was go home to Peter and her children. Coming to the ranch always made her unhappy, especially this time. The father who had always put her in last place was gone. It was never going to get better now, he was never going to “fix” it. She wasn’t a star, and she didn’t run the ranch for him or do his bidding, so for him she had never existed. Even when she was a child, he always overlooked her, because she was bookish and a good student, which Kate and Gemma weren’t. They were more like him. Bright, but with a more limited scope of interest. Gemma only cared about her Hollywood life, and Kate the ranch. Caroline cared about art and literature and history and other intellectual pursuits in a broader world.
When Caroline turned around, she saw Kate staring at her computer screen, and Gemma gave a sharp gasp, when she saw it too.
“Holy shit, that’s not possible.” But her name and date of birth matched up. It was clearly the right person. She had given up the name Tucker, and was back to using her maiden name, Scarlett Jane Carson. A profile showed up on the screen, with a photograph of an attractive older woman with white hair.
“What does it say?” Caroline asked them both. She was on the other side of the computer. “Is she dead?” She hoped she was, she didn’t want to have to deal with a monumental lie on top of everything else, and a mother who had abandoned them thirty-nine years ago and given them up, not died, as their father had always told them.
“No. Dad lied to us,” Kate said in a strangled voice. “She’s alive, and living in Santa Barbara.” Less than an hour away. How long had she been there? For all these years? Less? They had lost their father suddenly, and now their mother had returned from the grave. Caroline bowed her head with a devastated look, as Kate and Gemma stared at each other.
“I want to go see her,” Gemma said immediately.
“I don’t.” Caroline was adamant. “Whatever the reason was she gave us up is their business. I don’t want to know. And I don’t want to see her. We don’t know her. She’s been dead to us for thirty-nine years, whether it was true or not.”
“You don’t have to see her,” Kate said quietly, trying to calm them both. She wanted to slow Gemma down, and reassure her youngest sister, who looked badly shaken.
“What about you?” Gemma asked Kate.
“I don’t know,” Kate said, staring at her computer screen again, and then at her sister. “I honestly don’t know what I want to do. I need some time to digest this.”
“Then I’ll go alone,” Gemma said in a strong voice. “I want to know why she gave us up, and why she never saw us again. Did she sell us? Did he pay her off? And why did he tell us she was dead, when she isn’t?” They were important questions, and in her heart of hearts, Kate wanted to know too. She just didn’t know if she could face the mother she had never known and had mourned all her life, on the heels of losing her father too.
They asked Juliette that afternoon if she knew anything about it, and she said she didn’t. They believed her. Their father didn’t share everything with her. And the answers to their questions had died with their father, and if they wanted answers, they had no choice. They would have to go and see their mother. For right now, it was more than any of them felt ready to deal with. The fact that they might have a living mother was shocking news to all of them. It made a liar of their father, and if true, they had been deprived of a mother by someone’s choice, either his or hers. She hadn’t been stricken by an early death, as they had always believed. Had she given them up willingly, or had he forced her to? The answer was important to each of them, even as adults. Was she a drug addict, a terrible person, a criminal? And why had he hidden it from them? To protect the memory of their mother, or to cover some foul deed of his own?
Caroline knew better than either of them that no woman walks away from three small children easily, unless she has no choice. What it told her was that