True Colors

  “Yeah. Be sure and spread it around: Winona turned her back on us.” She kissed Noah’s plump cheek and handed him off to Aurora, along with his diaper bag.

  Noah went to his aunt happily, immediately playing with her beaded necklace.

  “You want me to come with you?” Aurora asked. She’d made the same offer last night when Vivi Ann called her.

  “I love you for offering, but no. I need to start doing things on my own. I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of that in my future.” She started to leave.

  Julie’s hand on her wrist stopped her. “Not everyone thinks he’s guilty,” she said.

  “Thanks, Jules.”

  All the way to Olympia, Vivi Ann practiced what she would say, how she would convince a stranger to take her husband’s case. At the first address, she strode into the squat brick building, gave the receptionist her name, and waited impatiently. Almost twenty minutes later, James Jensen came out to meet her.

  She smiled brightly when he finally appeared. “Hello, Mr. Jensen. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  “When one is looking for a criminal defense attorney, it’s often a rush. Here, come into my office and sit down.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Vivi Ann gave him the facts of the case, at least as much as she knew. She was careful to be professional and unemotional; she didn’t want to look like one of those women who stupidly believe the best of their husbands. When she’d exhausted the limited facts, she talked about what a wonderful husband and father Dallas was. Then she waited for him to speak.

  At last, he looked up.

  She had waited for that look. Now he would ask if Dallas was innocent and she’d nod and tell him how she knew that to be true.

  “So, Mrs. Raintree. I would need a thirty-five-thousand-dollar retainer. Then we could get started.”

  “A . . . what?”

  “My fees. In advance. Not all of them, of course; just enough to get started. A case like this requires a lot of manpower—private detectives, lab work, motions. The discovery alone is often mind-numbing.”

  “You haven’t asked if he did it.”

  “And I won’t.”

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Ah. I see.” His flat, pudgy palm made a muffled thumping sound on the wooden desk. It reminded her of a closing door. “There are some good public defenders.”

  “But they won’t care like a private attorney would. Like you would.”

  He lifted his hands, palm up. “Such is the system. I will hope that you can get the money together, Mrs. Raintree. From what you’ve told me, and what I’ve read in the newspapers, your husband—who, as you know, is no stranger to American jurisprudence—is in serious trouble.” He stood up, shuffled her to the door with the ease of one who was experienced in this action. “Best of luck to you,” he said, and closed the door between them.

  In the next four hours, five attorneys told her the same thing. Their offices and personalities were different, but the deal was always the same: a large retainer up front or no lawyer.

  The last lawyer she’d seen, a lovely young woman who seemed genuinely interested in Dallas’s fate, had said it most clearly. “I can’t take on a case of this complexity for free, Mrs. Raintree. I’ve got children to feed and a mortgage to pay. I’m sure you understand. I’d be happy to handle the arraignment, but if you want me to file a notice of appearance on behalf of your husband, I’ll need a substantial retainer. At least twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  There was only one option left: she needed to find twenty-five thousand dollars.

  She drove home from Olympia at twilight, turning onto the Canal road just as the last rays of sunlight were polishing the winter waters to a silvery sheen and the snow in the mountains had turned lavender-gray.

  When she pulled up in front of her father’s house it was full-on dark. She found him in his study, with a drink in his hand, reading a newspaper. All the way home from Olympia she’d practiced what she’d say, how she’d say it, but now none of that mattered. He was her father and she needed his help. It was really that simple.

  She sat down in the chair opposite him. “I need twenty-five thousand dollars, Dad. You could take out a second mortgage on the ranch, and Dallas and I would pay you back. With interest.”

  He stared down at his newspaper so long she started to worry. It took all her self-control to sit there, waiting patiently. Her whole world hung in the balance, but she knew not to prompt him. He might be a little taciturn sometimes and judgmental, but most of all, he was a Grey, and in the end that would be his answer.

  “No.”

  He said it so quietly she thought she’d imagined it. “Did you just say no?”

