True Colors

“Good luck with making me move,” he said, putting his earbuds back in.

Vivi Ann stood there, staring at him. She could actually feel her blood pressure elevating. It was amazing how quickly he could get to her. Finally, remaining silent by force of will, she left his bedroom, slamming the door behind her. A juvenile show of irritation that nonetheless felt good.

In the living room, she paused. “I’ll be right back, girls. Keep working.”

Grabbing a sweatshirt off the sofa, she left the cabin and walked down to the barn. It was full of trucks and trailers.

Inside the arena was carefully controlled pandemonium. Kids and dogs ran wild through the bleachers, chasing the barn cats around. Several women and girls were riding in the center of the arena, practicing flying changes. Janie, back from college, was working her mare along the rail, and Pam Espinson was leading her grandson on his new pony.

Vivi Ann scanned the crowd, finding Aurora in the stands watching her daughter. She put her hands in her pockets and walked over to her sister. All around her was the blurring movement of people on horseback, the vibrating thunder of hooves on dirt. She moved easily through the crowd and took a seat by Aurora. “It’s nice to see Janie riding again.”

Aurora smiled. “It’s nice to see her again, period. The house is awful quiet these days.”

“I wish,” Vivi Ann said.

“Noah?”

Vivi Ann leaned against her sister. “Isn’t there a rule book for raising teenagers?”

Aurora laughed and put an arm around her. “No, but . . .”

“But what?” Vivi Ann knew what was coming and tensed up.

“You’d best do something before he hurts someone.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

Aurora looked at her. She didn’t say anything, but they both knew she was thinking about Dallas.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Vivi Ann said again, although her voice wasn’t as strong this time. “I just need to find him something worthwhile to do.”

Traffic on First Street was stop-and-go on this last day of school. No doubt all the graduating seniors in town were in their cars right now, honking to one another and high-fiving out their car windows as they passed. She saw a few yellow high school buses caught in the snarl, too, and could imagine their tired drivers’ reaction to all this.

If she’d left ten minutes earlier or later, she wouldn’t be stuck here. It wasn’t as if she were on a tight schedule—or like she didn’t have access to a calendar.

It was summer on the Canal now, on the very June day that most of the county’s schools ended for the year, and those two details combined to make a perfect storm of traffic. One blocky motor home after another inched down the winding road. Most of them were hauling other vehicles—boats, smaller cars, bicycles, Jet Skis. Nobody came to the Canal in these golden months to sit inside, after all; they came to play in the warm blue water.

Out on the highway, she drove past Bill Gates’s gated compound and the gorgeous lodge and spa called Alderbrook, where yuppies congregated for wine tastings, weddings, and hot stone massages.

As she drove, the Canal bent and curved beside her; sometimes the road was inches from the water and sometimes there were acres in between them. Finally, as she neared Sunset Beach, she slowed and turned onto the sloped gravel driveway that led to the house she’d purchased only last week.

Her newest project was a sprawling 1970s rambler, originally built as a summer home for a large Seattle family. There were six bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen the size of a toolbox, and a dining room that could comfortably fit a motorboat. A huge covered deck jutted out over the Canal, and to its right, stairs led down to the two-hundred-foot-long dock that was white with bird droppings. Every square inch of this place was dilapidated or rotting or just plain ugly, but the property made it all worth it. Along the road, huge cedars shielded the property and ringed the flat grass patch like a protective circle of friends. In front of the trees, in full bloom now, were giant rhododendron bushes and mounds of white Shasta daisies. The two-acre parcel sloped gently down to a sand beach. White pieces of opalescent oyster shells decorated the shoreline, interspersed with beautiful bits of gem-colored glass. A hundred years ago this stretch of sand had been a dumping ground for broken bottles. Time had taken that trash and turned it into treasure. Every time Winona looked at that impossibly colored beach, she thought of her mother and smiled.

She parked in the grass, grabbed a Diet Coke out of the cooler in the backseat, and considered how best to redesign the house. Obviously she was going to use the building’s footprint and remodel extensively. It was the only way she’d be able to have a house so close to the water these days. She could, however, go up a floor. That meant opening up the downstairs, making sure every room had a view, and creating a master suite, master bath, and office upstairs.

Perfect.

She retrieved her meatball submarine sandwich and her notepad from the car. Sitting on the front lawn, she ate her lunch and began drawing out interior plans. She was so enmeshed in the scale of rooms and the positioning of doors that she didn’t even notice that she wasn’t alone until Vivi Ann said her name.

Winona turned. “Hey. I didn’t even hear you drive up.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Vivi Ann crossed the lawn toward her as Noah exited the passenger side of the truck. Making no move to join them, he stood there, hands in his baggy chewed-up jeans, shoulders slouched, hair in his face, looking put-upon and pissed off.

“You came out to see the new house, huh?” Winona said. As a rule, she ignored Noah’s presence whenever possible. It made life easier. “Can I show you around?”

Vivi Ann’s gaze swept the place. “What do you have to do before you begin tearing down walls?”

“Oh, lots. There’s always prep work. You should see the dock. Forty years’ worth of seagull crap takes a while to wash off.”