True Colors (9 page)

“I think I know another reason your dad was smiling.”

“Really?”

“I talked to him last night.”

“And that’s smile-worthy?” she teased, pouring champagne into the glasses she’d brought with them.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small box. “Marry me, Vivi Ann,” he said, opening the box to reveal a diamond ring.

It was like getting popped in the head by a fastball; you knew instantly you should have seen it coming and ducked. She tried to think of how to answer, what to say, knowing that only a yes and tears would make him happy.

“It made your dad smile,” he said.

Vivi Ann felt tears sting her eyes, but they were all wrong, not the kind he deserved at all. “It’s so early, Luke. We’ve only just started dating. We haven’t even—”

“The sex will be great. We both know that, and I respect you for wanting to wait until you’re ready.”

“Ready for sex is easy. This is . . .” She couldn’t even finish her thought. It was impossible for her to do what he wanted, to put on that ring and seal her fate. She looked up at him, feeling sadness well. She’d thought—foolishly—that not sleeping with him would slow down their relationship, but it hadn’t worked. He’d fallen in love with her anyway. “We hardly know each other.”

“Of course we do.”

“What’s my favorite ice cream?”

He drew back, frowning. She could tell that it was sinking in, that he knew this was going wrong. “Chocolate cherry. Dark and sweet.”

It was a question she asked every man who claimed to love her, a litmus test for how well they knew her. They always picked some sweet exotic flavor because that was how they saw her, but it wasn’t who she really was. Most of the men she dated—Luke included—stared endlessly at her face, declared their love in the first few months, and never thought they needed more. “Vanilla,” she said. “Inside, I’m plain old vanilla.”

“There’s nothing plain about you,” he said softly, touching her cheek with a tenderness that only made her feel worse.

“I’m not ready, Luke,” she said at last.

He looked at her for a long moment, studying her face as if it were a map he’d only just been handed, the terrain foreign. Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

“I’ll wait,” he promised.

“But what if—”

“I’ll wait,” he said again, cutting her off. “I trust you. You’ll get there.”

She wanted to say,
No
.
I don’t think I ever will,
but the words wouldn’t come.

Much later, when she stepped into the comforting quiet of the farmhouse, she looked longingly at her father’s closed bedroom door, wishing that she had a mother to talk to about this. Moving tiredly, she went upstairs and got ready for bed, but before pulling back her comforter, she walked over to her window. The ranch lay in darkness before her, lit here and there by a moon that seemed as worn-out as she. She knew that just beyond a row of evergreens lay Luke’s land, and she found herself wondering if that mattered. Not in the way her father cared, of course; in a deeper, more meaningful way of connection, of what it meant when two people grew up in the same place, knowing the same people, wanting the same things. Surely a property’s border could be a boundary, but was it also a line of common ground?

She turned away from her window and climbed into bed, unable to stop her thoughts from spinning back to his proposal.

If only she could talk to someone about how she felt. Her sisters were the obvious choice, but she was afraid of what they would say. Would they listen patiently and shake their heads and say, “Grow up, Vivi. He’s a good man.”

Should that be enough for her? Was she wrong to want passion? To dream of something—someone—more? She’d always imagined love to be turbulent and volatile, an emotion that would sweep her up and break her to pieces and reshape her into someone she couldn’t otherwise have become.

Was she a fool to believe in all that?

It felt as if something inside of Winona were slowly going bad, like a tomato left on the vine too long. In the past few days, she’d snapped at Lisa, lost a client, and gained five pounds. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t control her emotions. She kept waiting for Vivi Ann to call her with the big news that she was engaged.

She wanted to believe that Vivi Ann would laugh at him, blow off his ridiculous proposal. God knew her baby sister wasn’t ready to settle down, but Luke Connelly was a hell of a catch in this town, and Vivi Ann always got the best of everything.

By Tuesday afternoon, she was a wreck. This envy of hers was expanding, taking up too much space in her chest. Sometimes when she thought about everything Vivi Ann had stolen from her, she couldn’t breathe.

Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any worse, Lisa came on the intercom and said, “Hey, Winona. Your dad is on line one.”

Dad?

