he years ground slowly forward.

1997.

1998.

1999.

Aurora tried to make peace within their family numerous times, but Vivi Ann had no room in her shrunken heart for forgiveness, and in truth, she didn’t try to make space. Her father and Winona had wounded her too deeply. Every Saturday, Vivi Ann dropped Noah off with Aurora and drove two and a half hours to the prison, so that she could sit behind a dirty Plexiglas window and talk to Dallas through a heavy black receiver. Roy filed one motion after another, each one a beacon of hope that crashed on the rocks. She felt as if she were tied to a wicked seesaw where every high and low took a little more of her soul away. And when Roy finally called to say that the last state appeal had been denied, he’d added quickly, “But don’t worry, I’ll go federal.” So she’d tried again to keep believing, and the months kept passing.

The only way she’d found to survive was to numb herself to everything else. She popped Xanax like jelly beans during the daytime, and they allowed her to move forward, to smile and talk and pretend to be in an ordinary world. Aurora was her anchor in that attempt, her steadying hand. Still, when Vivi Ann was alone at night, she drank too much and either held her son too tightly or not at all. Sometimes she just sat there, swaying to the music in her head, hearing Noah crying or calling out for her, and trying to remember how it had felt to touch Dallas, to hold him. The memories were leaking away, and without them, she had nothing to ward off the numbness, and so she gave in, falling into a deep and troubled sleep on the sofa.

On several of her Saturday visits she’d missed things—Noah’s first tricycle ride, his preschool’s winter party, even his fourth birthday. She’d told herself at the time that he was young, that if she told him his birthday was Sunday he’d believe her—and he had—but she’d seen the way Aurora looked at her, so full of pity, and Vivi Ann had had to turn away. That night, after all the party decorations were in the trash, she’d taken so many shots of tequila that she’d missed her lessons in the morning.

Now it was October 1999; a Saturday. Almost four years after Dallas’s arrest.

She sat in the prison parking lot, staring through the windshield at the gray walls. Rain assaulted the windshield, falling so hard and fast the glass seemed alive, almost flexible. Through this distortion, she could see the imposing concrete mass of the maximum-security prison. She’d seen the collection of buildings in all kinds of weather, and even in full sunlight, with the green landscape and blue sky surrounding, it looked grim and menacing. The rain made the prison look dismal and forlorn, huddled against the hillside instead of standing defiantly in front of it.

She went through the routine of checking in on autopilot, barely noticing anymore how frightening it was to be in here. All she really noticed these days was the noise—the clanging of doors, the clicking of locks, the distant hum of raised voices.

She took her usual place on the left-side cubicle, waiting.

“Hey, Vivi,” he said when he sat down across from her.

At last she smiled. For all the apathy in her everyday life, she couldn’t escape the fact that here, with him, she felt alive. As crazy as it was, she was glad to see him, to be near him, even if they couldn’t touch. She said his name and it was like a prayer, had almost become one. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the newest photograph of Noah. In it, he was a bright, shiny six-year-old, wearing a baseball cap and holding a bat, grinning.

Dallas stared down at it, touched the glass as if for once it wouldn’t stop his hand.

Vivi Ann knew what he saw: a boy. The years of Dallas’s incarceration could be seen on the changing face of his son. Noah was taller, thinner; he’d left babyhood behind this year. And he’d stopped asking about the daddy he didn’t remember.

“He misses you,” Vivi Ann said.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “We don’t have much left. Let’s at least be honest.”

She should have known better than to lie to him. They were separated now, kept apart by razor wire and Plexiglas and concrete, but the connection between them was as strong as ever. “If you’d let me bring him to see you—”

“We’ve had this discussion. He doesn’t need to see me like this. It’s better if he forgets me.”

“Don’t say that.”

They fell silent after that, staring at each other through the dirty plastic, holding on to big black phone receivers, with nothing to say. She wasn’t sure how long it went on, their quiet, but when the end-of-visiting-hours alarm buzzed, she flinched.

“You look tired,” Dallas said finally.

She wanted to pretend not to know what he was talking about, to lie to him again—this time with a confused smile—but she knew he saw the truth on her face, in her weary eyes. In the years of his imprisonment it had grown increasingly difficult to pretend there was a different future waiting for them. They had both lost weight; Roy said last month that they looked like a pair of walking skeletons. Dallas’s face, always sharp, had grown hollow and gaunt. The veins and sinews in his neck were like tree roots protruding just beneath the soil.

Time had left its mark on Vivi Ann’s face, too; she could see the changes in her mirror every morning. Even her hair had grown dull and stringy from too few cuttings and too little care. She was thirty-two, but looked nearly a decade older than that.

“It’s hard,” she said softly.

“Are you still taking those pills?”

“Hardly ever.”

“You’re lying,” he said.

She looked at him, loving him so much it was a physical pain in her chest. “How do you get through it?”

He leaned back. They rarely did this, rarely left the path of pretend and stepped onto the hard cement of reality. “When I’m out in the yard, I find a place that is empty, and I stand there and close my eyes. If I’m lucky, the noise will sound like hoof-beats.”

“Renegade,” she said.

“I remember riding him at night... that night.”

Their eyes met; the memories were vibrant, electric. “That was our first time...”

“How do you get through it?”

Pills. Booze. She looked away, hoping he didn’t notice. “Out on the porch, I have one of the wind chimes my mom made. When she was sick, she gave them to me and said that if I listened closely, I’d hear her voice in their sound. And I did. I do.” She looked at him again. “Now I hear you, too. I wait for the wind sometimes...”

