True Colors

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.