“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.