She tried to remember the last time he’d called her at work and couldn’t. “Thanks, Lisa.” She picked up the phone and answered.

“That idiot Travis is gone,” he said halfway through her greeting. “He left without sayin’ a damn word and the cabin looks like a bomb went off in there.”

“Isn’t that Vivi Ann’s problem? I don’t do housecleaning.”

“Don’t get smart with me. Didn’t you say you’d hire us someone?”

“I’m working on it. I’ve interviewed—”

“Interviewed? What are we, Boeing? All we need is someone who knows horses and ain’t afraid of hard work.”

“No, you need all that
and
someone who’ll promise to stay for the summer. That’s not easy to find.” She’d learned that the hard way. Summer was rodeo season and all the men who’d answered their ads refused to commit to long-term employment. They were out of work, most of them, but cowboys were romantic in their way, seduced by the lifestyle, and they just had to follow the circuit. They all thought they’d hit it big at the next city.

“Are you sayin’ you can’t do it? ‘Cause, by God, you should have told us that before—”

“I’ll do it,” she said sharply.

“Good.”

He hung up so fast she found herself listening to nothing. “Nice talking to you, Dad,” she muttered, hanging up. “Lisa,” she said into the intercom, “I want you to take the rest of today and tomorrow off. I need those help-wanted ads posted at all the feed stores in Shelton, Belfair, Port Orchard, Fife, and Tacoma. And let’s double the number of
Little Nickel
ads. From Olympia to Longview. Can you do that?”

“That’s not exactly my idea of taking the day off,” Lisa said, laughing. “But yeah, I can do it. Tom is working swing this week.”

Winona realized how she’d sounded. “I’m sorry if I was snippy.”

She folded her arms on her desk and laid down her head. She could already feel a tension headache starting behind her right eye.

She was hardly aware of the passing of time as she sat there, her face buried in the crook of her arms, imagining her life changing course.

She dumped me, Win
. . .

Of course she did, Luke, come here. I’ll take care of you
. . .

Deep in the familiar fantasy, it took her a moment to realize that someone was speaking to her. She lifted her head slowly and opened her eyes.

Aurora stood there, eyeing her. “Quit dreaming about Luke. You’re coming with me.”

“He’s going to propose to Vivi,” she said, unable to turn up the volume on her voice.

Aurora’s face pleated with pity. “Oh.”

“Don’t you have some play-nice advice for me?”

“I’m not going to say anything. Except that you have to tell Vivi Ann
now
. Before something bad happens.”

“What’s the point? She always gets what she wants.” Winona felt that bitterness move again, uncoil from its resting place.

“That’s poison, thinking like that. We’re
sisters
.”

Winona tried to imagine following Aurora’s good advice, even chose the words she could use and turned them around in her head. All she could come up with was a perfect picture of herself as pathetic. “No, thanks.”

Aurora sighed. “Well. She obviously hasn’t said yes yet or we would have heard. Maybe Vivi Ann knows she isn’t ready. You know how romantic she is. She wants to be swept away. When it comes to love, she’ll either be in it from the start or out of it, and Luke hasn’t rocked her world.”

Winona let herself hope. It was a tiny flare of light, that hope, but it was better than the dark that preceded it. “I pray you’re right.”

“I’m always right. Now get up. Travis bailed in the middle of the night. We’re going to help Vivi Ann clean the cabin.”

“What if she shows off her ring?”

“You made this bed of lies; I guess you’ll either crawl under the sheets or get the hell out of it.”

“I’ll go change.”

“I’d change more than your clothes, Win.”

Ignoring the jibe—or was it advice?—Winona went up to her bedroom and put on an old pair of jeans and a baggy gray UW sweatshirt.

In no time at all they were in the car, driving to the ranch.

Inside the cabin, they found an absolute shambles, with weeks’ worth of dirty dishes on every surface and a pile of them in the sink. Vivi Ann was on her knees, scrubbing a stain from the hardwood floor. Even in her oldest clothes, with her long hair tied in a haphazard ponytail, and no makeup on, she managed to look gorgeous.

“You’re here,” she said, giving them both that megawatt smile of hers.

