When she finally got home, she slammed the door shut behind her and went straight to the medicine cabinet. She took too many pills—who cared? anything to numb the pain—and washed them down with tequila.
Crawling into bed, she pulled the covers up and tried not to think about Dallas or Noah or the future. If she thought about any of it, she’d fall apart. And so she lay there, woozy, cottony, staring out the window at the ranch until night fell; after that, she stared at nothing until she was part of it and she couldn’t feel anything at all.
The next morning, feeling like a piece of old, dried-out leather, she climbed out of bed, took a scalding-hot shower, and went to the prison.
“Vivi Ann Raintree to see Dallas Raintree,” she said formally, although by now she was known around here.
The woman at the desk—it was Stephanie today—smiled. “Your lawyer scheduled a contact visit today.”
“Really? No one told me that.”
Normally she would have been thrilled at the idea of a contact visit. In all the years she’d been coming here, she’d only had a few. But now she knew why it had been scheduled. It was Roy’s parting gift to her, a signal that the end had come.
She went down to the metal detector. Once she was through it, a big man in uniform said brusquely, “This way.” He stamped her hand and gave her an identification tag to wear around her neck.
She followed him down a wide, gray hallway. Doors opened and closed automatically, swinging wide slowly and clicking shut with a loud thud behind them. The noise seemed to grow closer and louder with each new open door, until Vivi Ann was in the prison itself, the part where the prisoners were housed.
At last, the guard led her into a room at the end of the last hallway. It was small, without windows or cubicles. A uniformed guard stood in the corner opposite the door. He took note of her arrival but didn’t move or nod.
In the center of the room was a large wooden table, scarred and scratched from years of use. Several molded plastic chairs were pushed up to it. She went to the table, sat down, and scooted close, waiting. On the wall, the minutes ticked past.
Finally, the door in the back of the room buzzed and swung open. The guard turned slightly to face the door.
Dallas hobbled into the room; his wrist and ankle cuffs were linked to chains cuffed together around his waist.
She got to her feet, waiting, unable to believe they were this close again after all these years.
He shuffled over and she took him in her arms, holding him tightly, feeling how thin and bony they’d both grown.
“That’s enough,” the guard said. “Take your seats.”
Vivi Ann reluctantly let him go. He hobbled back to the opposite side of the table and sat down.
He slid back in his chair, putting his feet forward. His hair was really long now, almost past the curl of his shoulder.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the latest picture of Noah, handing it to him. In it, their son was sitting in a big western saddle on Renegade, waving to the camera. “You should see your son ride. He’s going to be as good with horses as you are.”
Dallas took the photograph in a trembling hand. “We’re not good for each other, Vivi.”
“Don’t say that. Please.”
“I tried to be good enough for you.”
She swallowed hard. “What did you tell Roy?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He was so still it was almost as if he wasn’t breathing, which made no sense because she was gasping like a sprinter, unable to catch her breath.
“You know what I loved most about you, Vivi? Y’never asked if I killed her. Never.”
She went to him, pulled him into her arms, and kissed him, wanting to
feel
him, touch him, but all she tasted were her tears. “Don’t you try to tell me you did it, Dallas. I won’t believe you. And don’t you dare give up. We’re in this together. We have to keep fighting—”
“Back away,” the guard said, moving toward them.
Through the blur of her tears, Vivi Ann could see that Dallas was smiling. It was the same sexy, easy, come-hither smile he’d given her all that time ago at the Outlaw Tavern on the night they’d met. “You should have married Luke.”
“Don’t,” she said, but it was barely a whisper, that plea.
The guard opened the door and led Dallas out.
And when she looked down, she saw the photograph of Noah still on the table, and she knew he had given up.
Saturday after Saturday, as September turned into October, and then into November, Vivi Ann went to the prison and signed in. She sat in a cubicle, alone, watching the minutes of her life tick away.
Dallas never came out to see her again. Her weekly letters were returned unopened. In December, six years to the day after his arrest, he sent a postcard that read:
Give Noah my truck and tell him the truth
.
The truth.
