Madeline chose to skirt around the glaring truth that her mother had spent most of her life hopping from one bed to another. “Not everyone has a father, Mom. Some people only have a sperm donor.”
The absence of a father was the singular crack in Madeline’s life, the chasm she could never seem to avoid. It wasn’t that she dwelled on it, quite the opposite—she had made herself forget it a very long time ago. But inevitably, when she met new people, they would ask about her family, and she would end up explaining that she never knew her father, and, no, she never saw him but one time, never heard from him (never mattered to him, did not exist for him)—and she would have to relive the whole no-dad thing again. She much preferred not thinking about him at all.
“Why’d this guy come all the way to tell you?” Mom asked. “Why didn’t he send a letter or something?”
“Because my father left me something, Mom. He left me a ranch.”
“A what? What do you mean a ranch? A real ranch?”
“A real ranch,” Madeline confirmed. Just saying it out loud made her feel strangely annoyed. She ought to be, as Jackson Crane had pointed out, excited by the prospect. But she wasn’t.
“What about me?” her mother asked.
“What do you mean?” Madeline asked, confused.
“I mean, did he leave me anything?”
Madeline didn’t even know what to say to that. Why would she think he had? “I don’t—”
“What about all the child support he should have paid me? I ought to go after that.”
Madeline was not surprised that her mother would turn news like this around to herself. “Mom… no offense, but you probably should have gone after that when you actually supported me. I’m almost thirty. I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen.”
“Well,” her mother said with a sniff, “when you go, ask about that. I feel like he should have left me something.”
Go? Go where? A big, heavy wrench had just been tossed into the middle of Madeline’s neatly ordered life. She had the DiNapoli listing, a fifteen-thousand-square-foot monstrosity of Greek revival meets Jersey Shore. It was a huge challenge to sell, but one that would pay off in a major way when it did. Eight months ago, Madeline’s fellow realtors had told her not to take it, that the sellers were unreasonable, that they wouldn’t come down off the asking price. But Madeline was determined. She’d spent a lot of time and money to market that property—a lot—and she wasn’t going to leave that hanging. Plus, she’d committed to another eight weeks of soccer, and neither was she going to leave those little girls without a coach. Camp Haven had saved Madeline from a bad situation one summer by daily removing her from her mother’s dysfunctional orbit. She was indebted to them. Coaching made her feel useful. She didn’t have time for a father she never knew popping up, uninvited, unwanted, into her life.
“Honestly, I never thought he was a ranch kind of guy,” her mother said, and at the same time, Madeline heard the faint, but unmistakable tone of a male voice in the background. “Well, listen, kiddo, I’ve got to get going—”
“Wait, Mom! There’s more,” Madeline said quickly. “That’s not all he left me.”
“Oh yeah? What else?”
“Two sisters.”
Her mother took a long drag off her smoke and blew it into the receiver. “I guess that doesn’t come as a big surprise. Look on the bright side—you’ve always wanted siblings.”
It was true that Madeline had always wanted siblings. Brothers, sisters, she didn’t care, just someone to be there when she came home from school. Someone who would make Pop-Tarts and watch TV with her until Mom dragged in from wherever she’d been that day. To think that all this time, Madeline had had not one, but two sisters was a lot to absorb. She imagined an entire life of barbeques and ski trips and father-daughter dances that had not included her.
“I’ll be just a minute!” her mother suddenly shouted, startling Madeline, and then said, “You look like him, you know it?”
“Who?”
“Your father! Those blue eyes and that dark brown hair. Let me tell you, thirty years ago, Grant Tyler was one good-looking bastard. We sure sowed some wild oats.” She laughed, but it dissolved into a phlegm-filled cough. “We discovered our sexuality together.”
“Mom!” Madeline exclaimed. “Don’t even. It’s not like you guys were hanging out at Woodstock.”
“You think Woodstock was the only sexual revolution in this country?”
“I am so not having this conversation with you.”
“You know what your problem is?” Mom continued, ignoring her. “You’re too uptight. You like things to fit in neat little boxes and go certain ways and they never do.”
“Oh, I know, Mom. You taught me that things weren’t going to go my way,” Madeline said with a twinge of bitterness.
“Don’t start with me, Madeline. I did the best I could. Now when are you going to go and check out this ranch?”
“I’m not.”