True Colors

Winona and her father spent Christmas Eve together. She got to his house early and decorated all by herself. She went up to the attic, found the worn, creased cardboard boxes marked Xmas, and carried them down to the living room.

There, it was quiet. There were no sisters laughing together, drinking wine, and arguing about what holiday movie to watch while they decorated. No wonder Winona had put off the decorating until this late date. She’d known how it would feel.

Still, she refused to skimp on any tradition, and so she decorated the house from stem to stern, using everything in the boxes. She curled fresh cedar boughs up the banister and tied them in place with glittery gold ribbons. She put the miniature Christmas scene along the mantel: fake snow, tiny people with cars and carriages and replicas of downtown storefronts. As a girl, her favorite part had been to fit the tiny oval of mirrored glass on top of the cottony snow to make a minuscule skating lake. The girls had fought over that job for years . . .

Winona refused to think about that. Instead, she poured herself another glass of wine, put dinner on the stove, and cut herself a big piece of cake.

She’d used food to tide her over for most of the past few months. Whenever she’d felt depressed, she’d gone into the kitchen. Now she had probably ten dozen cookies in Tupperware containers in her refrigerator, and she’d gained at least fifteen pounds since Dallas’s arrest.

Don’t think about that, either.

She went into Dad’s study, finding him there. He was holding a drink and staring out at the Canal. The view was crisp on this cold, late December day—purple mountains crowned in pink snow, steel-blue water, gray shoreline. The few docks that could be seen from here were thick with sleeping seals. Seagulls lined the railing, one after another, like yellow-beaked bowling pins.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, coming up behind him.

“Hey,” he said without looking at her.

She was trying to think of something else to say when the phone rang. Grateful for the interruption, she said, “I’ll get it,” and ran to the wall phone in the kitchen. “Hello?” she said, slightly out of breath.

“Merry Christmas Eve,” Luke said.

“Luke!” she said, smiling for the first time all day. Yanking the long cord out behind her, she sat down at the breakfast table and put her feet up. “How’s Montana?”

They didn’t talk as easily as they once had. Their conversation was punctuated with lengthy silences, things unsaid. Still, he told her about the house he’d bought a few weeks ago and how it was going with his new partner. She told him a funny story about her recent date with Ken Otter and said it was what she had expected, dating a thrice-divorced dentist. “It’s better than being alone though.”

There was a pause, then he said, “How is she?”

“Is that why you called? To ask about Vivi Ann?”

“It’s about you,” he said. “I know how much it’s killing you to be on the outs with her. Quit waiting for a chance and go up and make one. Just walk up to the house, knock on the door, and say you’re sorry.”

“Can we talk about something else, please?” Winona said, and for the next hour they talked about ordinary things, and when they ran out of topics, he said, “Well. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas.”

“You, too, Luke,” she said, hanging up.

But as she walked away from the phone, his words stayed with her, echoed. Aurora and Richard had taken the kids skiing for the holiday, probably because they knew the loneliness that would lurk at Water’s Edge this year, and so she knew Vivi Ann and Noah were up there alone.

Could she do it? Just walk up to the cabin as if it were a journey back in time? She tried to think it through, imagine it rationally, but the truth was that once she’d had the thought, she couldn’t let it go. Longing sank its hooks deep in her heart, and she grabbed her coat from the closet by the front door and slipped into it. Walking carefully, avoiding puddles that floated on the gravel road, she walked up to Vivi Ann’s cabin and knocked on the door.

Vivi Ann answered instantly, looking awful. Her hair was a rat’s nest of tangles, as if she’d been obsessively scratching her scalp, and her face was red and blotchy. Her eyes were watery and bloodshot, and she was unsteady on her feet, almost drunken. “What do you want?”

Winona was momentarily taken aback by the sight of her sister. “I . . . I wanted to talk. I know you’re pissed at me, but it’s Christmas Eve, and I thought—”

“You’re here to gloat, aren’t you? You know his appeal was denied.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You think I want to hear that you’re sorry?” Vivi Ann moved forward, lurched a little. “You sat in that courtroom every day, listening to the evidence, Winona. My supposedly brilliant sister. Did you question any of it? He was sick on Christmas Eve. I took his temperature . . .”

“You think Myrtle was lying?”

“I think she was mistaken. She had to be, and that hair evidence was crap. Even you can’t believe Dallas was screwing Cat while he was married to me.” Vivi Ann’s eyes were glassy and a little wild-looking, and Winona felt a flutter of fear. Something was wrong here.

In the back of the house, Noah started to cry.

“Answer me,” Vivi Ann snapped. “Do you think he was screwing Cat? You saw us together.”

Winona saw how desperately Vivi Ann was trying to convince her. She knew that all she had to do was pretend to agree, and maybe they could begin to mend their breach.