She didn’t even know what that meant. Which truth? That his parents had loved each other, or that it had ruined all of them, that love? Or did he mean to imply, as Roy had, that he had confessed to Cat’s murder (she would never tell her son that, and she wouldn’t believe it, either). She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was past falling apart these days. It had been bad going to prison to see him all those years. Now not seeing him was worse. She’d thought until today that it couldn’t get worse.
Then the mail had come. When she saw the big manila envelope from the prison, she tore into it, thinking,
Thank God
.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage
.
Nothing had ever hurt like that, not even losing Mom or Clem. Nothing.
She’d gone straight to the medicine cabinet for her pills and took too many, washing them down with tequila. Then she crawled into bed and closed her eyes, praying to God that she didn’t dream . . .
“Mommy. Is it time yet?”
“Mommy?”
She lifted her heavy head from the pillow.
Noah stood beside her bed. “We gotta go to Sam’s house, remember?”
“Huh?”
His face pursed into a frown that was becoming familiar. “The party starts at three o’clock. All the other moms know that.”
“Oh . . .” She shoved at the covers and stumbled out of bed. Moving slowly—her head was pounding and her body felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton—she tried to take a shower, but her hands were so numb she couldn’t turn the faucet on. Instead, she ran her fingers through her lank, dirty hair and made a sloppy ponytail. Dressing seemed to take forever; her focus was off and her fingers were trembling and her balance was shot. Finally, though, she got herself into a pair of old gray sweats, cowboy boots, and a flannel shirt. “Less go, little man,” she said, trying to smile, thinking that maybe she’d slurred the words.
“Where’s the present?”
“Huh?”
“It’s his
birthday,
Mom.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She walked unsteadily around the house, wishing this fog in her head would go away. She found a nearly new halter on the kitchen counter (what the hell was it doing there?) and wrapped it up in the comics section from last weekend’s newspaper. “There. He got a new horse, right?”
“That’s a dumb present.”
“It’s this or nothin’.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
They went outside, into a falling rain, and headed for the truck.
It took her too long to strap him into his bumper seat, and by the time she finished, she was soaking wet. Her shaking fingers were so slick she had trouble grasping the wheel.
Rain pummeled them, turned the windshield into a river. The wipers could barely keep up.
She hit the gas. Driving through town, she tried to focus only on the road in front of her; it was impossible to see. The world looked watery and bleak, insubstantial, like the last time she’d gone to the prison to see Dallas . . . when she’d kissed him and begged him not to give up on her, on them . . . she’d come out into the rain on that day, too, had—
“Mommy!”
She blinked and tried to focus. She was in the wrong lane; a car was coming at her fast, its horn honking.
Swerving hard, she felt the truck lurch sideways and careen over the sidewalk. She slammed on the brakes but it was too late, or too hard. The truck skidded through the wet grass and crashed into a tree.
She hit her head on the steering wheel so hard that for a second she didn’t know where she was. The taste of blood filled her mouth.
Then she heard Noah’s screaming.
It seemed to come at her from far away, that high-pitched, hysterical sound. Somewhere deep inside, she reacted to that scream, wept for it, but her head was so fuzzy that she couldn’t make sense of it all.
“Mommy!”
With shaking hands, she undid her seat belt and unhooked his bumper seat. Noah launched himself into her arms, sobbing against her neck.
Slowly, slowly, she began to feel him in her arms, to realize what had just happened. She clung to him, breathing in his little boy scent. For so long, she’d held back from Noah, been afraid of him, but now her love for him came rushing back like water through a storm drain, almost drowning her. “Oh, my God,” she cried. “I’m so sorry . . .”
He looked up at her, sniffling, his eyes dark with tears. “Are you okay, Mommy?”
“I will be, Noah. I promise you.”
Vivi Ann put the truck in reverse and backed away from the scarred and dented tree trunk. The truck’s engine idled too fast, revved when she hit the gas, but it backed up, dropped down from the curb.
Her whole body was shaking as she drove; still, she tried to hide that from her son, who was back to playing with his dinosaurs as if nothing had happened. But he’d remember this; she was sadly certain of it.