  “You never shoulda married that Indian. Everyone knew that. And you never should have let him spend so much time at the Morgan place. It disgraced us.”

  Vivi Ann listened in disbelief. “You don’t mean this.”

  “I do.”

  “Is that how you take care of Mom’s garden?”

  He looked up at her. “What did you say?”

  “All my life I made excuses for you, told Win and Aurora that Mom’s death broke you, but it isn’t true, is it? You’re not who I thought you were at all.”

  “Yeah, well, neither are you.”

  Vivi Ann got to her feet. “You told me the old stories a million times, made me proud to be a Grey. You should have warned me it was all a lie.”

  “He’s not a Grey,” Dad said.

  Vivi Ann was leaving, at the door, when she turned around to say, “Neither am I. Not anymore. I’m a Raintree.”

  Vivi Ann walked up the hill toward her cabin. At the barn, she stopped, unable to keep moving. The ranch she loved so much was still and cold; winter-bare trees lined the driveway, looking stark and lonely against the gray skies and brown fields. She could see a few dying leaves still clinging stubbornly to their places on the branches, but soon they’d be gone, too, let go. One by one they’d tumble to the ground, where they would slowly fade to black and die.

  She felt like one of those lonely leaves right now, realizing suddenly, fearfully, that there was no group around her. She’d clung to something that wasn’t solid after all.

  Without her father, she didn’t even know who she was, who she was supposed to be. She walked into the cold, dark barn and turned on the lights. The horses immediately became restless, whinnying and stomping to get her attention. She didn’t pass the stalls slowly or with care. For once she walked straight to Clem’s stall and opened the door, slipping inside. The fresh layer of salmony-pink cedar shavings cushioned her steps, made her feel absurdly buoyant.

  Clem nickered a greeting and moved toward her, rubbing her velvety nose up and down Vivi Ann’s thigh.

  “It’s always been you and me, girl, hasn’t it?” she said, scratching the mare’s ears. She leaned forward, slung her arms around Clem’s big neck, and pressed her forehead against the warm, soft expanse of hair, loving the horsey smell of her.

  Two years ago, maybe even last year, she would have reached for a bridle right now, would have jumped on Clem’s bare back and headed for the power lines trail. There, they would have run like the wind, fast enough to dry Vivi Ann’s tears before they fell, fast enough to outrun this emptiness spreading inside her.

  But Clem was old now, with creaking joints and aching legs. Her days of riding like the wind were over. Unfortunately, her spirit was young and Vivi Ann knew the mare waited patiently to be ridden again.

  “Too many changes,” Vivi Ann said, doing her best to sound strong, but halfway through the sentence, it hit her all at once—her father’s simple no; Winona’s refusal to help; Noah’s plaintive bedtime cry last night of Dada? and the kiss Dallas had given her just before they left for Cat’s funeral. She hadn’t known then it would be their last one for a long time, but he had. She remembered what he’d said so quietly that morning, dressed all in black, with his gray eyes so impossibly sad: I love yo
u, Vivi. They can’t take that.

  She’d laughed at him, said, “No one is trying to take it away. Trust me.”

  Trust me.

  She wondered now if she’d ever be able to laugh again, and then, in the stall with this horse that was somehow her childhood and her spirit and her mother all wrapped up in one, she cried.

  This part of the county had been economically devastated by decreased logging and dwindling salmon runs. In the heart of downtown, several storefronts were empty, their blank, blackened windows a reminder of the people and revenue this community had lost. Dirty, dented pickup trucks, many with FOR SALE signs in the back window, lined the street, gathered in front of the taverns on this Thursday afternoon.

  Vivi Ann stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the gray stone courthouse. Behind it, the lush green hills of the Olympic National Forest rose into a cloud-white sky. It wasn’t raining yet, but it would be any moment.

  Tightening her hold on her purse, she headed up the stone steps toward the big double wooden doors.

  Inside, the place was even more decrepit-looking. Tired wooden floors, peeling walls, people in cheap suits moving up the stairs to the courtrooms and down the hall to various closed doors. She walked over to a harried-looking receptionist and smiled. “I’m here to visit someone in jail,” she said, embarrassed.

