“Do you see Daddy?” she asked Noah, who sleepily babbled something that ended with, “Go Dada.”
“Uh, Vivi Ann?”
Turning, she saw Myrtle Michaelian dressed in a pink polyester princess outfit. Her plump features were outlined in bright color: blue eye shadow, rosy pink blush, red glittery lipstick. A cheap tin tiara sat on her head amid a pile of graying curls.
“Hey, Myrtle,” Vivi Ann said. “Great costume.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“I was just looking for him. Why?”
“Well . . . I don’t usually trade in gossip . . .”
Vivi Ann kept from gritting her teeth by sheer force of will. While it was true that the gossip about their affair had faded, Dallas was still a man to be watched in Oyster Shores. Especially by the older, more conservative people like Myrtle. They didn’t like the way he drank too much, fidgeted in church, played poker for money, and (perhaps most of all) that he didn’t seem to care about their opinion of him. “I’m sure I already know whatever you’re going to say.”
“Really?” She leaned forward, whispered loudly, “Last Saturday I was closing up late and I saw Dallas and that Morgan woman walking across the street. They got into that beater car of hers and drove away.”
Vivi Ann nodded. She’d heard this story in one form or another for two years; Dallas and Cat had been seen together at the minimart, at the gas station, at King’s Market buying beer. “They’re just friends, Myrtle.”
“I’m only saying this, Vivi Ann, because your mama can’t. She was a good friend, and if she were here, she’d tell you that no good can come of giving a man that kind of freedom.”
“I love my husband,” Vivi Ann said. To her, that was answer enough. She loved her husband and she trusted him. So what if he let off a little steam drinking and playing poker once a week at Cat’s? The small-minded gossip meant nothing to her. She knew her husband too well to be jealous.
“I love my dog,” Myrtle said crisply, “but I keep him chained up when the bitch across the street is in heat.”
Vivi Ann couldn’t help laughing at that. “Thanks for the heads-up, Myrtle. I’ll keep a closer eye on my husband.”
“You do that.”
Still smiling, Vivi Ann left the barn and went up the hill to their cabin. In the past year, Dallas had added on a big wraparound porch as well as about eight hundred square feet of space, which they’d turned into a new kitchen, nursery, and bathroom. New French doors ran the length of the living room, framing the majestic Canal view and leading the way out onto the white porch.
In the back bedroom, decorated with horses and cowboy hats, she changed Noah’s diaper, put him into his dinosaur pj’s, and lay him down in his crib. “Goodnight, little pumpkin.”
Out in the living room, she found Zorro standing beside her new sofa. He stepped sideways and turned on the stereo. His cheap black polyester cape caught on something and he pulled it free with a muttered curse.
She smiled. “You said you never dressed up for Halloween.”
“I said there was no Halloween when I was a kid. That’s different.”
He came so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, smell the whiskey he’d drunk. He brought up one gloved hand, let his finger trail down her exposed throat, down to the valley between her breasts.
“Myrtle Michaelian says you’re being a very bad boy lately. She saw you up to no good with Cat.”
“The gossip never stops in Mayberry. What did you tell her?”
“I told her I like bad boys.”
He picked her up and carried her to their bed, kicking the door shut behind him. “Trick or treat, Mrs. Raintree?”
She laughed when he dropped her onto their bed. Moonlight came through their window and illuminated half of his sharp face, turned half of his hair blue. “I think I’ll take a treat, Mr. Raintree. If you’re up to it.”
On Christmas Eve morning, Vivi Ann rose well before dawn and began making cookies. At some point Noah woke up and she brought him into the kitchen with her. He laughed and played with his plastic dinosaurs in a mound of sugar cookie dough. When he realized how good the dough tasted, he giggled and threw the toys aside and started eating.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Wiping her floury hands on her apron, she scooped him up and held him on her hip while she cleaned up the kitchen. It was like carrying a seizing cat; he kept reaching and twisting and crying, “Mo’, Mama, mo’.”
She carried him into their newly expanded bedroom. Sunlight poured in checkerboard beams through the French doors, landed in streaks on the wide pine floorboards, which glowed like streaks of fresh honey. “Get up, sleepyhead,” she said to Dallas. “Your son needs changing.” She dropped Noah alongside Dallas, who mumbled something and rolled over.
“Look, Noah, Daddy’s playing hide-and-seek.”
Noah giggled and clambered over Dallas, falling like a slinky on the other side of him. “Dada?”
Dallas’s arm came out from under the covers and coiled around the little boy. Noah immediately settled down, as he always did around his dad, and snuggled in close, resting his cheek on his father’s tattooed bicep. Closing his eyes, he started sucking his thumb and fell quiet.
Vivi Ann stood there a moment, drinking in the sight of them. From birth they’d been a pair; when Noah got hurt, it was Dallas he wanted, and when he woke in the middle of the night, crying over a bad dream, it was Dallas who calmed him. Oh, Noah loved Vivi Ann, followed her around like a puppy dog and kissed her good morning and fell asleep in her arms, but he was a daddy’s boy and everyone knew it.
Smiling, she went into the bathroom and took a shower. By eleven, she’d boxed up the cookies, wrapped up the fudge, and dressed for church.
“Dallas,” she said, trying to waken him. “You were supposed to get Noah ready.”
He rolled over onto his back. With Noah tucked protectively in the curl of his arm, he came awake slowly. “I don’t feel good.”
She sat down beside him, noticing how dull and glassy his eyes were. A few beads of sweat dotted his hairline. She reached down, pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“It’s that stupid play group. Every time I drop Noah off there, I get sick. I think there’s something wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. I’ll get you some aspirin.”
