“She can’t. She’s sick. She’s been sick for a long time.”
“She’s sick, all right,” Ivy retorted. “Holly’s a drug addict, Dad. Face it. She may have had talent once, but she’s burned her brain up on booze and cocaine and God knows what else.”
“A drug addict? Are you sure?”
“She’s been in and out of treatment half a dozen different times. That’s one of the reasons Burton doesn’t want you to settle with her. If it comes down to your word against hers, who’s going to believe her?”
Without answering, Harold leaned back against the wisteria trunk and closed his eyes.
“You went to see her, didn’t you?” Ivy flared “You’ve made arrangements to settle, haven’t you?”
“Not yet,” Harold murmured. “But I will. Later on today.”
“Why?”
“Because she couldn’t see me right then.”
“I don’t give a damn what time you go see her. What I want to know is why did you go at all? Burton told me what he thinks, but I want to hear it from you, from your own lips.”
Yuri moved closer to Ivy. Towering over her by nearly two feet, he put one protective hand on her shoulder. For years Harold Patterson had longed for someone to come into his younger daughter’s life, someone who would honor her and care for her the way she deserved. Yet now that Yuri had showed up on the scene, he seemed like more of an enemy than a friend.
Harold was glad the letter was still safely stashed in his box at the bank. After all those years, now that he was finally willing to share the awful secret with his two daughters, this one demanded unreasonable conditions. He couldn’t see spilling his guts after all these years with some interloping stranger hanging on every word.
Harold shook his head helplessly and didn’t answer.
Ivy shrugged off Yuri’s hand and moved closer, leaning forward until her face and her father’s were only inches apart. “Is it true, then?” she demanded. “Is that it?”
No,” he protested, holding up his arm as if deflecting a physical blow. “It’s not that at all. You got to believe me.”
“Well, I don’t. And no one else will, either, not if you settle. If you were innocent, you’d go to court to prove it. In the meantime, don’t bother splitting the ranch. Go back to Holly and tell her she can have the whole damn thing. I don’t want any part of it. Let her come back home and take care of you the way I took care of Mother if it ever comes to that. She can be the one who keeps the doors locked so you don’t wander outside without remembering to put your clothes on the way Mother did.”
“Ivy, please.”
But Ivy wouldn’t stop. “And when it gets to the point where you can’t feed yourself anymore, let your precious Holly be the one to ladle the soup into your mouth and change the filthy sheets and empty the damn bedpans. Tell her I’ve already done it once. Tell her I’ve already served my time, and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll do it again! Come on, Yuri, let’s go.”
As afternoon sunlight warmed the wet yard, a few chickens, the peacock, and two hens had ventured into the yard and were scratching for bugs in the damp dirt outside the fence. Harold sat without moving while the truck roared away, sending startled fowl squawking in every direction.
Only after the truck was entirely out of sight did he get up and wander into the house. With a staring gaze, he stood in the middle of the room and looked at the things that were missing-the things Ivy had packed to take with her-pictures, books, knickknacks that were probably every bit as much hers as they were his.
He stumbled over to the armchair in front of the fireplace where a small fire still burned on the grate. It was too bad he hadn’t brought the letter with him. He could just as well give up and burn the damned thing. The fire would have been only too happy to consume the old yellowed paper saturated with candle wax.
But giving up would have been too easy, and that wasn’t Harold’s style. Instead, he lurched to his feet and hurried through the house. In his bed room, he leaned into his age-mottled mirror and combed his sparse hair. He was old and butt sprung all right but he could still take care of his ownself. So far, anyway.
After sprinkling on a dab of Old Spice, Harold Patterson clambered into the Scout and once more headed for Cosa Viejo.
LATER ON, when Burton Kimball tried to recall the exact sequence of events, it was difficult for him to sort out that long, emotionally troubling afternoon.
What he did know for sure was that it had been right about noon when he strode into the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge, and all he could think about was Ivy, poor Ivy. What could he do to help her? What would become of her if she lost the Rocking P? Where, for instance, would Ivy go looking for a job?
Cattle ranching was all Ivy Patterson had ever known or cared to know. Working with her father on the ranch had been her whole life, but if cowboys were a dying breed, cowgirls were even more so. When Trigger, Roy Rogers’ old horse, went to the great pasture in the sky, someone had gone to the trouble of calling in a taxidermist to stuff the carcass. But whatever happened to Dale Evans’ horse? Burton wondered morosely. The way the world worked, Buttermilk probably turned into a horsehide sofa.
The bartender at the Blue Moon, a young slender blonde Burton Kimball never remembered seeing around town before, came out from behind the bar to take his order. Burton pulled himself out of the depressing morass of thought only long enough to order a Bloody Mary. As soon as the bartender walked away, he returned to his somber contemplation of Ivy Patterson’s dismal future and Holly’s treachery.
Because that’s how Burton saw it-as treachery pure and simple. Holly’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father were too much a part of current pop-psychology myth, a belief system that tended to blame everything from ingrown toenails to snoring on the convenient bogeyman of childhood abuse. The presence of Amy Baxter, a supposedly internationally recognized hypnotherapist, was designed to lend legitimacy to Holly’s claims.
But Burton Kimball wasn’t about to fall for the phony visiting-expert-therapist gambit. Amy Baxter’s professional attendance on Holly’s team didn’t impress him any more than Rex Rogers out-of-town lawyer act did. Despite Rogers’ claims to the contrary, the expected courtroom confrontation with her father had been played up as a
