Material Girl (3 page)

As if she had to be told that. “I'll call Dad right now.” She stood, swiped her coffee cup off her desk, and marched to the wet bar to pour another.

“Still drinking too much coffee?” he asked, his voice noticeably lighter.

“I guess,” she said and dumped three sugars into her cup. She stirred her coffee slowly, aware of the silence filling the space between them. After what seemed an eternity, she heard Evan move behind her.

“I'm going back to Dallas this afternoon,” he said, standing directly behind her. There was that thing in his voice, that uncomfortable sound of longing. Robin did not turn around, but simply nodded, waiting. Evan sighed. “I'll talk to you soon, all right?”

When Robin turned around, he had gone.

She stood at the wet bar for several long moments, staring at the door before finally, slowly, returning to her desk.

The phone message, on which the receptionist had written CALL YOUR FATHER AT THE RANCH IMMEDIATELY, was staring up at her. Shit.

Dad picked up the phone on the first ring. “Hello?” he said anxiously.

“Hey, Dad, it's me.”

“Robbie! Good God, does the word immediately mean anything to you? I've been trying to get hold of you for two days now!”

“Really? Well, I was out yesterday with Mia. You remember her—”

“I asked that you call me when you came in. Did you just come in?”

Robin suppressed a groan. “Dad, I had some other calls to return. Listen, I know why you're calling, and—”

“No, Robin Elaine, you don't. I need you to come to the ranch.”

“Uh… to the ranch?” That was most definitely not in her plans. “Gee, Dad, I don't think I can make it right now.”

“Rebecca and Rachel are coming, too,” he continued, as if he hadn't heard her. “Bec is going to pick up Rachel in Dallas this morning and then they are driving down. You can get here tonight if you leave before rush hour—”

“Dad!” Robin exclaimed, laughing nervously at his sudden determination to see his daughters. “I can't just up and come to the ranch—”

“Why the hell not?” he barked, then made a strange sound. “Robbie, listen,” he said, his voice hoarse and soft, “there is something I need to tell you, but I can't do it over the phone. I need you to come here.”

That sobered her—her father was demanding, but not the sort to make anxious demands, unless… unless something was awfully wrong. “Has something happened?” she asked quickly.

“Yes. No. Well, is happening.”

“What?” she asked, unconsciously curling her hand into a fist, steeling herself. “Is it Mom? Did something happen to Mom?”

“Oh baby, no, your mom is fine,” he said softly and sighed wearily. “God, Robbie, I don't believe it myself, but… it's me.”

The entrance to the Lear family ranch—massive limestone pillars framing iron gates, an overarching frieze of cattle and crosses with the name Blue Cross Ranch scripted in the middle—-had stood open since Aaron and Bonnie arrived two weeks ago.

The event was remarked by the locals in and around the town of Comfort , Texas , and every so often, one of them would be curious enough to drive through the gates for a friendly look around. The caliche road, marked by cattle guards, wended through mesquite trees and old live oaks with branches so long and low that they formed a canopy for long stretches. To the right and left of the road, 1,500 head of cattle and about 500 sheep grazed on the green, hilly landscape. In the spring, bluebonnets, buttercups, and Indian paintbrush grew so thick that it looked as if the cattle slept on a bed of flowers.

Eventually, the road widened and a dozen gaslights lined the last 100 yards or so to the ranch house, which was nestled in the shadows of the long, twisting limbs of the live oaks along the banks of the Guadalupe River . Slung long

and wide, the house was two-story limestone, marked with an abundance of windows so that no vista was left un-framed. A wide veranda stretched endlessly around the structure, dotted with wicker furniture, green ferns, and whitewashed porch swings. In the small front yard stood an old iron kettle, filled with antique roses that matched those planted along the railing of the porch. A century-old boot scrape and horse tether stood next to the path leading to the flagstone skirt spread around the entrance to the porch.

Robin had seen this house a million times, but today, as she coasted into the circular drive at dusk, she thought it looked strangely hollow—the setting sun reflected on the second floor windows, giving the house orange eyes and a gaping black mouth where the front door stood open.

