True Colors

What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she let go of this? The jealousy was killing her and hurting the thing she cared most about: her family.

I’m worried about what you’ll do. Aurora had voiced that fear long ago, and it came back to Winona now.

“Winona?” someone called out.

She came to a breathless stop on the sidewalk and wiped her eyes, then turned—smiling—toward the speaker.

Myrtle Michaelian stood there. “Your father is making a scene at the Eagles Hall. I think someone should drive him home.” Myrtle frowned at her. “Are you okay, honey?”

Winona swallowed hard. “Sure, Myrtle. Why wouldn’t I be?” She turned away and walked briskly toward the Eagles. Before she’d even stepped through the door and into the smoky interior, she heard her dad telling one of his many Vivi-Ann-is-perfect stories in a slurred voice.

“Come on, Dad,” she said, taking his arm. “It’s time to go home.”

He was too drunk to put up much of a fight. She guided him out of the building and into her waiting car. “You should cut back on the whiskey, Dad.”

“Saysh the girl who eats everything in sight.”

Winona said nothing more to him on the drive to the ranch. There, she helped him into his room, watched him collapse on the bed and start snoring.

“You’re welcome,” she said, pulling off his boots and covering him with a blanket.

Sighing, she left the house and returned to her car. As she drove up past the barn, she noticed Vivi Ann’s truck parked deep in the trees by Grandpa’s cottage. Dallas’s truck was there, too.

If the moon had been smaller, or its light muted by clouds, she might not have noticed it at all. No one would.

Winona slammed on the brakes and sat there, staring at the trucks parked side by side. In that moment, memories locked into one another, brushstrokes of color formed a solid image. She remembered several times Vivi Ann had been missing or hadn’t shown up as she’d promised to. And all the while Luke waited for her, trusting her.

Could it be that Vivi had lied to them all?

The kiss. Had it been the start of something?

Driving onto the grassy road, she parked up beside the trucks and went to the front door, opening it without a knock, calling out, “Hello?”

She saw them in a rush of images: Dallas, naked in the bed, lying on his side . . . with a chest full of ugly, misshapen scars, and a tattooed arm slung possessively around her sister. Even from here, she could see the way they looked at each other, touched each other; the whole cottage smelled of sex and lust and candle wax.

He sat upright at her entrance, looked right at Winona.

Vivi scrambled to cover her nakedness. “I can explain.”

Winona wanted to laugh. She held it back by sheer force of will. This was it. The end of Vivi and Luke. “Really? I doubt that.”

“She won’t understand,” Dallas said. “You can see that by looking at her.”

Vivi Ann wrapped herself in Grandma’s pink quilt—ruined now—and stumbled out of bed. “Winona, please, let me explain . . .”

“Explain to your fiancé.”

“I will, Win. I swear. I’ll make this right. I know you’re disappointed in me—”

“Don’t bother talking, Vivi. She’s too jealous to hear you.” Dallas got up and stood beside Vivi Ann, naked, as bold as brass.

She felt his stare like a beam of light, slicing through her, seeing too much. She backed away from him, from them. “Jealous? Dream on.”

He picked up a pair of black boxer shorts off the floor and put them on. “I know about wanting, Winona, believe me, I do. You’re sick with it.”

She turned away from them and ran back to her car. She heard Vivi Ann behind her, calling for her to stop, to come back, but she kept moving, slamming her car door shut. Starting the engine, she stared for a moment through the dirty window at her sister, wrapped in an antique quilt, standing on the porch.

Winona hit the gas and drove away, thinking as she came to the barn that it was finally done.