When she came back, he was asleep again. She jostled him awake, made him take two aspirin and drink a glass of water.
“I was so excited about today,” she said.
“The Grey Christmas Eve tradition,” he said. “Ugh.”
“What? You don’t like shopping all day, having dinner at the Waves, going to a movie, and then ending it all with night services at church?” She pushed the damp hair away from his eyes, let her touch linger on his face.
“I’d rather eat my own boots.”
“I thought you’d want to help me find something for Noah.”
“I made him a dreamcatcher. My mom made me one when I was about his age.” He smiled. “I kept it a long time.”
“What’s a dreamcatcher?”
“Indian thing. You hang it over your bed and it keeps the bad dreams away.”
She touched his bare, damp chest, letting her fingertip trace the ugliest of his scars. It was an oblong-shaped pucker with pink edges. “Okay, Mr. Raintree, because I love you, I’m going to tell my sisters you’re sick today, but tomorrow is Christmas morning and we’re going to Dad’s. So if this is some kind of Ferris Bueller trick, you only get one day off.”
“It’s no trick.”
She leaned down and kissed him, germs and viruses and all. “I love you, Dal.”
“I love you, too.”
She reached over for Noah and picked him up. Taking him into his bedroom, she changed his diaper and put him in a red and green flannel shirt, OshKosh overalls, and his coat. Then she went back to Dallas, put a cool, wet rag on his forehead, and kissed him goodbye.
The following morning, Vivi Ann woke just as dawn was beginning its gentle rise from the horizon.
Rolling over, she faced her husband. She hadn’t known before that your whole world could sometimes be found in another person’s face, that creases could seem like valleys to be explored; lips a mountain range.
She leaned closer, pressed her naked body to his in the way she’d done so many times before. “Merry Christmas,” she whispered against his lips.
“Merry Christmas.” His voice was gravelly and low, as if he’d been yelling all night, or smoking cigars.
“How do you feel?”
“Better.”
They lay there for a while longer, and then Vivi Ann kissed him one last time and got out of bed. Almost from that moment on, they were both in motion. They took showers and got dressed. While Vivi Ann readied Noah for the big gathering down at the farmhouse, Dallas fed the stock and checked the water in the fields. By the time he returned, the fullness of daylight had settled across the pastures, catching in the puddles and drops from last night’s rain and giving everything a silvery sparkle.
Vivi Ann packed the truck with food and presents.
“Oh. There’s one more thing,” Dallas said as they were heading out. “Just a second.” He went into the bedroom and came out a moment later carrying a big pink-wrapped box. She could tell he’d wrapped it himself—the Scotch tape was at odd angles and covered every possible seam. The white foil bow was hanging on by a thread.
“You know we open presents at Dad’s,” she said. “Just put it in the truck.”
“Not this one.”
She laughed. “What is it? Edible underwear? Or a nightgown that doesn’t quite cover my nipples?”
“Open it.”
The way he was watching her caused a little shiver to skip down her spine. She took the package from him and carried it over to the sofa. He scooped Noah up from the floor and sat down next to her.
The sight of him beside her, holding the son who looked so much like him, was all the present she could ever want, and all the future, too. Still, eagerly she unwrapped the box and found another, smaller one inside of it, and then a small one inside of that. By the time she got to the smallest package, she was pretty sure she knew what it was and her heart was beating quickly.
She glanced at him, caught the intensity of his gaze, and opened the box.
Inside was a beautiful diamond ring. The stone was small but brilliant and set amid an antique-looking gold filigree.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t afford one when we got married.” He took the ring out and slid it onto her finger, butted it up against the plain gold band she’d worn since their wedding day more than three years ago.
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.”
Dallas came slowly out of his chair. It was impossible not to notice how pale he’d gone. “What happened?”
“Well,” Al said, looking down the table, “that’s what I’ve come to find out. Where were you last night, Dallas?”
Chapter Fourteen
LOCAL WOMAN FOUND SHOT TO DEATH
IN OYSTER SHORES HOME
In the early morning h
ours of December 25, local woman Catherine Morgan was found shot to death in her home on Shore Drive. The forty-two-year-old woman was discovered by a neighbor, who immediately contacted police.
Investigators are continuing to gather evidence at the scene. Sheriff Albert Bailor has reported only that the death “appears suspicious,” and that they are “following all leads.” Sources outside law enforcement confirm that Ms. Morgan was shot in the chest at close range and that there was no sign of forced entry at her residence. Reports of sexual assault remain unconfirmed at this time. Anyone with information is asked to contact Sheriff Bailor.
—William Truman
Oyster Shores Tribune
Vivi Ann got out of bed slowly. In the last forty-eight hours she’d learned how to move quietly, to be both there and gone at the same time. Wrapping her terrycloth robe around her, she walked out into their living room and found Dallas exactly where she’d expected him to be: slouched over the kitchen table, rereading the newspaper accounts of the murder.
She put a hand on Dallas’s shoulder, felt him flinch. He cocked his head and looked up at her. There was a wildness in his eyes that made her want to draw back, but she knew how close to the edge he was and how much he needed her to keep him steady. She knew, too, that he was waiting for her to ask him if he’d done it. The whole town was talking about his connection to Cat. Rumors were running rampant about his late-night visits, his trips to the store for beer with her at his side. They knew this, both of them, although they hadn’t spoken of it.
“Today’s the funeral,” she said quietly. “We need to get Noah to the babysitter at eleven.”
“I don’t think I should go.”
“You have to go. People are talking—”
“You think I give a shit what these small-minded bastards say?”
“I think we have to care.”
“I should leave. Just leave. I never should have stayed.”