True Colors (2 page)

She walked away from her sister, but it was a mistake, that movement, and she knew it instantly. In this kitchen, memories of her mother were everywhere—in the handmade canary and blue gingham curtains, in the Mountain Mama magnet that clung to the refrigerator door, in the bowl of shells on the windowsill.
Come on, Winnie, let’s go to the beach and look for treasures
. . .

How many times had Winona blown her mother off this summer? She’d been too busy to hang with Mom, too cool to scavenge the beach, looking for pieces of smooth broken glass amid the shattered oyster shells and drying kelp.

That thought sent her to the fridge. Opening the freezer door, she found a half gallon of Neapolitan ice cream. It was the last thing she needed, but she couldn’t help herself.

Grabbing a spoon, she leaned against the counter and started eating. Through the kitchen window, she could see the dirt driveway in front of the farmhouse and the raggedy barn-red loafing shed in the clearing. Up there, her dad’s beat-up blue truck was backing up to their rusted six-horse trailer. He got out of the driver’s side and went back to the hitch.

“Tell me he’s not going to the rodeo,” Winona muttered, moving forward.

“Of course he is,” Vivi Ann said, drawing again. “He was up at dawn getting ready.”

“The rodeo? You’re kidding.” Aurora came into the kitchen, stood beside Winona at the window. “But . . . how can he?”

Winona knew she was supposed to step into her mother’s empty shoes and explain why it was okay for Dad to get on with everyday life on the day after his wife’s funeral, but she couldn’t imagine forming a lie of that magnitude, not even to spare her sisters pain. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie—maybe that was what adults did in this world, maybe they just went on—and somehow that was even more frightening, even more impossible to voice. The silence lingered, made Winona uncomfortable; she didn’t know what to say, how to make this bearable, and yet she knew it was her job to do just that. A big sister was supposed to take care of her siblings.

“Why’s he getting Clem out of the pasture?” Aurora asked, taking the spoon from Winona and digging into the ice cream.

Vivi Ann made a sound that was part cry, part scream, and ran for the door, flinging it open so hard it cracked against the wall.

“He’s selling Mom’s horse,” Winona said sharply. It irritated her that she hadn’t figured it out first.

“He wouldn’t,” Aurora said, and then looked to Winona for reassurance. “Would he?”

Winona had no assurance to offer. Instead, she followed Vivi Ann’s lead and ran. By the time she reached the parking area by the shed, she was out of breath. She skidded to a stop beside Vivi Ann.

Her father stood there, holding Clem’s lead rope. Sunlight hit the sweat-stained crown of his cowboy hat, glinted off the saucer-sized sterling belt buckle he wore. His chiseled face reminded her of the nearby mountains: granite planes and shadowed hollows. There was no hint of softness there.

“You can’t sell Mom’s horse,” she said, panting hard.

“You gonna tell me what to do, Winona?” he said, letting his gaze linger for just a moment on the ice cream.

Winona felt her cheeks redden. It took all her courage to speak up, but she had no choice. There was no one else to do it. “She loves . . . loved that horse.”

“We can’t afford to feed a horse that don’t get ridden.”

“I’ll ride her,” Winona promised.

“You?”

“I’ll try harder than before. I won’t let myself be afraid.”

“Do we even got a saddle that’ll fit you?”

In the excruciating silence that followed, Winona lunged forward and grabbed the lead rope from her father. But she moved too fast or spoke too loud—something—and Clementine shied, bolting sideways. Winona felt the sting of a burn as the rope yanked across her palm and she stumbled sideways, half falling.

And then Vivi Ann was beside her, controlling Clementine with a word, a touch. “Are you okay?” she whispered to Winona when the horse was calm again.

Winona was too embarrassed to answer. She felt her father moving toward them, heard the way his cowboy boots sank into the mud. She and Vivi Ann turned slowly to face him.

