True Colors (32 page)

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

—A
TTICUS
F
INCH, FROM
H
ARPER
L
EE’S
T
O
K
ILL A
M
OCKINGBIRD

There were places that changed with the times and others that remained stubbornly the same. Seattle, for example, had become all but unrecognizable to locals in the past decade. The combination of dot.com ingenuity and designer coffees had turned the once REI-garbed, nature-loving inhabitants of that beautiful big town into honest-to-God urbanites. The sound of construction was ever-present; huge orange cranes dotted the changing skyline like giant birds of prey. Every day there was a new high-rise shooting up into the gray underbelly of the sky. Restaurants with flashy fusion menus and unpronounceable names lined the boomtown streets, creating instant neighborhoods where before there had been only buildings and street signs. The famed Space Needle and the once-renowned Smith Tower, now the bookends of the city instead of its proud twin masts, looked smaller and older each day.

Vivi Ann had grown up, too. She was thirty-nine years old, and most of her youthful optimism and energy had been lost. A few times a year, when she felt especially alone, restless, and edgy, she drove into the city. With a cover story firmly in place—buying tack at an auction or looking at a horse for sale—and babysitting secured, she tried to find solace in dark bars, but on the rare occasions when she let a man take her home, she ended up feeling dirtier and more unhappy than when she’d begun.

And always, she came back to Oyster Shores, where nothing ever changed. Oh, houses had been built, property values had risen, but it was still relatively secret, this hidden patch of warm water in a cold-water state. A few years ago Bill Gates had built his summer compound on the Canal and the locals had been abuzz with worry that other millionaires would follow and tear down their old, comfortable houses to put up McMansions along the shore, and it had happened—was happening—but slowly.

Many of the same stores lined the same streets, albeit with better signs, thanks to all that summer money. There were a few more restaurants, a few more bed-and-breakfasts, and a new three-screen movie theater, but other than that, not much had been added. Flowers still bloomed in window boxes along Main Street and hung from baskets on the streetlamps along Shore Drive.

The biggest difference in town was actually Water’s Edge. The ranch had grown more successful than she’d ever imagined. Two ranch hands worked full-time on the place, and the arena was rarely empty. It had become the social heart of the town, so much so that Vivi Ann had to work hard to schedule time with her sisters.

Now she sat at the diner, at her favorite booth, with Aurora across from her. They were surrounded by the usual pre–Memorial Day lunch crowd; locals sitting here and talking quietly among themselves. In a week’s time, when the holiday hit, this place would be packed with tourists.

“I heard there’s a new banker in town. Not bad-looking is the word,” Aurora said, tucking a lock of newly blond hair behind her ear. In the past months, she’d chosen Nicole Kidman as her personal fashion icon, which meant she ironed her dyed wheat-blond, chin-length hair, and wore enough sunscreen to be safe in the event of a nuclear blast.

“Really?” Vivi Ann answered. They both knew she didn’t care. “Maybe you should go after him.”

“It’s been twelve years,” Aurora said, meeting Vivi Ann’s gaze head-on.

As if she didn’t know exactly how long it had been since Dallas’s arrest. There were still nights she couldn’t sleep and days when she beat herself up over signing those divorce papers. Sometimes, in the still of the night, she wondered if he’d been testing her; if he’d wanted her to prove her love by refusing to give up. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

“Sure.” Aurora paid the check and they walked out together, into the sunlit day. “Thanks for meeting me for lunch.”

“Are you kidding? I love playing hooky. Next time I’ll dress up.”

“You? Ha.”

“I know how you hate to be seen with a woman wearing fifteen-year-old jeans.”

“It’s a small town. My choices are limited. If I weren’t with you, I might have to join the Women’s Auxiliary again and hear how stupid I was to let Richard go. Like I was supposed to not care that he was screwing his nurse.”

Vivi Ann linked arms with her sister. It had been four years since Aurora’s acrimonious divorce, but no one knew better than Vivi Ann how long some wounds could take to heal. She knew Aurora felt foolish for failing to see her husband’s infidelity. “How are you doing? Really?”

“Some days are better than others.”

“I know that song,” Vivi Ann said. She, of all people, knew that a thing could be talked about only so much. Then, finally, you had to let it go. Everything that needed to be said about Aurora’s divorce had been. So she said, “How’s work?”

“I love it. I should have taken a job a long time ago. Selling jewelry might not be curing cancer, but it keeps me out of the house.”

Vivi Ann was just about to say more when her cell phone rang. Reaching into her purse, she pulled it out, flipped it open, and answered.

“Vivi? This is Lori Lewis, from the middle school. Noah is in the principal’s office.”

“I’ll be right there.” Vivi Ann snapped the phone shut with a curse. “It’s Noah,” she said. “He’s in trouble at school.”

“Again? You want me to come with you?”

“No, thanks.” Vivi Ann gave Aurora a quick hug and then hurried over to her new truck. Jumping in, she drove three blocks and parked on the street.

At the secretary’s desk, she smiled tightly. “Hey, Lori.”

“Hi, Vivi,” Lori said, leading her toward the principal’s door. Opening it, she said, “Noah is in with Harding now.”

“Thanks,” Vivi Ann said, stepping past the secretary.

Harding rose at her entrance. He was a big man, with a paunch that strained the buttons of his short-sleeved white dress shirt. Baggy brown polyester pants rode beneath his protruding belly, held in place by taut suspenders. His fleshy face, folded by distress into basset hound lines, was showing signs of emergent beard growth. “Hello, Vivi Ann,” he said. “I’m sorry we had to pull you away from the farm. I know how busy you are these days.”

