She held his gaze. “I never needed a diamond.”
“I wanted to give you one.”
“It’s perfect.”
Holding hands, they went out to the truck and drove down to the farmhouse.
Vivi Ann stood back, looking at the house. White Christmas lights embellished the eaves and glittered along the porch’s handrails. Through the front window, the decorated tree cast prisms of multicolored light through the ancient glass.
Inside, the party had already begun. The Glen Campbell Christmas album—a family staple—was on the turntable, pumping music into the house. Ricky and Janie were running around, playing hide-and-seek with their dad, while Aurora and Winona worked in the kitchen. Dad was by the fireplace, drinking bourbon already, and looking at a photograph of Mom.
Aurora greeted them at the door. In her green leggings, high-heeled ankle boots, and red velvet tunic, she looked like an elf come to life; her jewelry ran on some kind of battery pack and came on and off in bursts of light. “There’s my gorgeous nephew.” She reached out for Noah and carried him over to the tree.
“The usual carnival,” Dallas said, looking around at all the Christmas knickknacks.
Richard chose that moment to join them. In his tan Dockers, cinched high on his waist and drawn tight by a brown belt, with his blue plaid shirt tucked in, and his stockinged feet, he managed to look as he always did, both ready to stay and ready to leave at the same time. “Dallas,” he said, nodding. “I heard you’ve been working miracles with the Jurikas’ new colt.”
“He’s a hell of an animal,” Dallas said. “Just last week . . .”
Vivi Ann squeezed her husband’s hand and wandered into the kitchen. Winona was at the counter, rolling squares of dough into crescent rolls. She looked up at Vivi Ann’s entrance and paused. “Hey.”
For a second, Vivi Ann felt time peel back. With the pale winter sunlight coming through the windows, wreathing her sister’s full, beautiful face, Vivi Ann remembered another time in this kitchen . . .
I’m drawing something for Mommy, she’d said, feeling about as small and forgotten as a child could. That was what she recalled most about her mother’s funeral: feeling invisible. But Winona had seen her, had bent down beside her and touched her head and said, We’ll put it on the fridge.
Vivi Ann had assumed back then that they would always be connected, she and Win, that nothing could rend two sisters apart.
That was before she’d known about passion, of course. And though Winona wouldn’t admit it, Vivi Ann knew that their reconciliation was imperfect. Winona still didn’t trust Dallas, and she hadn’t entirely forgiven Vivi Ann for hurting Luke. In Winona’s world, everything was black and white. Justice most of all. And she thought Vivi Ann had been rewarded for doing the wrong thing.
Vivi Ann reached out suddenly, took Winona’s hand, and spun her in time to the music. It was a flick of a switch, that movement, a spinning back to the seventies, when dancing in the kitchen had been a normal part of Christmas morning.
Come on, garden-girls, Mom used to say, dancing all by herself, I need some swing partners.
Aurora skidded into the room, pushing her way between them and taking the lead. “No way you bitches are dancing without me. You know I’m the one with all the rhythm.”
“Comes from all that pumping of your hips you did in high school,” Vivi Ann said, laughing.
It was funny how a song, or a dance, or a look passed between sisters could give the whole of your life back to you. The rest of the day passed in a blur of familiar snapshots: opening gifts, sipping wine, coming together in smaller groups to talk, watching Janie and Ricky ride their new bikes in the yard and Noah walk around with ribbons stuck to his hair. They had so much fun that even their dad’s drunken sullenness couldn’t take the shine off the day.
At the end of the meal, as the girls had just finished serving pie and retaken their seats, Dallas stood up. “My son will grow up with this.” He made a motion with his hand, a gesture that included all of them. “Thank you.”
Vivi Ann gazed across the table at her husband.
“My Dada,” Noah said in her lap, grinning.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s your daddy.”
In no time they went back to talking at once and cracking jokes and commenting on the various pies. After dinner, Vivi Ann tried to talk everyone into a game of charades. “Come on, you guys. It’ll be fun . . .”
Then the doorbell rang and Sheriff Al Bailor walked in.
“Hey, Al,” Aurora said, pushing back from her chair to greet him. “Tell Vivi Ann we are not playing any games. We’re still sober, for God’s sake.”
“I’m sorry to bother you all on Christmas,” Al said, taking off his hat and working its brim with his blunt fingers.
Dad stood up. “What’s the problem, Al?”
“Cat Morgan was murdered last night.”