  The woman didn’t even look up. “Name?”

  “Vivi Ann Raintree.”

  “Not yours. The inmate’s.”

  “Oh. Dallas Raintree.”

  The woman punched some keys into her bulky beige computer, waited a few moments, then said, “P Cell. Visitation begins at three and ends at four.” She pointed one stub-nailed finger down the hall. “Second door on your right.”

  “Th-thank you.” Vivi Ann began the long, slow walk to the jail. When she got there, another receptionist was waiting for her.

  “Name?”

  “Dallas Raintree.”

  “Not the inmate’s. Yours.”

  “Vivi Ann Grey Raintree.”

  “Identification, please.”

  Vivi Ann’s hands were shaking as she opened her purse and extracted her driver’s license from the wallet. The receptionist took it, wrote some things in a logbook, and handed it back.

  “Fill out this form.”

  As she stood there, Vivi Ann heard people come up behind her, forming a line of sorts. It forced her to write faster. “Here you go,” she said, handing the sheet back to the receptionist.

  “Over there,” the receptionist said, tilting her chin without looking up. “Put all your personal items in one of those lockers. No purses, wallets, food, gum, keys, et cetera. The metal detector is at the end of the hallway. Next.”

  Vivi Ann walked down the quiet corridor. At the end of the steel-gray lockers, she stowed her purse, and then headed toward the metal detector. A huge uniformed guard stood by the entrance, with his booted feet planted apart and his arms loose at his sides. He wore a gun on each hip.

  She handed him the locker key and moved cautiously through the detector. Since she’d never flown anywhere, this was the first time she’d ever been through one of these devices and she wasn’t quite sure how it should be done. Slowly made sense, so she inched forward. A high beeping alarm sounded; Vivi Ann’s heartbeat kicked into high gear. She looked around; now there were three uniformed guards around her. “I—I don’t have anything on me.”

  A woman guard came forward. “Over here. Spread your legs.”

  Vivi Ann did as she was told. Even though she knew she was fine—had to be—she was afraid. Sweat broke out on her forehead.

  The guard passed a flat black paddle in front of her. It beeped again at her bra and at the buckle on her shoe.

  “You’re fine,” the guard said. “That way.”

  Vivi Ann moved forward again, to another desk, where her hand was stamped and a VISITOR tag was hung around her neck. She followed another uniformed guard down another hallway to a door marked VISITATION.

  “You got one hour,” he said, opening the door.

  Vivi Ann nodded and walked into the long, low-ceilinged room. A row of Plexiglas cut the space in half; on either side were cubicles. Each one had a black telephone receiver and a chair.

  She went to the last cubicle on the left and sat down. The fake glass was clouded with thousands of fingerprint smudges.

  She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, alone, but the wait felt endless. At one point another woman came in, took a seat at the opposite wall. Through the distorting series of Plexiglas cubicles, their gazes met and then looked away.

  Finally, the door opened and Dallas was there, wearing an orange jumpsuit and flip-flops, his long hair falling lank across his bruised face.

  He came over to the cubicle, sat down on his side of the dirty Plexiglas. Slowly, he reached for the receiver.

  She did the same. “What happened to your face?”

  “They call it resisting arrest.”

  “And did you?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said, “I’m looking for a good defense attorney. It takes so much money, though. I’ll keep trying. I can’t—”

  “I’ve already signed the pauper’s affidavit and met with the lawyer assigned to my case. You’re not going into debt to save me.”

  “But you’re innocent.”

  The look he gave her was so cold that for a second he was someone she didn’t know. “And that’s what I’m going to teach you in the end. Cynicism. When this thing is over you won’t know what to believe so you’ll believe in nothing. That will have been my gift to you.”

  “I love you, Dallas. That’s what matters. We have to stay strong. Love will get us through.”

  “My mom loved my dad until the day he killed her.”

  “Don’t even think about comparing yourself to him.”