“You got no horse sense, Winona,” he said. It was a thing she’d heard all her life from him. From a cowboy, it was as cutting a remark as was possible.

“I know, but—”

He wasn’t listening to her. He was looking at Vivi Ann. Something seemed to pass between them, a piece of communication that Winona couldn’t grasp. “She’s a high-spirited animal. And young, too. Not just anyone can handle her,” Dad said.

“I can,” Vivi Ann said.

It was true, and Winona knew it. Vivi Ann, at twelve, was bolder and more fearless than Winona would ever be.

Envy hit her like the snap from a rubber band. She knew it was wrong—mean, even—but she wanted her father to deny Vivi Ann, to cut his most beautiful daughter down with the sharp blade of his disapproval.

Instead he said, “Your mama would be proud,” and handed Vivi Ann the ragged blue lead rope.

As if from a distance, Winona watched them walk away together. She told herself it didn’t matter, that all she’d wanted was to keep Clem from getting sold, but the lies were cold comfort.

She heard Aurora come up beside her, walking up the hill now that the drama was over. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“What matters is that he didn’t sell Clem.”

“Yeah,” Winona said, wishing that was how she saw it. “What do I care about who rides a horse?”

“Exactly.”

But years later, when she looked back on that week of her mother’s death, Winona saw how that single action—the handing over of a lead rope—had changed everything. From then on, jealousy had become an undercurrent, swirling beneath their lives. But no one had seen it. Not then, at least.

The day Vivi Ann had been waiting for—January 25—seemed to take forever to arrive. When it finally came, she woke even earlier than usual. Long before dawn had lightened the night sky, she threw back the covers and got out of bed. In the cold darkness of her room, she dressed in insulated coveralls and a woolen cap. Grabbing a pair of worn leather work gloves, she stepped into big rubber boots and went outside.

Technically she didn’t have to feed the horses. Her latest ranch hand would do it. But since she was too excited to sleep, she figured she might as well do something useful.

Without a moon to guide her, she couldn’t see anything except a ghostly silvered image of her own breath, but if there was one thing Vivi Ann knew in this world, it was the lay of her father’s land.

Water’s Edge.

More than one hundred years ago, her great-grandfather had homesteaded this property and founded the nearby town of Oyster Shores. Other men had chosen easier, more populated areas, places with easier access, but not Abelard Grey. He had crossed the dangerous plains to get here, lost one son to an Indian raid and another to influenza, but still he’d moved West, lured by a dream to this wild, secluded corner of the Evergreen State. The land he chose, one hundred and twenty-five acres tucked between the warm blue waters of the Hood Canal and a forested hillside, was spectacularly beautiful.

She walked up the small rise toward the barn they’d built ten years ago. Beneath a high, timbered ceiling, a large riding arena was outlined by four-rail fencing; twelve box stalls flanked the east and west sides of the structure. After she opened the huge sliding door, the overhead lights came on with a sound like snapping fingers, and the horses instantly became restless, whinnying to let her know they were hungry. For the next hour, she separated flakes of hay from the bales stacked in the loafing shed, piled them into the rusted wheelbarrow, and moved down the uneven cement aisles. At the last stall, a custom-made wooden sign identified her mare by her rarely used registered name: Clementine’s Blue Ribbon.

“Hey, girl,” she said, unbolting the wooden door and sliding it sideways.

Clem nickered softly and moved toward her, sneaking a bite of hay from the wheelbarrow.

Vivi Ann tossed the two flakes into the iron feeding rack and closed the door behind her. While Clem ate, Vivi Ann stood beside her, stroking the big mare’s silky neck.

“Are you ready for the rodeo, girl?”

The mare nuzzled her side as if in answer, almost knocking Vivi Ann off her feet.

