True Colors

She wanted to pretend not to know what he was talking about, to lie to him again—this time with a confused smile—but she knew he saw the truth on her face, in her weary eyes. In the years of his imprisonment it had grown increasingly difficult to pretend there was a different future waiting for them. They had both lost weight; Roy said last month that they looked like a pair of walking skeletons. Dallas’s face, always sharp, had grown hollow and gaunt. The veins and sinews in his neck were like tree roots protruding just beneath the soil.

Time had left its mark on Vivi Ann’s face, too; she could see the changes in her mirror every morning. Even her hair had grown dull and stringy from too few cuttings and too little care. She was thirty-two, but looked nearly a decade older than that.

“It’s hard,” she said softly.

“Are you still taking those pills?”

“Hardly ever.”

“You’re lying,” he said.

She looked at him, loving him so much it was a physical pain in her chest. “How do you get through it?”

He leaned back. They rarely did this, rarely left the path of pretend and stepped onto the hard cement of reality. “When I’m out in the yard, I find a place that is empty, and I stand there and close my eyes. If I’m lucky, the noise will sound like hoof-beats.”

“Renegade,” she said.

“I remember riding him at night . . . that night.”

Their eyes met; the memories were vibrant, electric. “That was our first time . . .”

“How do you get through it?”

Pills. Booze. She looked away, hoping he didn’t notice. “Out on the porch, I have one of the wind chimes my mom made. When she was sick, she gave them to me and said that if I listened closely, I’d hear her voice in their sound. And I did. I do.” She looked at him again. “Now I hear you, too. I wait for the wind sometimes . . .”

She fell silent. That was the thing about memories; they were like downed electrical cables. It was best to stand back.

“Have you heard from Roy?” she asked.

“No.”

“We’ll hear soon,” she said, wanting to believe it, trying to. “The federal court will hear your case. You’ll see.”

“Sure,” he said. Then he stood up. “I gotta go.”

She watched him hang up the phone and back away.

“I love you,” she said.

He mouthed the words back to her, and then he was gone. The door clacked shut behind him.

She sat there alone, staring at his empty cubicle for so long that a woman came up and tapped her on the shoulder.

Mumbling an apology, Vivi Ann got up and walked away.

The drive home seemed to take longer than usual. As one mile spilled into the next, she tried to remain steady. There were so many things she couldn’t think about these days, and if she really concentrated, she could hold back the fear. During the daylight hours, at least. The nights were their own kind of hell; even overmedicating herself only worked some of the time.

In town, she eased her foot off the gas and slowed down. All around her, she saw proof that while she’d been suspended in the gray-black world of the criminal justice system, life here had gone on. The trees along Main Street were riots of autumn color; the first few of the dying leaves had begun to fall. The Horsin’ Around Tack Shop was advertising their yearly sale and the drugstore had a window display full of ghosts and pumpkins.

Trick or treat, Mrs. Raintree?

She flinched and hit the gas. The old truck coughed hard and lurched forward.

At the ranch, she pulled up into the trees and consulted her watch. It was three o’clock. That gave her one hour to feed the horses and be at Aurora’s in time to pick up Noah.

Noah.

There was another truth she tried to avoid. She was becoming a useless parent. She loved her son like air and sunlight, but every time she looked at him another piece of her heart seemed to fall away.