As she climbed out of her car and gathered her things, she could see the familiar shapes of her sisters rise from two wicker chairs and move across the porch, Rachel distinguished from Rebecca by the wild curl of her long hair and the glowing tip of her cigarette. Rebecca, sleek and slender, had her hair pulled back—she was the first one to come off the porch, walking gracefully but purposefully.

It was the determination in her stride that unnerved Robin. She felt a small panic in the pit of her belly—she wasn't ready to do this, or to hear it, or to feel it, and realized with surprise that her hands were shaking. God, this was so unlike her. She was always the one who was so put together, so sure of herself. Everyone said that of all of them, she most resembled Dad.

“Hey,” Robin said lamely as Rebecca came around the side of the car.

Rebecca responded by taking Robin into her arms and hugging her tight. “I'm so glad you're here.”

She let go, grabbed a bag from Robin's hand, and stepped aside. Rachel dropped her smoke and ground it out with the heel of her boot. “Hey, Robbie,” she said.

Robin picked up her purse and put her arm around Rachel's shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze as they followed Rebecca up the flagstone path to the house. "Rach,

you're still smoking?" she asked, as the house loomed larger and larger before her.

“Sometimes,” Rachel answered sheepishly.

“Oh yeah?” Robin stopped, looked up at the windows of the master suite. “Then give me one.”

Rachel obediently fished a smoke from her pocket and handed it to her, then offered up a light. Robin grimaced at the taste, but welcomed the soothing race of smoke through her blood. In front of them, Rebecca dropped Robin's bag at her feet, looked up at the master suite, too, and shook her head. “I can't believe this,” she said, gesturing for Rachel to give her a cigarette, too. “This just all seems so unreal.”

Robin glanced at Rebecca, who shrugged as she inhaled, then daintily let the smoke escape her lips. It was a fact that Rebecca could, just by breathing, be the most elegant woman on the planet. She had that special air about her, as if she walked on spun gold—unlike Robin, who marched through in army boots, kicking her way to clear a path, and Rachel, who pretty much floated along, barefoot and picking flowers.

“So how are Mom and Dad? I mean… is everything okay?” Robin asked.

Rebecca settled her pale blue eyes on her. “They are doing remarkably well. It's weird. It's like the last fifteen years didn't happen.”

“That is so strange,” Rachel murmured.

Robin's sentiments exactly. She took another drag from her smoke. “So has he told you anything? Like what his doctors are saying? H-how… long?” she forced herself to ask.

The question silenced them all; Rachel looked nervously at the ground. Rebecca, the rock, calmly shook her head. “He wanted to wait for you. He hasn't said any more than what he told us on the phone—just that it's bad.”

“Maybe he's exaggerating. You know how some people are—they think things are a lot worse than they really are?” Rachel said, her hopeful expression dissolving with Rebecca and Robin's pointed looks. “I mean, how bad can it be?” she asked no one in particular, tossing the cigarette aside.

“God, is there any liquor out here? A beer at least?”

The three women looked up at the second-story windows of the master suite, none of them having the guts to take the next step forward.

From the sitting room of the master suite, Aaron watched as his three beautiful daughters gathered on the drive below him. “Since when do my children smoke?” he demanded gruffly as Rachel handed Robin a cigarette.

Seated in a comfortable armchair beside him, Bonnie lowered the book she was quietly reading. “They don't. At least not usually. Rachel can't seem to kick the habit completely, and when she feels stressed, she smokes.”

“I didn't know Rachel smoked.”

Bonnie shot him a sidelong glance. Aaron knew that look, it was the there's-a-lot-you-don't-know look she had perfected in the last couple of weeks. He sighed, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, unable to shake the ill effects of the aggressive drug therapy.

“Why don't you rest a bit? I'll go see about the girls, then bring you some tea in a while.”

Bonnie, ah, Bonnie. How I've let you down. Aaron felt her hand on his forehead, opened his eyes, and took her hand, pressing his lips to her palm. “T hank s, but I'm good.”

