And it was invigorating. For a whole week.
Rebecca looked up to the tops of the stately old pecan trees. It was so hard to become a butterfly. When marital strife and high society were lifted from her calendar, she discovered she really had little to keep her occupied. She worked relentlessly on the lake house, rearranging things, cleaning, and rearranging again, marveling at how she had managed to live for so many years filling one empty moment after another with such meaningless pursuits as shopping and spas and dinner parties. Now that she was alone, friendless, and living forty-five miles from the nearest civilization (unless one counted Ruby Falls, which, even on International Lawn Mower Race Day, could not be considered civilization), she struggled to fill those empty moments, and discovered how pathetically ill-equipped she was to live life. She realized she had been someone’s daughter or wife for so many years that she couldn’t even find Rebecca in the wreckage that was now her life.
Thus had begun her maddening, so-called transformation to her place in this stupid world. “Meditation,” Rachel had recommended. “Clear your mind of all the negative vibes. But definitely keep up with the transformation therapy, so you can stay in touch with your alter ego. And it doesn’t hurt to have a box of Oreos lying around, either.”
Grand advice, only Rebecca didn’t have a clue about what ego she was in touch with, if any. The job idea was more concrete; it was the best way to rediscover the confident girl in her she had buried fifteen years ago when she latched on to Bud, the girl who wanted to be an artist and dance in the ballet and raise horses and didn’t care if her spice rack was alphabetized or the stripes on her couch lined up with the stripes on the couch pillows. Having spent the better half of the last decade making sure her life and heart didn’t break in two, Rebecca had beaten that girl down and left her feeling worthless and numb.
In theory, a job seemed the perfect answer to rebuilding her self-esteem—the problem being, of course, that she didn’t have any actual job skills. Her résumé was landing in round file after round file. No one called. No one returned her calls. She had hoped that Fleming and Fleming would have the answer—Placing individuals in esteemed positions of employment since 1942, their ad said. But Marianne said, “There are lots of people out of work right now, blah blah blah,” and “You’re not really quite qualified, blather blather blather.”
Clearly she was going to have to face the fact that she could not get a job in Austin . . . unless she wanted to leap into the fire and call Dad.
Eeew.
Nothing against Dad—she knew that deep down, he loved her. And she loved her father somewhere deep down there, too. But he was and had always been a hard-ass, and she honestly didn’t like him very much. She kept him in the Men to Avoid category. But, she told herself, it’s just a phone call. It didn’t mean she’d owe him anything, an extremely important point, thank you, as she had no intention of living off anyone ever again. Especially a man, because in her reading of Protecting Our Inner Child While Searching for the External Woman, she had come to realize that all her life, she’d been letting men take over and then answered to them, answering and answering, until there was nothing left of Rebecca.
That life was thankfully behind her now, she reminded herself as she watched a vendor roll his cart to the gate, open an umbrella, and hang a sign that said: Dogs, Quesadillas, Tacos.
She was a new woman, right? She could make her own way in this world and she didn’t need a man . . . well, technically, she needed Dad at the moment, but it was just for a moment, and Moira would say to quit dancing around the campfire and just do it. Okay. This was her, just doing it.
Rebecca got a cell phone from her purse, noticed in passing that more people were wandering into the park as the clock passed the noon hour. She punched the auto dial for the number at the family ranch.
“Hello?” Dad answered immediately on the first ring, and she had an unnerving image of him sitting and staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring.
“Dad?”
“Rebecca! Did you get my message?”
“No . . . what message?”
“Where is your mother? I need to know where she is. I need to talk to her.”