Open Skies

by Marysol James

  “Bullshit,” Jake said. “I get that you two didn’t have a very close relationship, but he came through in the end, right? How can you have been such an ungrateful little bitch your whole life?” His hands were clenched and he was breathing hard. “You had your perfect little life in New York, choosing wallpaper and bathroom tiles and shopping and partying, all on Daddy’s dime, and you never came here to see him, never once made any fucking effort.”

  Julie stared at Jake in total confusion. What the hell is he talking about? Me and that bastard didn’t have any relationship…because I had no idea who he was! Why does Jake think that we knew each other?

  Unbalanced, she sat down again. OK, breathe deep. It’s OK. This cowboy doesn’t know anything about you, about your life. God only knows what your asshole father told everyone here – maybe he implied that he had tried to make contact, that you refused?

  “Dave Reid was a good man,” Jake said tightly. “One of the best men I’ve ever known. He deserved better than to have a daughter like you – a selfish little spoiled bitch who shows up to collect her inheritance but couldn’t be there for birthdays or Christmas. Who didn’t support her father while his wife died of cancer. Who missed her stepmother’s funeral. Her father’s funeral.”

  Julie had no idea what to do: his anger was so huge, it filled the room. He scared her, with his height and weight that far surpassed her own. She needed to get away from him, to sit someplace quiet and think this through. None of it made any sense, and she couldn’t get a handle on it with Jake standing there yelling at her. She couldn’t cope, she couldn’t deal.

  So she did what she always did: she withdrew completely. In to her cool blue room she went, to that place where she was always in control and always calm and always safe.

  Jake stood there in amazement. Julie was sitting there not saying a word – not defending herself, or apologizing, or even upset anymore. She looked supremely disinterested in the conversation. He might as well be shouting at a plaster wall for all the humanity and emotion and reaction she was displaying.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You just don’t care, do you?”

  She raised her eyes to meet his and he took a step back. Dave’s eyes had never been so full of malice, not once the seven years that Jake had known him.

  “No,” she said in a precise little voice. “No, I just don’t care.”

  Without another word, he turned and left the office.

  Julie sat paralyzed, her head spinning. She needed to find out exactly what people around here thought about her relationship with David Reid. She suddenly understood that things had not been presented accurately. Oh, no. Not at all.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, first thing, Julie went looking for Mattie.

  She found Mattie in the restaurant finishing her breakfast. Her silver hair was shimmering in the sunlight, and her smile lit up the room. “Morning, Julie! You here for breakfast?”

  Julie smiled at a few of the hotel guests. “Good morning,” she said to them. Then she switched her attention to Mattie. “No, I ate breakfast in the cabin.”

  The older woman waved her hand at the buffet. “Oh, honey. You have to try Manny’s breakfast some time – it’s delicious!”

  “It is,” one of the guests told Julie. “I came here determined to stick to fresh salad and fruit… and I scarf down bacon and sausages and pancakes every day.” She looked ruefully at her stomach. “I’ll need to rethink wearing my bikini on the beach this winter break.”

  Julie grinned. “Well, I am a big bacon fan…”

  “Who’s not?” the woman’s companion asked her.

  “True.”

  Mattie stood up and nodded pleasantly at the guests. “So, I hope you enjoyed your visit here with us… maybe we’ll see you back here soon.”

  “Oh, for sure!” the man said. “I’ll plan a trip up here in the summer with my brother and his kids. They’ll love the horses.”

  “That’ll be lovely,” Mattie said. “We’ll see you again then.”

  “Thank you,” Julie said to them. “I’m glad you had a good time.”

  Julie and Mattie walked out of the restaurant. Julie turned to her. “Can I talk to you? Just for a few minutes?”

  “Well, sure. I’ve got an hour ‘til I have to be at the stables for a riding lesson with some kids.”

  “OK.”

  They went down the hall and in to Julie’s office. Mattie looked around, but didn’t comment on the missing pictures.

  Julie sat on the sofa, patted the spot next to her. “Sit down, please.”

  Mattie sat. “OK, hon. What’s up?”

  Julie had been awake for most of the night, trying to think how to ask Mattie what the hell Jake had been talking about. Finally, she decided that asking straight-out was the only way. She didn’t know Mattie well at all, but she knew the woman would tell her the truth. If she just asked for it.

  “Mattie, do people here think that my father and I had some kind of relationship? That maybe he wanted me to be a part of his life, but I refused?”

  Mattie leaned back, her eyes on Julie’s strained, pale face. Oh, Lord. She’d been dreading this conversation, but she knew it had to come up some time. Everyone was so angry at Julie, angry at Dave dying, angry at everything. It was just a matter of time before someone said something to Julie about neglecting her father.

  “Julie, honey. This is a bit of a story. You want me to tell you the truth, right?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “OK, then.” Mattie paused to collect her thoughts. “So, your father was married to a woman named Margaret. They married when Dave was about forty, and they had a great marriage. They built this place up together, and they lived in the Big House. They never had any kids, but they didn’t seem to need anyone but each other.”

