True Colors

“I don’t drink.”

She turned to him. “Is there a story there?”

Without looking at her, he nodded. “Are you okay dating a dry alcoholic?”

“I look forward to it.”

He took her elbow and guided her out the door and across her bumpy, untended yard, through the freshly clipped arch in the hedge, and into his beautifully restored home. Everywhere she looked there was something exquisite: a massive marble hearth, hand-cut and brought over from Italy; a four-hundred-year-old silk prayer rug from Iran, mounted on black velvet and framed in gold; hand-blown glass light fixtures from Venice.

She followed him down to a toffee-colored media room, full of overstuffed furniture and dominated by a big-screen TV. Cissy sat curled up in an upholstered chair, eating ice cream and watching a movie.

“Hey,” she said, hitting the pause button. The image on-screen froze. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was caught in midair.

Mark leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll have my cell phone on. We should be home about ten or eleven.”

“Call me when you leave the restaurant so I know when to expect you. Otherwise I wouldn’t know when to panic.”

Winona smiled. It was the kind of thing she would have said to her sisters.

Mark led Winona back upstairs and out onto the deck. There, he grabbed a cooler and a blanket.

“Are we going camping?” she asked.

“Follow me.”

He led her down to his dock and out to the ski boat, where he settled her into the seat beside him.

They puttered away from the dock, motored through the flat, calm water. Every now and then a water-skier or a Jet-Skier would zip past, causing a wake to rock the boat, but for the most part it was peaceful on this blue June evening. There were no clouds in the sky, nothing to cast a shadow on the water. It was a deep, rich green at this time of the day, flat calm.

Winona studied the houses along the shoreline, noticing how many newer, bigger houses had sprung up in the last few years. She wondered how long it would take for this whole area to be changed beyond recognition. Mark maneuvered the boat up to the Alderbrook Lodge’s long public dock, tying up next to a gorgeous old wooden yacht called The Olympus.

He helped her out of the boat, paid the dockmaster a moorage fee, and together they headed toward land.

The newly redone Alderbrook was a full-service resort built on the foundation of what had once been a quaint family-owned lodge. On a stunningly gorgeous stretch of beach that overlooked the placid Canal and the sawtooth range of the Olympic Mountains, every room and cabin was exquisite. Built of stone and wood and glass, it was a perfect expression of new upscale Northwest chic.

At the restaurant, the hostess seated them at a table along the window, and almost from the first moment they were talking. Mark told her about the year he and Cissy had traveled the world, and the amazing things they’d seen. He’d described Thailand and Angkor Wat and Egypt in the kind of detail that made her yearn to go.

“I would love to see those places,” she said when dinner was over and they were sitting in big plastic Adirondack chairs on the resort’s grassy lawn. Night was falling finally; the sky was a brilliant smear of striated hues—orange, pink, lavender. The water had gone black, with only the lapping sound of the waves to remind you that it was alive and awake.

“Have you ever traveled?”

“No, not really.”

“Why?”

Winona shrugged. “My mom died when I was fifteen and I had to grow up fast. After law school, I came back here to practice because my sisters and my dad needed me.”

“Your sisters were lucky to have you. When my wife left, poor Cissy had no one but me.”

It was a topic he’d danced around all night but never quite addressed. She wanted to ask him about his ex, but things were going so well she didn’t want to jinx it.

For the next few hours, they sat in the Adirondack chairs, staring out at the dimming view and talking with the ease of old friends. Winona couldn’t remember when a first date—especially a dinner date—had gone so well.

Finally, at eleven, he said, “We’d better go. I don’t like to leave Cissy alone too long.”

And he was a good parent, too.

“Sure,” Winona said, smiling at him.