Danielle Steel - The Ranch

The three women were standing awkwardly in the living room, and Tanya was wondering what to do now. “Will you at least sit down? You're both making me very nervous,” she said, pacing the room, as Zoe looked at her. Unlike the other two, who were the same age, Zoe was almost a full year older, but they all looked terrific. “Look,” Tanya said as they sat down, “I probably shouldn't have done it, I apologize. It was a stupid, sophomoric thing to do, but I thought I could get the three of us back together. I've missed you. I don't have any other friends like you. Nobody else in this whole world cares about me, absolutely no one. I don't have a husband, I don't have kids, I don't even have stepkids anymore. All I have is you… and what I wanted was what we used to have… that's all… maybe it was crazy… but I wish you would at least try it.”

“We both love you,” Mary Stuart said calmly, trying to regain her composure. “Or at least I do, and I'm sure Zoe does too, or she wouldn't be here. We didn't just come here for the view and the cowboys,” Zoe smiled and nodded as she listened, “but we don't love each other, Tan. That's the problem. I think it would be a very hard two weeks if we all stayed here.” Zoe nodded again, and Tanya looked even more disappointed. She had expected some kind of reaction when they arrived, but she hadn't expected both of them to insist on leaving. She realized now that her idea had been really stupid. She would have been better off extending the invitation to either Mary Stuart or Zoe, and not undertaking such an ambitious reunion.

“What about just for tonight? We've been driving all day, and we're both tuckered out.” She spoke of herself and Mary Stuart, and turned to Zoe. “You've had two flights just to get here, and you look tired… you look good,” she corrected herself, “but you look bushed. We all are. After all, we're not kids anymore,” she teased, but neither of them smiled. They were both thinking about what to do now. “Why can't we just stay here for tonight, and then it's up to you what you want to do. I won't make a fuss, and if you're both pissed and tell me to get lost, and leave, it's my own fault. But then I'm leaving too. I'm not going to stay here alone for two weeks. It would be too depressing,” It was a beautiful place, and a real shame to waste the vacation.

Zoe was the first to speak up, and she looked at both women when she did it. “I'll stay tonight. You're right. It's a long trip back, and I'm not even sure there is a flight out tonight. This is not exactly Kennedy Airport.” She smiled at Tanya, and looked hesitantly at Mary Stuart. “Would that suit you, Stu?” She slipped easily into their old nicknames.

“I'm all right with that,” Mary Stuart said politely. “I'll go back to New York in the morning.”

“No, you're not,” Tanya said bluntly, “you promised you'd spend a week with me in L.A.” She was starting to look annoyed. She thought Mary Stuart was being unreasonable, but she knew just how deep the old wounds went.

“I'll fly back tomorrow,” Zoe said matter-of-factly, and Tanya decided to quit while they were ahead. They were spending the night, it was a start, and maybe a miracle would happen before morning.

“What bedrooms do you all want?” Tanya asked, taking off her hat, and tossing it on a hat rack. The rooms had every possible thing they could have wanted. Coatracks, boot jacks, gloves in case the mornings were chilly. There were rain ponchos in the closet in case there was a storm. Everything was comfortable and luxurious and well thought out. Even Tanya had never seen any place like it. “I love this place,” she said with a cautious smile, and this time the other two joined her. In spite of their amazement at being together again, they all had to agree that the ranch was fabulous, and their cabin even better.

“Do they just do this for you, Tan?” Zoe asked, “or does everyone get this kind of treatment?” She doubted everyone did, she had never seen so many thoughtful little touches, including every magazine they could possibly have wanted.

“Supposedly, every cabin is like this,” she said, helping herself to a root beer. “They called my secretary the week before we left to ask what I like to eat and drink and read, what kind of soap I like, how many pillows and towels, what videos, if I needed a fax in the room, or additional phone lines. I told them one phone was fine, but I had them put in a fax, and three VCR's, and I guessed at the foods and drinks you like. If there's anything you want, just tell them.”

“This place is amazing,” Mary Stuart concurred as she went to look at all the bedrooms, and on her way back she almost ran into Zoe.

“How've you been, Stu?” Zoe asked solicitously, and the look in her eyes startled Mary Stuart. There was a lot of sorrow and pain there.

“I've been fine,” Mary Stuart said softly, wanting to ask her about her own life for the past twenty years. But she knew about the clinic from Tanya.

“I'm sorry about your son,” Zoe said, and instinctively touched her arm. “Tanya told me… it's so unfair… I deal with it all the time, and it's never right, but especially at his age. I'm really sorry.”

“Thanks, Zoe,” she said, her eyes filled with tears as she turned away from her. She didn't want Zoe to see it, but Zoe had sensed it, and she moved away so as not to offend her.

“Have we figured out what bedrooms yet?” Tanya came back into the room and she saw that Mary Stuart had been crying, and she wondered if they'd been fighting, but neither of them looked angry, and then she suspected it was about Todd, and when she raised an eyebrow Zoe nodded.

In the end, they all selected rooms. The slightly larger one had a sunken bathtub and a Jacuzzi, and Zoe and Mary Stuart both insisted that Tanya have it, although she would have given it up to either one of them. And when she agreed to use it, she told them to use the Jacuzzi anytime, but they both pointed out they'd be leaving in the morning. And Tanya almost told them she thought they were both disgustingly stubborn, but she didn't say it. She just went to her own room to change for dinner, and the others did the same a moment later.

Zoe called home from her room, and everything was fine. Jade was eating dinner when she called, and Inge said everything was going smoothly and she put Jade on the phone, and she didn't even cry when she heard her mother. She thought of paging Sam, just to see how things were, but she decided not to. He would be paged by plenty of her patients, so she didn't.

And shortly before seven o'clock they all met in the living room. Tanya was wearing skin-tight black suede pants, and a beaded cowboy shirt, with her blond hair loosely tied in a black ribbon behind her. And she was wearing tall, black suede cowboy boots that she had bought for the occasion. Zoe was wearing jeans, a soft, pale blue sweater and hiking boots, and Mary Stuart was wearing gray slacks, a beige sweater, and Chanel loafers. They were all as they had always been, surprisingly compatible, and yet totally different. There was a kind of mesh between them that, even now, with the rift between two of them, was still more powerful than they were. And Tanya knew that if they'd been honest with each other, they would have admitted that they felt it. She did, she felt drawn to both of them, as though there was an invisible cord around them pulling them closer. When she came back into the living room, Mary Stuart was asking Zoe about her clinic, and she was talking animatedly about it, while Mary Stuart listened in fascination.

“What an enormous undertaking,” Mary Stuart said admiringly, but as they left for the dining room, they both fell silent, as though they had each remembered they weren't supposed to be speaking to each other. But once they were at the dinner table, the conversation got under way again. Tanya talked at length about her next concert tour, and the movie she was about to close a deal on, and they were both excited for her. It was obvious that they were both genuinely fond of her and wanted to protect her. They had been put at a table in the corner of the room, and although they all saw heads turn, no one came to ask for autographs, or to speak to them, except eventually the head of the ranch, Charlotte Collins, who stopped at the table to make them feel welcome.