True Colors

“Thanks.” Vivi Ann downed the drink and ordered another, drinking it as quickly. She scanned the crowd, seeing Butchie and Erik in the corner with their wives, and Julie and Kent John in the back playing pool. Winona was on the dance floor with Ken Otter, the dentist who’d recently divorced his wife.

“I hear they just started dating,” Aurora said, following Vivi Ann’s gaze.

“Lucky him,” Vivi Ann said bitterly.

The band finished one song and started another. It took Vivi Ann only a note or two to recognize it: “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

Vivi Ann ordered another straight shot and drank it down, but it didn’t help to get rid of this titanic sense of loss.

And then she saw Winona coming her way.

“I gotta go,” she muttered.

“Don’t—” Aurora said, reaching for her.

Vivi Ann pulled free and ran stumbling through the crowd. Outside, she could breathe again, but that wasn’t good enough. She needed to be gone from here, away from this place where he was everywhere.

She ran back to Aurora’s house and went straight to her truck, leaving Noah asleep in Aurora’s safe, memoryless house. At Water’s Edge, she hit the brake so hard she lurched forward, smacked her breasts into the steering wheel when she parked.

To the left lay her cabin and the bed she’d shared with Dallas.

To the right lay the house where she’d grown up, and inside was her father, once her safe place and idol; now, nothing. Without him and her whole family, she felt lost, but there was no help for that. He and Winona had made their choice a year ago when they turned their backs on Dallas.

Dallas.

Vivi Ann made a little sound, a thin moan of pain. Stumbling forward, she went into the barn, down the aisle to Clem’s stall. Flipping the latch, she pushed the heavy wooden door open.

“Hey, Clem,” she said, stepping into the darkness and closing the stall door behind her.

Nickering softly, Clem limped over to her, nudged her with her graying, velvety muzzle.

“I haven’t spent the night with you since Mom died, have I, girl?”

Clem nickered again, rubbing her nose along Vivi Ann’s thigh.

And just like that, at her horse’s touch, Vivi Ann fell apart. Everything she’d been trying to hold in came pouring out. She slid down the stall wall and slumped in the cedar shavings, bowing her head to her knees.

Winona was at the stuffed grizzly bear’s outstretched paw when she saw Vivi Ann glance at her, see her coming, and run out of the Outlaw. She paused just a moment, stumbled as disappointment washed through her.

All of this was so unlike Vivi Ann. They’d always fought and made up and gone on; sisterhood was like that, a quilt made up of all the scraps, good and bad. Sighing, she walked over to Aurora, who stood there alone, staring at the open door, sipping her strawberry margarita.

“I can’t stand this anymore,” Winona said. “What are we going to do?”

“We?” Aurora’s voice was icy but dull, and in that lack of luster Winona knew there was an opening.

“You hate it, too.”

“Of course I hate it.”

“What do we do?”

Aurora turned to her. “Take his appeal. Help her.”

Why didn’t anyone understand? “I won’t be any help to him, don’t you get that? I’m a small-town attorney. I don’t know anything about criminal appellate work.”

Aurora’s gaze was steady and more than a little sad. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it, Win. We’re sisters. At least we used to be.” On that, she set down her half-empty margarita and walked out of the tavern.

Winona stood there in the smoky darkness, surrounded by friends and neighbors. Alone.