In the years since Mom’s death, Vivi Ann and Clementine had become inseparable. For a while there, when Dad had quit speaking and started drinking, and Winona and Aurora had been busy with high school, Vivi Ann had spent most of her time with this horse. Sometimes, when the grief and emptiness had been too much for Vivi Ann to handle, she’d slipped out of her bedroom and run to the barn, where she’d fall asleep in the cedar shavings at Clem’s hooves. Even after Vivi Ann had gotten older and become popular, she’d still considered this mare her best friend. The deepest of her secrets had been shared only here, in the sweet-smelling confines of the last box stall on the east aisle.

She patted Clem’s neck one last time and left the barn. By the time she reached the house, the sun was a smear of butterscotch-yellow light in the charcoal-gray winter sky. From this vantage point, she could see the steel-gray waters of the Canal and the jagged, snow-covered peaks of the distant mountains.

When she stepped into the shadowy farmhouse, she could hear the telltale creaking of floorboards and knew her father was up. She went into the kitchen, set three places at the table and then started breakfast. Just as she put a plate of pancakes into the oven to warm, she heard him come into the dining room. Pouring him a cup of coffee, doctoring it with sugar, she took it to him.

He took it from her without looking up from his
Western Horseman
magazine.

She stood there a moment, wondering what she could say that would start a conversation.

Dressed in his usual work clothes—well-worn Wrangler jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, with a saucer-sized silver belt buckle and leather gloves tucked in his waistband—he looked like he did every morning. And yet there was something different, too: a subtle collection of lines or wrinkles that aged his face.

The years since Mom’s death had been unkind to him, sharpening his features and adding shadows where none belonged, both in his eyes and in the fleshy bags beneath. His spine had curved; it was the mark of a farrier, he said, the natural result of a lifetime spent hammering nails into horses’ hooves, but loss had played a part in that curving of his spine, too. Vivi Ann was certain of it. The weight of an unexpected loneliness had reshaped him as surely as the hours he’d spent hunched at work. The only time he really stood tall anymore was when he was in public, and she knew how much it pained him to appear unbowed by his life.

He sat down at the table and read his magazine while Vivi Ann readied and served breakfast.

“Clem’s made some awesome practice runs this month,” she said, taking her place across from him. “I really think we have a chance of winning the rodeo in Texas.”

“Where’s the toast?”

“I made pancakes.”

“Fried eggs need toast. You know that.”

“Mix them in with the hash browns. We’re out of bread.”

Dad sighed heavily, obviously irritated. He looked pointedly at the empty place setting on the table. “You seen Travis this morning?”

Vivi Ann glanced through the window toward the barn. There was no sign of their ranch hand anywhere. No tractor out and running, no wheelbarrow by the barn door. “I fed the horses already. He’s probably out fixing that fence.”

“You picked another winner with that one. If you’d quit rescuin’ every hurt horse between here and Yelm, we wouldn’t need no help around here at all. And the truth is we can’t afford it.”

“Speaking of money, Dad . . . I need three hundred bucks for the rodeo this week and the coffee can is empty.”

He didn’t respond.

“Dad?”

“I had to use that money to pay the hay bill.”

“It’s gone?”

“The tax bill just came, too.”

“So we’re in trouble,” Vivi Ann said, frowning. She’d heard it before, of course, had always known there wasn’t much money, but for the first time, it really hit home. She understood suddenly why Winona was always harping about saving money for taxes. She cast an upward glance at her dad. He sat hunched forward, with his elbows on the table. Her sisters would have seen that as rude; Vivi Ann was sure she knew better. “Your back hurting you again?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge the question.

She got up, went into the kitchen, and got him some ibuprofen, setting the pills gently on the table between them.

His splayed farrier’s hand closed over them.

“I’ll find a way to get the money, Dad. And I’ll win this week. Maybe as much as two thousand bucks. Don’t you worry.”

They finished the rest of the meal in silence, with him reading his magazine. When he was done, he pushed back from the table and stood up. Reaching for the sweat-stained brown felt cowboy hat that hung on a hook by the door, he said, “Make me proud.”

“I will. ’Bye, Dad.”