters’ lives. It was a devastating revelation for them all. None of them could imagine her ever going to jail, or being on drugs for ten years. They realized she was a strong person if she had survived all of it and turned her life around. She looked proper and respectable and wholesome, and seemed like an honest, open, very loving person, even if she’d been foolish in her youth. And how could anyone guess what they would do, faced with that kind of poverty and despair?
“It’s ironic,” she said quietly, “that he died first, and you found me as a result. I’m surprised he never destroyed the paperwork, so there was no evidence.” It surprised her daughters too.
“He probably forgot,” Kate said in response, “or meant to do it later. He died very suddenly of a heart attack, and he was quite young, at sixty-four. I’m sure he expected to live much longer and thought he had time to destroy the papers.”
“Did he ever remarry? Did you have a woman in your life?” she asked gently.
“No, he didn’t. He’s been with the same woman for twenty-four years, almost as long as you’ve been with your Italian friend,” Gemma answered. “She’s very discreet, and treated us more as friends. Dad never wanted anyone too involved with us. They didn’t move in together until Caroline left for college. He was pretty proper about things like that.”
“Are you all married? Do you have children?” Scarlett wanted to know everything about them, and Kate laughed.
“I’m not. I run the ranch, and have worked for Dad for twenty years. Gemma’s not married either. She’s been too busy being a star.” They all laughed. “Caroline is married and has two kids, a son, eleven, and a daughter, fifteen.”
“My daughter looks a lot like you,” Caroline said softly. Her sisters had noticed it too.
They were all shocked to realize they had spent two hours with her, while she told her story. It had been a heavy emotional experience for all of them. Her partner, Roberto Puccinelli, let himself in as they were chatting at the end. She introduced him to all of her daughters, and he looked deeply moved.
“Your mother speaks of you almost every day.” He smiled at Gemma. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man with lively blue eyes and white hair. “And we watch your show every week.”
“You’ll have to watch reruns now,” she said sadly. “We just went off the air.”
“Oh no!” he exclaimed, and Scarlett smiled at them.
“May I see you again?” she asked cautiously, afraid of what they’d say. Maybe they only wanted to satisfy their curiosity, but didn’t want her in their lives now. Anything was possible. Jimmy had successfully gouged her out of their lives for nearly forty years.
“Of course,” Caroline was the first to say, and Gemma and Kate were quick to respond positively.
“Will you come to the ranch to visit us?” Kate asked her. “We’re all staying there right now, which is very unusual for us.”
“Where do you all live normally?”
“I live in L.A.,” Gemma volunteered, and Caroline said San Francisco. They had never been very far from her.
“I would love to come to the ranch,” Scarlett said, and Kate extended the invitation to Roberto too.
They all had much to think about, and a little while later, the sisters left, after promising to all get together again soon. Roberto stood next to Scarlett with an arm around her and they waved as the girls drove away. Kate noticed that her lip was trembling. The poor woman was overcome with emotion to have seen her daughters and told them her story.
There was silence in the truck for the first few minutes after they drove away, and Caroline and Gemma dabbed at their eyes again.
“What an amazing woman,” Gemma said. “I can see how it all happened. How could Dad do that to her, not let her see us?” But they all knew he had a vengeful side. If you crossed him, he didn’t forgive you. Leaving him for another man must have been the ultimate betrayal, and he made her pay for his broken heart and his bruised ego, and had clearly never forgiven her. Her life sentence was to make her stick to her agreement to give up her daughters. They believed her that she thought she could get him and the courts to relent but she couldn’t. She was trapped by her own agreements, and by a man who would never forgive her. By some miracle fate had intervened. They were all glad they had seen her. They each felt as though a piece of them that had been missing had been restored. The mother they knew virtually nothing about had reappeared. She hadn’t been a disappointment, as they had feared. She had been a gift.
Chapter 8
Much to Scarlett’s delight, Kate called her the next day to thank her for seeing them, and being so open with them. After so long, and so much pain, she could have refused to open her heart again, but she hadn’t. Kate said that hearing her story and knowing the truth had helped each of them. They had all been enormously impressed by her, her grace, her simplicity, and her honesty.
Kate invited her and Roberto to the ranch for lunch on Sunday, and Scarlett was thrilled to come, and said Roberto would be too. She knew about Jimmy’s enormously successful ranch, of course, but had never been there. She asked if their father’s companion would be upset by their visit.
“I don’t think so,” Kate said. “She’s a wonderful person. She’s not a jealous woman. I’ll tell her. She doesn’t have to come to lunch if she doesn’t want to. I’ll give her fair warning, but she’s probably curious to meet you.” Oddly, although her father had been difficult, and even domineering, from what Kate knew, he had a penchant for exceptionally nice, gentle women. There wasn’t a bitchy side to Juliette or Scarlett, from what Kate could see. On the contrary, they were both quite docile in some ways, even meek, so were willing to play by his rules. Stronger women wouldn’t have agreed to do that. A woman like Gemma would have killed him. But Kate had done what Juliette and her mother had. She had let him take the lead, and never challenged his power or right to tell her what to do. He had done the same to Scarlett, and to Juliette for twenty-four years, and to Kate for twenty years of working for him. Only now was she finally able to make important decisions on the ranch. She couldn’t during his reign. He wouldn’t tolerate it. And he had unilaterally decided to keep Scarlett away from her children, no matter how it impacted them, and all because she had left him for another man. In his mind, they didn’t need a mother, so he had wiped the slate clean and forced her
to live by the terms of the cruel paper she had signed in order to divorce him. And it suited him to rule, and to parent them, alone.
It took them all several days to digest what they’d heard. They were all haunted by it, and Morgan and Billy were curious about meeting their unknown grandmother on Sunday. Caroline had explained it as delicately as she could, that she’d thought her mother was dead but she wasn’t, and she had just met her. She didn’t explain the part their grandfather had played in it.
The day that they all spent with Scarlett and Roberto was exceptionally wonderful. Kate had gone out of her way to organize a picnic lunch from a barbecue chef they sometimes used for events at the ranch. His wife made the best pies in the Valley. It was a genuine celebration. Kate invited Thad to join them, without going into detail, and he looked startled when she introduced Scarlett as her mother.
He found a minute alone with her just before lunch, and looked confused.
“But I thought she was…” He was embarrassed to say it.
“So did we. We found some papers in Dad’s office safe, which led us to her. She’s been living in Santa Barbara for all these years. We just met her this week.”
“Gemma looks just like her, and you too a bit, and Morgan. She seems very nice,” he said quietly.
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