  “About two years ago, Margaret started getting headaches. Bad ones. They’d lay her up for days at a time, make her vomit for hours. Dave hustled her off to Denver for tests, and the results were bad: Margaret had a brain tumor.”

  “That’s awful,” Julie whispered. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “It was. It was awful. It about killed your father, and all of us, really. Margaret was a wonderful person: warm and smart and funny. She’d been a social worker for years before she met your Dad, and she just loved kids. It was her idea to start the program here where we bring in troubled kids to work with the horses.”

  Julie blinked. “Sorry. What program?”

  “I’ll tell you more about that later,” Mattie said. “Just know that it’s a great program, and many kids have benefited from it.”

  “OK.”

  “She ended up in hospital for treatment, but it was just too late. The tumor was inoperable, and she just didn’t respond to anything they did for her. After almost a year, Margaret said that she just wanted to come home, back to the mountains, and Dave agreed. He brought her back here, set her up in the smallest cabin for privacy, and we all just tried to make her as comfortable as we could while she died.”

  “So. There we all were. Margaret was sick and getting sicker, and there was nothing anyone could do. We took it in turns to sit with her, all day and all night, so Dave could get some sleep. He didn’t sleep much, but still… we made sure that she was never alone. Every one of us sat for four-hour-shifts, talking to her, holding her hand while she slept. Holding her hair back when she vomited, wiping down her face. And talking to her. Listening to her talk. She talked for hours.”

  Mattie stopped.

  Julie looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, it’s just that… she talked about you a lot.”

  “She what?”

  “We had no idea that Dave had a daughter, you see. He’d never mentioned you, not to any of us. But he’d obviously talked to Margaret about you… she knew your name, and that you lived in New York, and that you were an interior designer. She knew your Mom was dead, and that you were single and had no kids.”

 
; “What else did she know about me?”

  “Well, I’m not too sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The brain tumor, it… it made her imagine things. Changed her personality. She’d go off on these angry rants about things.”

  “Including about me.”

  “That’s right. But the thing was, we could never be sure if she was remembering things right. She accused Dave of horrible things, things that we all knew had never happened. She said that she’d met with the President and that he’d tried to feel her up. She said that she had four children who never visited.”

  “So – she was confused.”

  “Yes. By the end, she had no idea at all about anything. Couldn’t separate fact and fiction. And so when she talked about you, and said awful things, we had no way of knowing what was true and what wasn’t.”

  “So why believe anything at all that she said?”

  “Because Dave admitted to some of it. He said that yes, he had a daughter named Julie in New York, and that you had no relationship at all.”

  “OK. That’s true.”

  “But Margaret said that Dave had tried for years to get you to visit them. She said that she’d talked to you on the phone a hundred times, begging you to come for the holidays, and every time you were horribly rude and said no.”

  Julie was stunned. “No. No, that never happened.”

  “She said that Dave sent you money every month – ten thousand dollars – and that you wasted it all on shopping and drinking and partying. She said that Dave had supported you for years and years, and you just kept taking his money and never even showed up for his birthday.”

  Julie stood up, furious. “That is a bunch of fucking lies.”

  Mattie looked alarmed. “Sit down, hon. I’m just telling you what you wanted to know. I’m not saying that I believe any of it.”

  Julie sat down again. “But some people around here do.”

  “Yes,” Mattie admitted. “Maybe not all of it – we all knew how much she was imagining at the end – but most people believe some of it. They at least think that you didn’t want a relationship with your Dad, and that he kept trying and sending you money and supporting you, and you kept saying no.”

  “I see.”

  “So, when your Dad died and we all found out about his will – that he left this place to you – we were stunned when we heard that you were coming here. It was assumed that you were finally willing to come to the ranch now that the coast was clear and your Dad was dead. People thought that you were happy enough to claim the inheritance, after all those years of rejecting your father’s overtures. It made folks angry.”

  Mattie fell silent and looked at Julie anxiously. The girl looked ill, actually, physically, ill. She was grey and shaking and she had dark shadows under her eyes.

  “You OK?”

  “No, not really.” Julie shook her head. “So, this is what people really think about me? That I’m a – a spoiled little brat who squandered her Daddy’s money, and broke his heart, and who now shows up to ruin a successful business?”

  Mattie squirmed. Actually, that was almost verbatim what a few people had said about Julie, including Jake and Rosie and Joe.

  “Well, yes.”

  Julie nodded. “I see.”

  “But some of us are happy to give you a chance, Julie.”

  Julie looked at her. “I appreciate you telling me all this, Mattie. Thank you.”

  Mattie knew that she was being asked to leave, but she was a bit worried about Julie. The girl looked like she’d been hit over the head with a bag of rocks.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you – can you maybe tell me the truth? What the real story is with you and Dave?”

  God, where do I even begin with this?

  “Well, the truth is that I never knew my father.”

  “What? At all?”

