Chapter 13
Well, that explains Camellia’s dislike for Dakota, Lily thought.
Camellia shook her head, got up from the stool, and went back to the couch. “Well, enough about that for tonight. I only need to get through the charity rodeo, and then the rodeo circuit will be over for a few months. With any luck, either Ray will come to his senses, or the officials will finally declare him too old and unfit to enter.”
Violet smiled reassuringly. “Let’s hope so, Camellia.”
Camellia was quiet for a minute, then looked at Violet and Lily curiously. “Have either of you noticed, or maybe found it even a bit odd, that we’re all named after a flower?”
Lily and Violet looked at each other. Of course, they’d always known they were named after flowers. Their mother’s name had been Daisy, and Dad had always said he loved that all of his girls were named after flowers. He’d loved flowers, and whenever he’d come home from a long trip, he never failed to bring their mother a huge bouquet. Even after her death, he made sure there were flowers on her grave every year on her birthday.
“Well, yes. Dad said he liked that all of his girls were named after some of his favorite flowers,” Violet said carefully. “I guess I didn’t register that Camellia is also a flower.”
Camellia nodded. “Dad always told me it was his favorite flower. I was thrilled, of course, and it made me feel super special. I’ve always loved my name. Until now.”
“Why until now?” Lily asked softly. “It’s still a beautiful name.”
Camellia shrugged miserably. “But it’s not special, like Dad said it was. He forgot to mention that he had two other special little girls named after flowers, the same as I was.”
Camellia groaned and put her head back against the couch, closing her eyes. “It’s how I used to comfort myself. Whenever he was gone for a long time, and I missed him, I’d think about how he would come home any day now, with a huge bunch of flowers for me, and I’d know that he’d been thinking of me and missing me.” She looked at the two women sitting in her living room. “But the truth was, he wasn’t missing me at all. He was spending time with his other flowers. I wasn’t anything special after all. What was your mother’s name?”
The question came out sounding hollow and sad, and Lily suspected that Camellia already knew the answer.
“Daisy,” she said.
Camellia nodded miserably. “I thought so. Mama’s name was Mary Ann. Nice, simple, plain old Mary Ann. Old-school Mary Ann, without the added E at the end.”
“It’s a nice name,” Lily said.
Camellia glared at her. “I was named after your mother, not mine. I was named after a woman I didn’t even know existed and who took my father away from us.”
Violet wanted to respect Camellia’s response to the life-altering news they’d all received, but the timeline was a bit off. “Whoa now, hold on there,” Violet protested. “It seems to me that the evidence points more to the direction that your mother was the one who took our father from our mother. I’m clearly the oldest child, and our parents’ marriage certificate predates the certificate you have.”
Camellia shook her head. “No, that certificate was issued when Mama and Dad had their formal wedding. She told me years ago that she and Dad had actually already been officially married for three years. They’d just kept it a secret from everyone because Mama’s family didn’t want her to marry him and had threatened to stop paying for her college if she did.”
Violet shrugged. She didn’t care what Camellia thought; the proof was in the documents. “She may have had her reasons for telling you that, but the marriage certificate you showed us looked pretty legitimate to me. Dad clearly married our mother before he married yours, which makes the marriage to your mother null and void,” Violet announced.
Camellia’s eyes flashed with a mixture of pain and anger. “No, that’s not true. Mama wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true. Monday, I’m heading to the courthouse to see if I can find the original marriage certificate and when it was filed. I’m positive when I do, it will prove that my mother was the first to marry him.”
Lily’s head was starting to throb, and she could see that neither Violet nor Camellia were going to let this subject rest. It occurred to her yet again that her two sisters weren’t only similar in looks but also in their stubborn personalities.
She couldn’t take it. They’d all been dealt a horrible hand with no real answers. All three of them were victims, not just one. “Stop it, both of you,” Lily said sternly. “Will you just listen to us? Here we are fighting about which mother was first when it doesn’t really matter, does it? The truth is that neither one of our mothers knew about the other, and it wasn’t their fault that they were duped by Dad. It sounds like they both loved him and were both deceived by him.”
Camellia visibly shrank back into her pillow. “You’re right. What Dad did to all of us wasn’t your mother’s fault—or mine. As much as it hurts, it wasn’t her fault that I was named after her, either. I’m just glad that Mama died before she could ever find any of this out.”
Violet couldn’t reconcile the hurt and pain of the secrets their father had left behind. “What was he thinking? I mean, why would he do that to all of us? He doesn’t deserve the love any of us gave him!” Violet clearly felt bad for Camellia.
“He was still our Dad, Vi. Don’t forget that. What he did to our mothers was wrong, but he’s not here to explain himself. It doesn’t negate all the good things he did for us in his life,” Lily said.
