The Ranch She Left Behind

Ellen and her friends, who had supposedly been safe at a friend’s sleepover, had been caught shoplifting. The store would release her with only a warning, but he had to talk to them in person.

Shoplifting? He almost couldn’t believe his ears. But he arranged a cab for his date, with apologies, then hightailed it to the mall, listened to the guard’s lecture, and now was driving his stony-faced eleven-year-old daughter home in total silence.

A lipstick. Good God. The surprisingly understanding guard had said it all—how wrong it was morally, how stupid it was intellectually, how much damage it could do to her life, long-term. But Max could tell Ellen wasn’t listening.

And he had no idea how he would get through to her, either.

Ellen had turned eleven a couple of weeks ago. She wasn’t allowed to wear lipstick. But even if she was going to defy him about that, why steal it? She always had enough money to buy whatever she wanted, and he didn’t make her account for every penny.

In fact, he almost never said no to her—never had. At first, he’d been overindulgent because he felt guilty for traveling so much, and for even thinking the D word. Then, after Lydia’s death, he’d indulged his daughter because she’d seemed so broken and lost.

Great. He hadn’t just flunked Marriage 101, he’d flunked Parenting, too.

“Ellen, I need to understand what happened tonight. First of all, what were you and Stephanie doing at the mall without Stephanie’s parents?”

Ellen gave him a look that stopped just shy of being rude. She knew he didn’t allow overt disrespect, but she’d found a hundred and one ways to get the same message across, covertly.

“They let her go to the mall with friends all the time. I guess her parents trust her.”

He made a sound that might have been a chuckle if he hadn’t been so angry. “Guess that’s a mistake.”

Ellen folded her arms across her chest and faced the window.

The traffic was terrible—Friday night in downtown Chicago. It would be forty minutes before they got home. Forty very long minutes. He realized, with a sudden chagrin, that he’d really rather let it go, and make the drive in angry silence. Though he’d adored Ellen as a baby and a toddler, something had changed through the years. He didn’t speak her language anymore.

He didn’t know how to couch things so that she’d listen, so that she’d care. He didn’t know what metaphors she thought in, or what incentives she valued.

The awkward, one-sided sessions of family therapy, which they’d endured together for six months to help her deal with her grief, hadn’t exactly prepared him for real-life conversations.

Even before that, everything had come together in a perfect storm of bad parenting. His job had started sending him on longer and longer trips. Mexico had happened. When he returned from that, he was different—and not in a good way. His wife didn’t like the new, less-patient Max, and he didn’t like her much, either. She seemed, after his ordeal, to be shockingly superficial, oblivious to anything that really mattered in life.

And she had taken their daughter with her to that world of jewelry, supermodels, clothes, diets. When they chattered together, Max tuned out. If he hadn’t, he would have walked out.

He hadn’t blamed Lydia. He knew she clung to her daughter because she needed an ally, and because she needed an unconditional admiration he couldn’t give her. But as the gulf widened between Max and Lydia, it had widened between Max and Ellen, too.

He might not travel that much anymore, but he’d been absent nonetheless.

“Ellen.” He resisted the urge to give up. “You’re going to have to talk to me. Stealing is serious. I have no idea why you’d even consider doing something you know is wrong. You have enough money for whatever you need, don’t you?”

She made a tsking sound through her teeth. “You don’t understand. It’s not always about money.”

“Well, then, help me to understand. What is it about?”

“Why do you even care? I’m sorry I caused you trouble. I’m sorry I interrupted you on your date.”

He frowned. Could his dating already be what had prompted this? He’d talked to her about the dinner ahead of time, and she’d professed herself completely indifferent to when, or whom, he chose to date.

But he should have known. Ellen rarely admitted she cared about anything. Especially anything to do with Max.

“I don’t care about the date,” he said. “It wasn’t going well, anyhow. Right now, all I want is to be here. I want to sort this out with you.”

She laughed, a short bark that wasn’t openly rude, but again, barely. “Right.”

“If you want me to understand, you have to explain. If it’s not about money, what is it about? Are you angry that I went on a date?”

“No. Why should I be? It’s not like Mom will mind.”

He flinched. “Okay, then, what is it?” He took a breath. “Ellen, I’m not letting this go, so you might as well tell me. Why would you do such a thing?”

She unwound her arms so that she could fiddle with her seat belt, as if it were too tight. “You won’t understand.”

“I already don’t understand.”

“It’s like an initiation.”

He had to make a conscious effort not to do a double take. But what the hell? What kind of initiation did eleven-year-olds have to go through?

“Initiation into what?”

“The group. Stephanie’s group.”

“Why on earth would you want to be part of any group that would ask you to commit a crime?”

“Are you kidding?” Finally, Ellen turned, and her face was slack with shock. “Stephanie’s the prettiest girl in school, and the coolest. If you’re not part of her group, you might as well wear a sign around your neck that says Loser.”

A flare of anger went through him like something shot from a rocket. How could this be his daughter? He’d been brought up on a North Carolina farm, by grandparents who taught him that nothing seen by the naked eye mattered. The worth of land wasn’t in its beauty, but in what lay beneath, in the soil. The sweetest-looking land sometimes was so starved for nutrients that it wouldn’t grow a single stick of celery, or was so riddled with stones that it would break your hoe on the first pass.

People, they told him, were the same as the land. Only what they had inside mattered, and finding that out took time and care. Money just confused things, allowing an empty shell to deck out like a king.

For a moment, he wanted to blame Lydia. But wasn’t that the kind of lie that his grandfather would have hated? All lies, according to his grandfather, were ugly. But what he called “chicken lies” were the worst. Those were the ones you told to yourself, to keep from having to look an ugly truth in the eye.

So, no. He couldn’t blame Lydia. First of all, where did Lydia come from? From Max’s own foolish, lusty youth. From his inability to tell the empty shell from the decked-out facade.

And, even more important, why should Lydia’s influence have prevailed over his?

Because he’d abdicated, that’s why. He’d opted out. He’d failed.

But not anymore. He looked at his little girl, at her brown hair that used to feel like angel silk beneath his hands. He remembered the dreams he’d built in his head, as he walked the floor with her at night. He remembered the love, that knee-weakening, heart-humbling rush of pure adoration....

“We’re going to have to make some serious changes,” he said. His tone was somber—so somber it seemed to startle her, her eyes wide and alarmed.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “But you should brace yourself, because they’re going to be big changes. We’ve gotten off track somewhere. Not just you. Me, too. We have to find our way back.”

She swallowed, as if the look on his face made her nervous. But she didn’t ask any further questions.

Which was good, because he didn’t have many answers. Only one thing he knew, instinctively. He couldn’t do it here, in Chicago, with the traffic and the malls and the Stephanies. And the memories of Lydia around every corner.