She drove to the party and dropped him off, holding him so tightly he squirmed to be free.
“I love you, Noah,” she said, wondering how long it had been since she’d let herself say those three words.
“Love you, too, Mommy.”
Straightening slowly, she watched him walk up to the front door. In another life—the one she’d once imagined for herself—she would have walked up with him, held his hand the whole way, and then joined in with the other mothers inside, organizing games and handing out cupcakes.
Now she stood here, alone and separated from her own life.
It had to stop.
She went back to the dented, smoking truck and climbed into the driver’s seat.
What a joke that was: her in the driver’s seat. She’d been a passenger for years, but what was she going to do? What
could
she do? The answers seemed too big to grasp, too far away to see clearly.
The only thing she knew for sure was that she needed help. She couldn’t handle being alone anymore.
And Winona’s house was across the street.
She got out of the truck and walked to her sister’s property line, standing at the closed white picket fence. Rain pelted her, blurred her vision, but it couldn’t obscure the sudden knowledge of what needed to be done. Noah deserved more from her.
Finally, with a heavy sigh, she walked up to Winona’s front door.
“Winona? Your sister, Vivi Ann, is here to see you.”
Winona had been waiting for that sentence so long that when it finally came, she stood upright immediately, almost forgetting to tell Lisa to send her in.
She stood there, uncertain, hopeful, afraid, trying to think of what to say. Then Vivi Ann opened the door and walked in, and Winona was so taken aback that she couldn’t say anything at all.
Vivi Ann wasn’t just crying; she was sobbing. Great, gulping tears that shook her shoulders and ravaged her pale, drawn face.
Winona went to her, opening her arms instinctively.
Vivi Ann shrank away, stumbled over to the couch, and collapsed onto it.
Winona took the chair opposite her, sat stiff and erect, barely breathing, waiting. For once she needed to keep her mouth shut and not speak first. It was torture. She had so many things to say to her sister, words she’d hoarded for years, polishing like the bits of beach glass their mom had loved.
It seemed silent forever. Then, quietly, Vivi Ann said, “I almost killed Noah and me today.”
“What happened?”
“That’s not what matters.” She looked away. Stringy, lank hair clung to her face; tears fell from her bloodshot eyes. “I want to get the hell away from here, but I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“Don’t run away from us,” Winona said. “We’re your family. We’re Noah’s family. We can get through this.”
“Dallas isn’t going to get out of prison. You were right about that. And now he wants to divorce me.”
“I was wrong about a lot of things, Vivi,” Winona said. They were the words she’d waited too long to say.
“I know you think I’m crazy for loving him, and you hate me for hurting Luke, but I need advice, Win.” Vivi Ann looked up at that.
“I don’t hate you for hurting Luke,” Winona said, sighing. “I hated you for being loved by him.”
Vivi Ann frowned and wiped her eyes. “What?”
“I’ve loved Luke Connelly since I was fifteen. I should have told you.”
It was a long time before Vivi Ann spoke, and when she did, her words came slowly, as if she were finding them one by one in the dark. “You loved him. I guess that makes it all make sense. We Greys,” she said. “We aren’t lucky in love, are we? So, what do I do, Win?”
Winona had known the answer to that question for years, had waited for it to be asked of her, and imagined her response a hundred times. And yet, now that the time had come, she finally understood how cruel the truth was and she couldn’t say it.
“Tell me,” Vivi Ann said, and in her broken voice, Winona knew that Vivi already understood the answer; she just needed her big sister’s help to admit it.
“You need to stop being Dallas’s wife and start being Noah’s mother. And those drugs are killing you.”
“Noah deserves so much better than the mother I’ve been.”
Winona went to her finally, took her youngest sister in her arms, and let her cry. “You’ll get over this, I promise. We’ll all help you. Someday you’ll even fall in love again.”
Vivi Ann looked up, and in her gaze was a sadness so deep Winona couldn’t touch the bottom of it. “No,” she said at last. “I won’t.”