  “You’re going to hear all about it before this thing is over, how he abused me, burned me with cigarettes, locked me up. They’re going to say it made me mean. They’re going to say I had sex with Cat, that I—”

  Vivi Ann pressed her hand to the glass. “Touch me, Dallas.”

  “I can’t,” he said, and she could see how that admission ate him up inside and made him angry. “Love isn’t a shield, Vivi. It’s time you saw that.”

  “Touch my hand.”

  Slowly he brought his hand up, pressed his palm against hers. All she could feel was the slickness of the Plexiglas, but she closed her eyes and tried to remember the heat of his skin against hers. When she had the memory close, and could hold it to her chest, she opened her eyes. “I’m your wife,” she said into the receiver. “I don’t know who taught you to run, but it’s too late for that now. We stand and fight. And then you come home. That’s how it’s going to be. You get me?”

  “It makes me sick to see you in here, touching this dirty glass, talking into that phone, trying not to cry.”

  “Just don’t pull away. I can take anything but that.”

  “I’m scared,” he said quietly.

  “So am I. But I want you to remember that you’re not alone. You’ve got a wife and a son who adore you.”

  “It’s hard to believe that in here.”

  “Believe it, Dallas,” she said, swallowing the tears she refused to shed. “I won’t ever give up on you.”

  All that winter and for the following spring, the upcoming trial of Dallas Raintree dominated town gossip. It was such a juicy bit of steak, with lots of fatty flavor. There was the big question: Did he do it? But in truth that didn’t get much play. Most folks had made up their minds when he was arrested. Respect for the law ran high in Oyster Shores, and they figured a mistake was unlikely. Besides, they’d known from the minute he walked into the Outlaw Tavern, with his inked-up bicep and shoulder-length hair, and his looking-for-a-fight gaze, that he was trouble. The fact that he’d gone after Vivi Ann was proof enough he didn’t know his place. She’d been suckered in by him, pure and simple. That wa
s the talk anyway.

  Winona had spent the last five months in a holding pattern. It was obvious to everyone that her sisters were no longer speaking to her. Dallas’s arrest had broken the once-solid Grey family into two camps: Aurora and Vivi Ann vs. Winona and Henry. Sympathy ran high for all of them. The general consensus was that Dad and Winona had made an uncharacteristic mistake in hiring Dallas in the first place. While no one believed Dad should have paid for a private lawyer (Why throw good money after bad being the most common expression of this point), they believed he was wrong to let his family break up over it.

  Winona had carefully planted the seeds of her own defense: that she wasn’t a criminal defense attorney and couldn’t represent Dallas; that she longed to reconcile with Vivi Ann and waited for the day when her baby sister would return to the fold; and most convincingly, that Vivi Ann had always been headstrong and would learn in time that she’d made a terrible mistake in believing in Dallas. On that day, Winona always said, “I’ll be there to dry her tears.”

  It was true, too. Every day of her estrangement with her sisters was a nearly unbearable burden on Winona. For the first few months she had tried to bridge the gap, repair the damage, but each of her attempts at reconciliation or explanation had been ignored. Vivi Ann and Aurora would neither speak to her nor listen. They didn’t even sit in the family pew at church anymore.

  By mid-May, when the rhododendrons burst into plate-sized blooms and the azaleas in her yard were bright with flowers, she was hanging on by a thread, waiting for the trial to begin. When it was over, and Dallas was convicted, Vivi Ann would finally face the ugly truth. Then she would need her family again. And Winona would be there, arms open, waiting to take care of her.

  On the first day of the trial, Winona woke up early, dressed in a suit, and was among the first spectators allowed into the gallery of the courtroom. As she watched the poor defense attorney enter the room, dragging his file boxes toward the defense table, she knew she’d done the right thing in declining to represent Dallas. She could never have handled a trial of this magnitude. Last week she’d watched voir dire and several of the pretrial motions and known without a doubt that she would have been in over her head with this trial. Although, to be honest, she had her doubts about the defense attorney’s competence, too. He’d allowed a couple of local residents on the jury, which didn’t seem smart to Winona.