True Colors

You’re really here, he said, and he was the one of us who cried first. He said something I didn’t understand but the sound of it was so familiar. And I knew: it was what he used to say to me when I was a baby, the thing my mother didn’t know. It was just ours, me and my dad’s.

It means Ride Like the Wind in my mother’s language he said. God, he said next. I left a little boy in his mom’s arms and now here you are, a man.

Then he pulled me into his arms and said I missed you little man.

Chapter Thirty

There were literally a hundred things to do between now and the start of the Halloween carnival on Friday. Without Noah, Vivi Ann was going to have a hell of a time getting everything done. After breakfast, Dad went off to the loafing shed for his tractor and the ranch hands set off to feed the steers.

Aurora showed up around noon, and although she wasn’t much help, she shadowed Vivi Ann for most of the day, and then sat with her on the porch until nightfall. The white railings were decorated with colorful shells and rocks and bits of beach glass; generations of Grey women and children had marked their territory with treasures taken from their own shores. Vivi Ann still had the last scallop shell her mother had given her, and although she no longer carried it around with her, it was always here, waiting for her on this porch.

For the next few hours, they sat there, sometimes talking, often laughing, occasionally falling silent. In fact, the whole ranch was surprisingly quiet today; not a truck had driven down the driveway and not a call had come in. Finally, at around nine o’clock, Aurora looked at her watch and said, “Well, I think I’ve been here long enough. I’d better get going.”

When Aurora left, Vivi Ann went back inside to call Noah. Unable to get a dial tone, she did a quick search and discovered the source of the problem: her phone was unplugged. Irritated, she plugged it back in and called Noah on his cell. After several rings he answered.

“Hey, Mom. I’ve been trying to call you.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Somehow the phone got unplugged. Are you on your way home? It’s a school night.”

“Uh. I’ve . . . been helping Aunt Winona carry stuff down from her attic all day and we’re still not done. Can I spend the night? She’ll take me to school tomorrow.”

“Let me talk to her.”

Winona came on the line. “I’m really here and everything’s fine. I’ll get him to school on time.”

Vivi Ann wanted to say no, demand that her son be returned to her, but it was only because she felt lonely, so she said, “Okay, then. Tell him I love him.”

“You bet.”

She curled up on the sofa, put in her headphones, cranked up the volume, and listened to music on her iPod. Finally, when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, she went to bed. It felt strange to be alone in the house. She heard all kinds of new noises. For the first time, she imagined how it would be when Noah was grown and gone. How quiet this cottage would be.

Sighing at that, she drifted off to sleep.

Sometime later, a steady ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump wakened her. The muffled beat was regular and even, like the movement of a rocking chair in soft dirt. Or of a man riding a horse in the darkness.

Dallas. She gave in to the memories, let them wash over her . . .

Then she realized it wasn’t a dream. The noise was real. She woke up and threw back the covers and got out of bed, reaching for the robe draped on the foot rail. Putting it on, tightening the frayed belt around her waist, she walked through the quiet house, listening.

Opening the French doors, she stepped out onto the porch and closed the doors behind her. A pearl-white full moon hung suspended above the distant mountains. Its bright light illuminated everything, turning the fields into patches of midnight-blue velvet.

Moonlight shone on the man riding the horse without saddle or bridle.

She was losing her mind finally; after all these years it had just snapped.

She moved to the railing, not caring if she was mad, loving it, in fact. From here, all she could see of him was his white T-shirt; it glowed as if under one of those black-lightbulbs from her youth. Beneath him, Renegade was all but invisible in the darkness, but she could see that he moved in a flowing, rocking lope, his steps as fluid as long ago, when he’d been a champion. Another fact of her madness: Renegade was healthy again. Of course.

She tried to stay where she was, but like on a night sixteen years ago, she was powerless to resist. Her footsteps creaked on the wooden slats of the porch as she stepped across it.

She walked down the grassy hillside, careful not to slip in the dew-wet grass, and came up to the paddock fence.

They glided past her, made a circle in the paddock, and then they were in front of her, stopped. Renegade’s heavy, snorting breathing seemed to be the only sound for miles; even the sea seemed to have stilled in anticipation.

“Vivi,” Dallas said, and the sound of his voice made her feel so unsteady she clung to the top rail of the fence.

“You’re not really here . . .”

She stopped. Speaking required more substance than she seemed to have right now; it felt as if she were forming the words somehow, creating them from the parts of herself that were fading.