Camellia crossed her arms and leaned back. Her brow furrowed, and her lips pursed. “Doesn’t it?” Camellia asked. “It certainly brings into question everything he ever said to me. It makes me wonder if he ever told me the truth about anything. I took his advice and quit the rodeo circuit to go to college, even though I was doing great. Now I’m questioning my decision. College certainly never seemed to get me anywhere.”
Violet and Lily looked at her wide-eyed.
Lily gawked at the prim and proper carbon copy of her sister Violet, surrounded by her polished and formal things. She couldn’t imagine Camellia ever having a speck of dust on her. “You were part of the rodeo circuit?”
“Maybe you would be happier,” Violet said, “or maybe you would have both been gored to death by a bull.”
Camellia grimaced. “I wasn’t a bull rider, silly. Women don’t ride the bulls around here. I raced the barrels. And I was pretty good at it, too.”
Camellia rode horses? Miss prim-and-proper, sit-with-your-ankles-crossed-in-front-of-you had actually sat on a horse and gotten dirty? Could you do barrel racing in a sidesaddle? Lily wondered.
As usual, Violet was the more direct of the two of them and let out a doubtful, unladylike snort. “You? You actually sat that tiny behind of yours on one of those big creatures and rode at breakneck speeds around a bunch of barrels?”
For the first time since she’d met her, Camellia’s eyes actually brightened as a slight smile lit up her face. “Yes. I did.” Her pride was evident, and it seemed to be the first sign of pure joy they’d seen from the woman.
Lily shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe Dad let you do that!” said Lily, remembering how hard she’d begged him to let her get a bike to ride around town, but he’d always been so overprotective and worried about every little thing.
“Well, he didn’t know for quite a few years. I started riding with a friend when I was ten, and things just gradually happened. By the time I was sixteen, I was riding in amateur competitions. When my friend got tired of competing, her parents had already bought her an expensive and talented barrel horse, so they told me to go ahead and use it—and I did. My grandparents helped me out a bit, and since Dad never paid for any of it and was gone so much, it wasn’t all that hard to keep it a secret.”
Lily’s mind went to the pages of a book and an imaginary world she loved to escape to. “Is that how you met Ray?” asked Lily, already romanticizing the image of a young, attractive cowgirl falling for the handsome bull rider.
Camellia laughed. “Yes, it is where I first ran into Ray, but we actually couldn’t stand each other back then.”
Violet was already perched on the edge of her seat, watching Camellia, completely engrossed. “Why not? You two are absolutely perfect for each other.”
“Bull riders didn’t have a lot of respect for us girls. They called us the eye candy that attracted the male spectators, claiming that the bull riders were the real moneymakers for the show. Of course, us girls resented that and thought they were all just a bunch of arrogant Neanderthals.”
“I could see that. So, when did you and Ray finally decide to hook up?” Violet asked.
Camellia gave her a withering look. “We didn’t hook up, Violet. I was in my thirties and had long quit the rodeo when I ran into him again. He was working over the winter at his father’s car dealership, waiting for rodeo season to start up again and I was working a dead-end job at a call center. My old car decided to quit on me, and I didn’t have any money to get anything great. Mama had already given me as much as she could, so I walked into the dealership without a lot of hope of actually finding much. I think I must have looked pretty lost, and Ray took pity on me and walked over to help me.”
Lily rubbed her hands together like an excited child and grinned with anticipation. “ Oh , this might be even more romantic than the whole cowboy/cowgirl scenario,” Lily sang out. “Tell us more.”
Camellia shrugged. “I didn’t recognize him at first, without his hat. And by then, his hairline was already receding. He was wearing the standard-issue car salesman polo and khakis. Even though he recognized me right away, he didn’t say anything.” Camellia grinned, clearly thinking back on the memory. “If he had, we might have gotten together a little sooner. He was cute and nicer than the other guys. I secretly had a crush on him back then, even though us cowgirls were supposed to hate the bull riders.
“Anyway, I’d always shied away from dating, preferring to spend time with my horses and, later, with Mama. Thinking back on it, I was probably kind of scarred by Dad being gone all the time. By that time in our lives, he was only showing up for a few days every other month, and I knew how much Mama was hurting. I vowed that I was never going to be in that position of sitting around pining for a man, so I convinced myself it was better to stay alone.”
Violet was frowning, and Lily suspected she was thinking she had done the very same thing. While Lily had jumped at the first man to show any interest in her, Violet had never quite been able to trust or commit to any of the men she’d dated—until she met Lawrence.
“So, what was different about Ray?” Lily asked.
“I don’t really know. I went out with him the first time because I needed a car. I was hoping if I went to dinner with him, he’d work harder to get me a good deal. The owner of the dealership, his father, was known to drive a hard bargain, but at the time, I had no idea Ray was his son. If I had known, I probably would have been much too intimidated to go out with him.”
