True Colors

Winona held her tongue while Dad went on and on about Vivi Ann. What a great horsewoman she was, how everyone came to her for help, how men lined up to date her but she hadn’t found the right fella yet.

Finally, Winona couldn’t take it anymore. She actually interrupted the conversation to say, “I better go. I just came by to—”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Luke said, taking her arm. “I want to treat you and Henry to dinner in town.”

“I can’t,” Henry said. “I’m meetin’ some of the boys down at the Eagles. But thanks.”

Luke turned. “Winona?”

Don’t think anything of it. He asked your dad, too. The advice rang clear in her head, but when she looked up at him, it left in a rush, and the worst emotion swept in to replace it: hope.

“Sure.”

“Where should we go?” he asked.

“The Waves is good. On the corner of First and Shore Drive.”

“Let’s go.” Luke reached out and shook Dad’s hand. “Thanks again for everything, Henry. And don’t forget my offer: if you ever need to use my pasture, just say so.”

Henry nodded and went back into the house, closing the door solidly behind him.

“Asshole,” Winona muttered.

Luke grinned down at her. “You used to call him a jerk.”

“I’ve improved my vocabulary. I could think of a few more choice words, if you’d like.” Smiling, she walked across the front yard and got into the passenger side of his big truck. The minute the engine turned over, the stereo came on loudly. “Stairway to Heaven” was playing.

She looked at him and knew they were remembering the same thing: the two of them at the Sadie Hawkins Dance, moving together—or trying to—beneath a silvery disco ball.

“We sure showed those popular kids how to dance, didn’t we?” he said.

She felt a smile start. Somehow, in the flurry of his return, she’d forgotten how they’d come together in that first year after her mother’s death—a fat, quiet fifteen-year-old girl who lived in her own head and a gawky boy with a bad complexion who’d lost his father in a boating accident nearly a decade before. It gets easier. That was the first thing he said to her that she really noticed. Before that, he’d been just the son of her mom’s best friend.

After that, for two years, almost everything he’d said had been right. Then he moved away, without ever even kissing her, and he hadn’t called. They’d written back and forth for a while, but then that had been lost, too.

He pulled up in front of the Waves Restaurant and parked along the curb. A spotlight near the front door illuminated a yard full of ceramic gnomes that looked cute in the summer sun and oddly macabre on this winter evening. She led the way into the Victorian-home-turned-restaurant. On this evening, they were the only people under sixty in the whole restaurant, and the hostess led them to a corner table overlooking the Canal. Below, a discolored bulkhead held the water back, revealing a stretch of gray sand that was covered with broken white oyster shells and strands of bronze kelp. A tangle of harbor seals lay on the restaurant’s wooden dock.

In moments, they had their drinks—him a beer, and her a margarita.

“To old friends,” he said.

“To old friends.”

Then he said, “Did you get a chance to look over the paperwork?”

“I did. As your lawyer, I’ll tell you that everything looks to be in order. I’d make a few changes, but nothing major.” She looked across the table at him and lowered her voice. “But as your friend, I’d tell you that Moorman doesn’t have the best reputation. He’s struggled with a serious drinking problem for years; well, actually, he hasn’t struggled with it. Mostly he’s given in to it. A few years ago he brought in a young vet to be his partner and word is that he screwed the kid pretty badly.”

“Really?”

“Honestly, Luke, I think you’d do better to open your own practice. People around here would welcome you with open arms. You could set up an office in your house and fix up that four-stall barn on the property. Then, in a few years, maybe you’ll be ready to build a new facility.”

Luke sat back. “That’s disappointing.”

“I’m sorry. You asked for my opinion.”

“Sorry? Are you kidding? I’ve always loved your mind. And I know I can trust you. Thanks.”

She didn’t hear anything after the word loved.