She nodded in affirmation and glanced over to the corner, where her almost fourteen-year-old son sat slumped, one booted foot stretched forward. A column of jet-black hair fell across his face, obscured one green eye—the only trait he’d inherited from her. Otherwise, he was the spitting image of his father.

When she got closer, he tucked the hair behind his ear and she saw the black eye it had shielded, and the cut along his jaw. “Oh, Noah . . .”

He crossed his arms and stared out the window.

“He got in another fight at lunch. Erik, Jr.; Brian; and some other boys. Tad had to go to the doctor’s for an X-ray,” Harding said.

The lunch bell rang and the floor beneath them shook with movement. Raised voices bled through the walls.

Harding pressed the intercom, said, “Send Rhonda in, please.” Then he looked at Noah. “Young man, you’ve run out of rope with me. This is the third time you’ve been involved in a fight this year.”

“So it’s a crime to get beaten up around here, is that it?”

“I have several students who say you started it.”

“Big surprise,” Noah said bitterly, but Vivi Ann knew him well enough to see the hurt beneath his anger.

Harding sighed. “If it was up to me, I’d suspend him, but Mrs. Ivers seems to think he deserves one last chance. And since there’s only two weeks of school left, I’m going to agree with her.” He looked at Vivi Ann. “But you need to get a tighter leash on this boy, Vivi Ann. Before he hurts someone like his—”

“I can do that, Harding.”

The door behind them opened, and Rhonda Ivers walked into the room.

“You may go, Noah,” Harding said, and Noah was on his feet in a flash.

Vivi Ann grabbed his arm as he tried to pass her, yanked him around to face her. He was now eye to eye with her; tall and gangly. “You come straight home after school. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred bucks. Got it?”

He wrenched free. “Yeah, yeah.”

When he was gone, Harding said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Rhonda.” Giving them each a pointed look, he added, “Have your meeting here. I need to keep an eye on the lunch crowd.”

Rhonda waited for him to leave and then took a seat behind his big metal desk. Amid the piles of paper stacked on top of it, she looked frail and birdlike. She wore the same hairstyle and type of clothing she had some twenty years earlier when she’d tried to teach Vivi Ann to appreciate
Beowulf
. “Sit down, Vivi,” she said.

Vivi Ann was so tired of this; it felt as if she’d been battling one invisible foe after another for twelve years. Ever since Al had asked Dallas what he’d done on that Christmas Eve night.

“We all know Noah’s story,” Mrs. Ivers said when Vivi Ann sat down. “And his problem. We understand why he’s acting out, why he’s unhappy.”

“You think he’s unhappy? I thought . . . I hoped it was just normal teenage angst.”

Rhonda gave her a sympathetic smile. “You know the kids make fun of him?”

Vivi Ann nodded.

“He needs a friend, and perhaps some counseling, but that’s for you to decide, of course. I’m here because he is going to fail Language Arts this year. I’ve done the calculations and there’s no way he can make up all the lessons he’s missed.”

“If you hold him back a grade it will just compound his problem. Then they’ll think he’s stupid as well as . . . different.”

“Such was my analysis.” Mrs. Ivers pulled a black and white bound composition book out of her bag and slid it across the desk. “That’s why I’m giving Noah this one opportunity to save his grade. If he’ll fill this journal with
honest
writings this summer, I’ll pass him on to high school.”

Vivi Ann felt a wealth of gratitude for this woman she’d once called Mrs. Eyesore. “Thank you.”

“Don’t be so quick to thank me. This will be hard work for Noah. I’ll require eight pages a week all summer. I’ll meet with him each Monday to give him that week’s topic. We’ll begin next week before school. Say seven-fifty in my classroom? In late August, I’ll grade his work. I will not read his personal entries except to ascertain that it’s his own original work. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly.”

Mrs. Ivers smiled at last, a little sadly. “It can’t be easy on him.”

The past was always close in a town like this, like a layer of new snow on deep mud; noticeable. “No,” Vivi Ann said, reaching for the empty journal. “It’s not easy.”

By the time Vivi Ann returned to the ranch, it was almost time for her afternoon lessons. She passed her dad in the arena, where he was roping with a couple of buddies. The hired hands—day workers now; no more live-in help for Water’s Edge—were working the chutes. Waving, she went into the arena office and began creating flyers for next month’s cutting series.

In the past years, Water’s Edge had grown financially successful, but beneath the overhead lights inside the barn, little had changed. The arena still boasted rows of wooden bleachers and a series of gates and chutes for roping; three big yellow barrels were pushed to one side; they’d be pulled out and positioned for tonight’s barrel-racing jackpot. Inside the barn, horses had chewed down the wood wherever they could, leaving the slats scalloped. Cobwebs hung thick in the corners and flyers studded the walls with color, advertising stuff for sale, classes and clubs to join, and veterinary and farrier services. The arena schedule had been set for a long time now, too. She still ran a few jackpots a month, as well as a longer barrel-racing series; still taught lessons and trained horses. In addition, several clubs rented out use of the place regularly—drill clubs, 4-H Clubs, and horse shows. Once a month, kids with special needs came to ride. The only real difference was Vivi Ann herself; she no longer barrel-raced. She’d never been able to bring herself to replace Clem.