“So, when did you hook up?” Violet asked, then corrected herself quickly, “I mean, fall in love?”
“Honestly, I think I fell for him almost immediately. He was so different from anyone else I’d ever dated. He was soft-spoken and kind, and he really seemed to listen to me and care about what I had to say.” Camellia smiled softly, looking over at a photo on the mantle that must have been taken on their wedding day.
Ray wasn’t wearing his hat, and his receding hairline glistened in the sun on what apparently had been a very warm day.
“I loved his balding head and how embarrassed he was about it.”
Lily’s eyes followed Camellia’s, and she smiled. “It really is kind of cute.”
Camellia’s eyes were soft as she spoke, and it was clear to both sisters just how much she loved her husband. “Of course, I fought it, just like I always had. I broke it off with him countless times, the first time being when he finally told me he was a bull rider and remembered me from all those years ago. I felt hurt and betrayed. There was no way I was going to fall in love with a rodeo man.”
“But you did,” Lily said.
Camellia nodded. “I already had, yes. And as much as I tried to hide and deny my feelings, he wouldn’t give up on me, and I finally agreed to start seeing him again.”
“How romantic,” Lily sighed. “Did he get down on one knee to ask you? I’ve always wished Scott would have done that.”
She barked out a laugh. “Hardly! He actually asked me during the worst fight that we’d ever had!”
Violet was all eyes and ears now, leaning forward, fully engrossed in the story. “This just gets more and more interesting.”
Camellia looked at Violet and said, “The truth is, by then, we’d ‘hooked up’ a few times. I know Mama and Dad wouldn’t have approved, but I was a grown woman in my thirties. I was in love.” Camellia wrung her hands somewhat nervously. “I always wanted children, eventually anyway, but never found the right person. Well, I finally found myself with the right person, but my timing might have been a little off. A week after I found out I was pregnant, he picked me up, saying he had something to tell me. I was convinced he was going to ask me to marry him, and I was about to tell him about my pregnancy right then.”
“What happened?” Lily asked, sensing things hadn’t gone well.
“Instead of proposing, he confessed that his father wanted him to take over the dealership. He told me he’d refused and that he’d signed on for the new season of bull riding instead. He asked me to come with him and travel the circuit in his camper.”
“Oh boy,” Violet said softly.
Camellia nodded. “Yeah, oh boy. I lost it on him and walked out. Of course, he had no way of knowing I was pregnant and worried about how I would feed a baby on my call center salary. Mama had some money stashed away, but I didn’t want to go begging her—I knew how disappointed in me she’d be. Besides, I was also mad that he’d never told me. I felt like he’d been deceiving me the entire time we were together, and I started to doubt that I even knew him.”
“Sound familiar to anyone?” Violet queried, looking around at her sisters.
“But clearly, you got back together? I mean, you’re married, and you have your daughter,” said pressed, ignoring her sister.
“Yes. Turns out that Raymond Senior wasn’t really such a bad guy, after all. When Mama found out about my pregnancy, she called Ray’s father and read him the riot act about how his son was abandoning his responsibilities. I had no idea she’d even done that until Ray showed up at my doorstep, pretty much just as angry at me about not telling him about the baby as I was at him for not telling me about his father’s offer. Raymond Senior insisted we get married before I was any further along, and so we were married within a week, in a shotgun ceremony, so to speak.”
Camellia stood up and picked up the picture. “It’s amazing how fast Mama got the whole wedding set up,” she mused. “Of course, Ray’s father funded most of it, so she didn’t need to worry about asking Dad for the money.”
Lily had a burning question that she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to. “Did Dad walk you down the aisle?” Lily asked. Even though he’d been absent during most of the planning of both her and Violet’s weddings, he had made it back in time to walk them each down the aisle.
Camellia smiled sadly. “He was late, of course. But he did come roaring in just in time to throw on a suit and walk me down the aisle, yes.”
Lily nodded. “Yup, that sounds just like him.” Part of her was happy their Dad had shown up for Camellia, too, even if she was a little jealous to share that with anyone other than Violet.
Camellia put the picture down and turned around to face them. Her face looked drawn and tired. “I’m exhausted. It’s been a long and trying week for the two of you as well as for me, I imagine. It’s time we all get some sleep, but let’s make a pact first. No talk about Dad tomorrow. Instead of focusing on him, let’s take the time to get to know one another better. On Monday, I’ll go to the courthouse, and we can rehash whose mother married Dad first.”
Lily rose from her seat, more than ready to agree with Camellia, when she noticed her sister staring down at her phone, her face pale and drawn. “Violet, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have to go.” She met Lily’s gaze with tears in her eyes. “It’s Lawrence. He’s in the hospital.”