“That’s not what matters.” She looked away. Stringy, lank hair clung to her face; tears fell from her bloodshot eyes. “I want to get the hell away from here, but I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“Don’t run away from us,” Winona said. “We’re your family. We’re Noah’s family. We can get through this.”
“Dallas isn’t going to get out of prison. You were right about that. And now he wants to divorce me.”
“I was wrong about a lot of things, Vivi,” Winona said. They were the words she’d waited too long to say.
“I know you think I’m crazy for loving him, and you hate me for hurting Luke, but I need advice, Win.” Vivi Ann looked up at that.
“I don’t hate you for hurting Luke,” Winona said, sighing. “I hated you for being loved by him.”
Vivi Ann frowned and wiped her eyes. “What?”
“I’ve loved Luke Connelly since I was fifteen. I should have told you.”
It was a long time before Vivi Ann spoke, and when she did, her words came slowly, as if she were finding them one by one in the dark. “You loved him. I guess that makes it all make sense. We Greys,” she said. “We aren’t lucky in love, are we? So, what do I do, Win?”
Winona had known the answer to that question for years, had waited for it to be asked of her, and imagined her response a hundred times. And yet, now that the time had come, she finally understood how cruel the truth was and she couldn’t say it.
“Tell me,” Vivi Ann said, and in her broken voice, Winona knew that Vivi already understood the answer; she just needed her big sister’s help to admit it.
“You need to stop being Dallas’s wife and start being Noah’s mother. And those drugs are killing you.”
“Noah deserves so much better than the mother I’ve been.”
Winona went to her finally, took her youngest sister in her arms, and let her cry. “You’ll get over this, I promise. We’ll all help you. Someday you’ll even fall in love again.”
Vivi Ann looked up, and in her gaze was a sadness so deep Winona couldn’t touch the bottom of it. “No,” she said at last. “I won’t.”
Part Two
After
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
—ATTICUS FINCH, FROM HARPER LEE’S
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Chapter Eighteen
2007
There were places that changed with the times and others that remained stubbornly the same. Seattle, for example, had become all but unrecognizable to locals in the past decade. The combination of dot.com ingenuity and designer coffees had turned the once REI-garbed, nature-loving inhabitants of that beautiful big town into honest-to-God urbanites. The sound of construction was ever-present; huge orange cranes dotted the changing skyline like giant birds of prey. Every day there was a new high-rise shooting up into the gray underbelly of the sky. Restaurants with flashy fusion menus and unpronounceable names lined the boomtown streets, creating instant neighborhoods where before there had been only buildings and street signs. The famed Space Needle and the once-renowned Smith Tower, now the bookends of the city instead of its proud twin masts, looked smaller and older each day.
Vivi Ann had grown up, too. She was thirty-nine years old, and most of her youthful optimism and energy had been lost. A few times a year, when she felt especially alone, restless, and edgy, she drove into the city. With a cover story firmly in place—buying tack at an auction or looking at a horse for sale—and babysitting secured, she tried to find solace in dark bars, but on the rare occasions when she let a man take her home, she ended up feeling dirtier and more unhappy than when she’d begun.
And always, she came back to Oyster Shores, where nothing ever changed. Oh, houses had been built, property values had risen, but it was still relatively secret, this hidden patch of warm water in a cold-water state. A few years ago Bill Gates had built his summer compound on the Canal and the locals had been abuzz with worry that other millionaires would follow and tear down their old, comfortable houses to put up McMansions along the shore, and it had happened—was happening—but slowly.
Many of the same stores lined the same streets, albeit with better signs, thanks to all that summer money. There were a few more restaurants, a few more bed-and-breakfasts, and a new three-screen movie theater, but other than that, not much had been added. Flowers still bloomed in window boxes along Main Street and hung from baskets on the streetlamps along Shore Drive.
The biggest difference in town was actually Water’s Edge. The ranch had grown more successful than she’d ever imagined. Two ranch hands worked full-time on the place, and the arena was rarely empty. It had become the social heart of the town, so much so that Vivi Ann had to work hard to schedule time with her sisters.
Now she sat at the diner, at her favorite booth, with Aurora across from her. They were surrounded by the usual pre–Memorial Day lunch crowd; locals sitting here and talking quietly among themselves. In a week’s time, when the holiday hit, this place would be packed with tourists.
“I heard there’s a new banker in town. Not bad-looking is the word,” Aurora said, tucking a lock of newly blond hair behind her ear. In the past months, she’d chosen Nicole Kidman as her personal fashion icon, which meant she ironed her dyed wheat-blond, chin-length hair, and wore enough sunscreen to be safe in the event of a nuclear blast.
“Really?” Vivi Ann answered. They both knew she didn’t care. “Maybe you should go after him.”