Bonnie smiled; it was the same, sweetly beatific smile that had captivated him more than thirty years ago on that dirt football field in West Texas . No matter what had gone between them—and the Lord God knew there had been a lot—he still loved her, and in moments like these, desperately so. It was just like her, Aaron thought, as he watched her put her book away, that in spite of their estrangement, she had come when he had called. Her life in California had taken her down a new and different path, but they had never lost touch, neither of them able to completely let go, the bond between them amazingly resilient. She had, instinctively, felt his horror when he had made that pathetic call to her, and had come to New York immediately to be with him through the surgery and first rounds of radiation and

chemotherapy. She had put the many years of discord and strife aside and had stepped into the old role of partner and soul mate. She had consulted with his doctors, had gotten up in the night to make sure he was okay, had filled him with comfort foods that he could not keep down, and memories and kindness that he could.

He would never have made it this far without her.

When the shock and trauma of aggressive treatment to his body had begun to wear him thin, it had been Aaron's request that they come to the ranch to recuperate. Both of them had wanted some detachment from the world at large to put their minds and arms and hearts around the devastation of a sentence of six months to two years, and while they had not been at the ranch together for many years, it seemed the place to be. Aaron in particular needed some place where he could be silent, a place of solitude where he could think of all things that could not be left undone before he was gone.

And Bonnie, resolute, had come with him, her mouth set in determination as she gripped his hand on that interminably long flight from New York where he had, for the first time in his life, made use of the barf bag. Twice.

Fortunately, at the ranch, he had begun to improve, regaining some strength. They began every day as if it were his last. They did not call for the usual staff members to join them, preferring to spend the days in quiet solitude and reflection. They took walks in the morning as far as Aaron could go, looked through old family albums and letters in the afternoon, drank from his cellar of very fine wines, and spent their evenings on the porch swing looking at the stars.

More importantly, they talked, like they hadn't talked in years. About all of it, their lives, their daughters. About all the things that they had seen grow and blossom between them, then wilt and die, and how exactly it had all happened, beginning with a clear and calm night on the Texas caprock. That was the night of the spring dance in 1964, their junior year at Rails High, when Bonnie had willingly given herself to his wandering hands and neither of them had been the same again.

That night, and all its discoveries, had sparked the struggle within him to be a man—Aaron could still remember how fiercely he wanted to take Bonnie and all that she was, run away with her, find some place where the world did not exist except for the two of them.

His father, however, saw a different vision for him. There was no one else to leave the family business to, save his sister and whomever she might eventually marry. The more Aaron struggled with that plan, the less anyone in his family seemed to understand why or how he could leave generations of fanning behind. Only Bonnie had understood his need to see the world, to make his way by himself and escape the drudgery of cotton farming.

So in the weeks that followed their graduation from high school, when Bonnie had impulsively packed a bag and run off with him to Dallas to help him make their fortune, they had sealed their bond and their fate for the rest of their lives.

His father had died a bitter man and his sister's husband, a no-account dirt farmer from Crosby , had reaped the reward of Aaron's decision. It was, nevertheless, a decision Aaron never regretted.

At first, it had been very hard. Yet at the same time, it had been very good between him and Bonnie—they had been held together by young love and poverty. It was by chance that a foreman at Grantham Engines had taken a look at Aaron's application, saw that he knew how to operate a cotton gin, and put him behind the wheel of a semi, driving line-haul between Dallas and San Antonio . With a little money, Aaron and Bonnie had found a tiny one-bedroom clapboard house on the east side of Dallas , and they were happy.

When Robin came along in 1969, Aaron immediately fell in love with her dark blue eyes and dark curls. He had worshipped that baby doll, had taken her everywhere he could, doting on her. Then in 1971, the same year Aaron bought his first truck, Rebecca had joined them, another beautiful baby girl with crystalline blue eyes. By the time Rachel was born in 1974, laughing and gurgling beneath a head full of

black fuzz, he had a dozen of his own trucks running between Dallas and San Antonio .

Lear Transport had been born along with his daughters, but grew much faster. Aaron intuitively understood the fundamentals of a success in the business, and he quickly earned a reputation for delivering freight fast and cheap. As the business grew, so did his ambition. He moved the family to Houston to take advantage of the transatlantic shipping lanes that ended there, successfully bidding on several over-the-road contracts to move a substantial amount of ocean cargo that did not end up on the rails. By the time he moved to New York and added air transport to LTI, Bonnie had long gone.