  “I never knew his name, or where he lived. I never talked to him, or his wife. I never had any contact with him, ever. Not once, in my whole life. The truth is, Mattie, that he and my Mom had a summer fling when she was seventeen and he was twenty and she got pregnant. When she told him, he took off back home and never got in touch again. He – he just abandoned her. Her parents kicked her out, so she had me on her own, and raised me as best she could. It was – it was hard.”

  Mattie studied her face. It had been more than hard, she could tell. But she didn’t push.

  “My whole life, the only thing Mom ever said about my father was that his name was Dave and he ran when she told him about me. She didn’t have any pictures, and no idea where he was. She died ten years ago in a car accident, and I found nothing about him when I went through her things. For me, he was a – a ghost. Just some guy named Dave who didn’t want me. The first I found out anything more about him was last week, when the lawyer told me about the will.”

  “My God,” Mattie breathed. “What a shock. You poor, poor thing.”

  “It was a shock. It was – horrible, actually. To realize that he’d had a private investigator following me around, poking in to my life. He knew exactly where I was for five years – but he still never made contact. He didn’t want me, Mattie, right until the end.” The tears were starting now. “This ranch, this hotel? You know what it feels like? It feels like – like a payoff. Like he’s trying to buy my forgiveness, after it all.”

  Mattie leaned back, contemplating Julie’s words.

  “Maybe it’s an offering to you, Julie. An apology for never having been there for you. Maybe he thought you’d be happy here.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m too mixed up and tired to think it all through clearly. I need some time to decide how I really feel about it all. And how I feel about him. You all think the world of the man, so I can believe that he had good points.” She brushed away her tears. “But I’ve hated him for so long, you see. And now I’m here, being attacked for having been a bad daughter? It’s too much. I just can’t do it. I won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, Mattie. I’ll pack up my things and order a taxi and get on the first flight back to New York.”

  “Oh, no. No, don’t do that.”

  “Why should I stay here? I’ll leave you in charge of things, and I’ll arrange a sale of the ranch and hotel from New York. The lawyers in Denver can handle all the negotiations. I’ll just show up in the New York offices to sign the papers and collect the money.”

  “Julie, honey. Why don’t you think this through a bit?”

  “What for?” Julie stood up. “Thanks for telling me all this, Mattie. I’d really like to be alone now, if you don’t mind.”

  “OK. How about I come back a bit later and we talk again?”

  “If you want to, fine. But you won’t change my mind. It’s made up.”

  Mattie left the office and stood outside Julie’s office door, thinking. This is utter bullshit. Why treat this girl like she’s the enemy, when she’s done nothing wrong?

  She stalked to the stables. She’d have Phil take the riding lesson – she had a few choice words to share with Mr. Jake Weston.

  **

  Rosie and Steph stood in the stables, watching Mattie and Jake. Something was clearly going on over in the far corner of the corral.

  Mattie was pointing her finger in Jake’s face and talking a mile a minute. Her long hair blew around in the cool autumn wind, making a glowing halo around her head. She looked like an avenging angel of some kind.

  And Jake – well, Jake towered over Mattie by more than a foot, but he looked for all the world like a naughty schoolboy being reamed out by the principal. He was slumped and diminished, somehow. He looked chastened. Jake never looked like that; the man had the pride of Lucifer. Whatever Mattie was telling him hit him hard, and it made him sorry.

  Jake was talking now, shaking his head. Mattie answered and he nodded. They turned and looked over at Rosie and Steph. Rosie jumped and started brus
hing Millicent again while Steph pretended to tighten the loose screw on Star’s door.

  “What was that all about?” she whispered to Rosie.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “But here they come.”

  “Ladies,” Jake said. His gray eyes were troubled and he looked shaken.

  God, did somebody die? thought Steph. Somebody else, I mean.

  “OK, Jake,” said Mattie. “I’ll go up to the hotel now, talk to the staff there. I’ll leave the staff in the stables for you to deal with?”

  “Yep.”

  Mattie nodded at everyone and headed off to the main building. Rosie and Steph watched her go, puzzled.

  Jake cleared his throat. “I need to talk to you both. About Julie.”

  “Oh,” Rosie said. “What’s that bitch done now?”

  Jake snapped, “Do not call her that.”

  Steph was taken aback. “Why not? You’ve called her that enough times.”

  “Even to her face, practically,” Rosie reminded him.

  Jake took a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I know I did. Turns out, that was a big mistake. It seems that I didn’t – that we didn’t – have the whole story about her.”

  “OK, so. What’s the story?”

  And Jake started to talk.

  **

  It was almost five o’clock in the evening now. It had been a long day and Julie was almost sick from exhaustion.

  After the conversation with Mattie that morning, Julie had holed up in her office, too mortified to face anyone, too humiliated to even go out for lunch. She should have been hungry by now, seeing as she’d had nothing but coffee and grapefruit for breakfast, but her stomach was still clenched in to a giant knot. She was just waiting for most people to leave for the day and she’d go back to the cabin and start packing. The taxi was booked for nine o’clock the next morning; her flight back to New York was at six o’clock. It meant a long wait at the airport, but she found that preferable to staying here one minute longer than she had to.