“Of course we came. We’re family,” Aurora said, putting the slightest emphasis on that last word. She elbowed Winona, who stumbled forward.

“I’m sorry I missed the banquet, Vivi Ann. I heard it was a great night.”

Vivi Ann stood up, peeling off her yellow rubber gloves and dropping them beside the bucket. “I really missed you. It was fun.”

Winona could see the vulnerability in her sister’s eyes and knew that she’d hurt Vivi Ann. Sometimes all that beauty got in the way and Winona forgot that Vivi Ann could easily be wounded. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it.

Vivi Ann accepted the apology with another bright smile.

“Did anything happen after I left?” Aurora asked.

Vivi Ann’s smile faded. “Funny you should ask. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you guys. Luke asked me to marry him.”

“He told me he was going to,” Winona said. Her sentence seemed to fall off a ledge of some kind, landing in an awkward silence.

“Oh.” Vivi Ann frowned. “A little warning might have been nice.”

“It’s not the kind of thing a woman usually needs a warning about,” Aurora said gently.

Vivi Ann looked around the cabin. “He’s so perfect for me,” she said finally. “I should be over the moon.”

“Should be?” Winona said.

Vivi Ann smiled. It was forced, though. “I don’t know if I’m ready to get married yet. But Luke says he loves me enough to wait.”

“If you don’t think you’re ready, you’re not,” Aurora said.

That awkward silence fell again.

“Right,” Vivi Ann said. “That’s what I thought. So let’s get started cleaning this place up.”

Winona felt her breath release in a quiet sigh. Maybe there was hope after all.

And she thanked God for that. Lately, she’d begun to wonder what terrible thing she might do if Vivi Ann married Luke.

A week and a half later, Winona sat in her father’s study, at the big, scarred wooden desk that looked out over the flat blue waters of the Canal. On this crystalline day the trees on the opposite shore looked close enough to touch; it seemed impossible to believe that they were more than a mile away. She had just reached for the nearest bill—from the lumber store—when she heard a car drive up. A few moments later, footsteps thudded on the springy porch steps and someone knocked.

She pushed the bills aside and went to answer it.

A man stood on the porch, staring down at her. At least she
thought
he was staring down; it was hard to tell. A dusty white cowboy hat shielded the upper half of his face. He was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in torn, dirty jeans and a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt that had seen better days. “I’m here about the job.”

She detected a hint of an accent—Texas or Oklahoma, maybe. He took his hat off and immediately pushed back the long, straight black hair that hung to his shoulders. Skin the color of well-tanned leather made his gray eyes appear almost freakishly light in comparison. His face was sharp and chiseled, not quite handsome, with a bladelike nose that made him look vaguely mean, a little wild. He was lean, too; wiry as a strip of rawhide. Black tattooed Native American symbols encircled his left bicep, but they weren’t from local tribes. These images were unfamiliar to her.

“The job?” he said again, reminding her that she’d taken too long to respond. “Are you still looking for a hand?”

“You know your way around horses? We don’t want to train anyone.”

“I worked at the Poe Ranch in Texas. It’s the biggest operation in the Hill Country. And I team-roped for about ten years.”

“You good with a hammer?”

“I can fix what’s wrong around here, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m half white, too. If that helps you make up your mind.”

“That hardly matters to me.”

“You’re above most folks, are you?”

She got the sense he was laughing at her, but nothing about him changed.

“You follow the rodeo circuit?”

“Not anymore.”

She knew that her father wouldn’t hire this man—a Native American—wouldn’t approve of him at all, and yet their ads had been posted for more than a month now and the first roping jackpot was on Saturday. They needed to hire someone, and they needed to do it fast.

Taking off her expensive blue pumps, she stepped into Vivi Ann’s oversized rubber boots, which were always stationed at the door. “Follow me.”

She heard him behind her, moving slowly, his worn, scuffed cowboy boots crunching on the gravel. She refused to acknowledge her nervousness. It was an unfortunate by-product of the environment in which she’d been raised and she would not succumb. She was above judging people by the color of their skin. “Here’s the barn,” she said rather stupidly, as they were standing inside of it now.

He came up beside her, saying nothing.