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.
All three of them had gone to see Juliette that night, hugged her, and said how sorry they were. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she couldn’t stop crying. They left her after a few minutes to collect herself before they had to wade through the paperwork and formalities of “making the arrangements” the next day.
It sounded morbid to all three of them, and Juliette had said she was dreading it. She had no real right to make decisions, since they weren’t married, but the girls wanted to include her. Their relationship had lasted longer and been warmer and happier than most marriages. If not a mother figure, she had always been a good friend to them, and never created problems with their father, or interfered with his relationship with them. If anything, she had always helped them, and reminded their father to make more effort with them, to understand them better. She had always been a good influence on him.
With a second bottle of wine, back in Kate’s kitchen, they started telling funny stories about him, and reminiscing about their childhood. Caroline had the least to contribute, since she had spent the least possible amount of time with him, intentionally. Listening to them now, she wondered if she had missed something. She didn’t know the man they were describing, and her memories of him were entirely different from Kate’s and Gemma’s. But Kate had worked with him as an adult for the last twenty years, and Gemma could do no wrong. He worshipped her. Caroline had been a ghost in his life. He had never sought to try to bridge the gap between them. She couldn’t even explain now why she hadn’t been to the ranch in the past three years. She was busy with the children, she and Peter entertained his most important clients, and they traveled with the children on school vacations. There was never time to come home and see her father.
“You ran away from him, Caro,” Gemma said quietly, seeing the questions in her sister’s eyes, and Caroline nodded. She didn’t deny it.
“I know I did. But he never tried to find me, or even know me.”
“Maybe that was your job and not his,” Gemma said softly, “once you grew up. But I was no better. I haven’t been home in nearly a year. It’s hard to come home sometimes, and I got tired of fighting with him.”
“We all did,” Kate chimed in.
“You never fought with him,” Gemma corrected her. “That was my role. All you ever did was please him, or try to.” That was Kate’s place in the family. The pleaser and peacemaker. It surprised her that Gemma sounded harsh about it. In a way, her relationship with their father had been the easiest of all. They were workmates and colleagues as well as father and daughter.
After they finished the second bottle of wine, they went back to their respective cottages, Caroline in the barely used guesthouse, where Peter and her children were sound asleep, and Gemma to the guesthouse she was familiar with. Kate was in her own cottage, but nothing felt right anymore, not even her father’s house with his belongings everywhere.
As they left Kate’s cottage, Gemma turned to look at her sisters. “We’re orphans now, aren’t we? No mother and no father.” They couldn’t mourn a mother they had never known and didn’t remember, only