She fell silent. That was the thing about memories; they were like downed electrical cables. It was best to stand back.

“Have you heard from Roy?” she asked.

“No.”

“We’ll hear soon,” she said, wanting to believe it, trying to. “The federal court will hear your case. You’ll see.”

“Sure,” he said. Then he stood up. “I gotta go.”

She watched him hang up the phone and back away.

“I love you,” she said.

He mouthed the words back to her, and then he was gone. The door clacked shut behind him.

She sat there alone, staring at his empty cubicle for so long that a woman came up and tapped her on the shoulder.

Mumbling an apology, Vivi Ann got up and walked away.

The drive home seemed to take longer than usual. As one mile spilled into the next, she tried to remain steady. There were so many things she couldn’t think about these days, and if she really concentrated, she could hold back the fear. During the daylight hours, at least. The nights were their own kind of hell; even overmedicating herself only worked some of the time.

In town, she eased her foot off the gas and slowed down. All around her, she saw proof that while she’d been suspended in the gray-black world of the criminal justice system, life here had gone on. The trees along Main Street were riots of autumn color; the first few of the dying leaves had begun to fall. The Horsin’ Around Tack Shop was advertising their yearly sale and the drugstore had a window display full of ghosts and pumpkins.

Trick or treat, Mrs. Raintree?

She flinched and hit the gas. The old truck coughed hard and lurched forward.

At the ranch, she pulled up into the trees and consulted her watch. It was three o’clock. That gave her one hour to feed the horses and be at Aurora’s in time to pick up Noah.

Noah.

There was another truth she tried to avoid. She was becoming a useless parent. She loved her son like air and sunlight, but every time she looked at him another piece of her heart seemed to fall away.

She would have to change that. Tomorrow she’d stop taking the Xanax and get back to the business of living. She had to, whether she wanted to or not.

Feeling a tiny bit better with this goal (she’d made it before, but this time she meant it; this time she’d really do it), she headed for the loafing shed, where they kept enough bales of alfalfa for a week. Opening the door, she pulled out the wheelbarrow and stacked it with flakes of hay.

In the barn, she snapped on the lights and began feeding the horses, going from stall to stall. Here, she found a measure of peace again, and she was very nearly smiling when she un-latched Clem’s stall door.

“Hey, girl, have you missed me?”

There was no answering nicker, no whisper of a tail whooshing from side to side.

Vivi Ann knew the minute she stepped onto the fresh shavings.

Clementine lay crumpled against the stall’s wooden wall, her massive, graying head lolled forward.

Vivi Ann stood utterly still, knowing that if she tried to move she’d fall to her knees. It took work just to breathe. In that moment, in the cool, shadowy familiarity of this barn that had always been her favorite place in the world, she remembered everything about this great mare. Their whole lives had been lived together.

Remember when you stepped in that hornet’s nest... when you jumped the ditch and I landed in the blackberry bushes... when we won State for the first time?

Swallowing hard, Vivi Ann moved forward and dropped to her knees in the pale pink shavings at Clem’s belly. She reached out and touched the mare’s neck, feeling the coldness that shouldn’t be there. There were so many things to say to this great animal—her last real link to her mother—but none of that was possible now. Vivi Ann’s throat felt swollen; her eyes stung. How would she go on without Clem? Especially now, when so much had been lost?

She scratched Clem’s graying ears. “You should have been out in the sunlight, girl. I know how much you hate this dark stall.”

That made her think of Dallas and the cell he was in, and loneliness and grief overwhelmed her. She lay down against her mare, curling into the fetal position against her comforting flank, and closed her eyes.

Goodbye, Clem. Tell Mom I said hey.

Time kept going; inching, lurching, slowing, but always moving. The year 2000 drained away in a blur of gray and empty days and endless nights. Noah had started kindergarten at five (too early, Vivi Ann thought; she should have held him back a year, would have if Dallas were here, but he wasn’t), and T-ball at six and soccer at seven. She missed all of his Saturday games; it was just one more thing to feel guilty about. Aurora always offered to come with her to the prison, but Vivi Ann refused the offer. She could only do it alone.

Then, finally, in the first week of September 2001, she got the call she’d been waiting for.

“Mr. Lovejoy would like to see you today.”

It was good news. Vivi Ann knew it. In all the years of Dallas’s imprisonment, never before had Roy asked Vivi Ann to come to his office for a meeting.

Thank you, God, Vivi Ann thought as she got ready that morning. That sentence cycled through her mind, gaining the speed of a downhill racer, until she could hardly think of anything else.

On her way out of town, she stopped at the school and picked up Noah. After all that they’d been through, he deserved to be there on the day they got the good news.

“I’m going to miss recess,” Noah said beside her. He was playing with a pair of plastic dinosaurs, making them fight on the front of his bumper seat.

“I know, but we’re going to get news about your daddy. We’ve been waiting so long for this. And I want you to remember this day, that you were here for it.”

“Oh.”

“Because I never gave up, Noah. That’s important, too, even though it was really hard.”

He made sound effects to go along with the dinosaurs’ epic battle.

Vivi Ann turned up the radio and kept driving. In Belfair, the town at the start of the Canal, she drove to Roy’s office, which was housed in an older home on a small lot beside the bank.

“We’re here,” she said, parking. Her heart was beating so fast she felt light-headed, but she didn’t take one of her pills, not even to calm down. After today, she’d never take one again. There would be no need, not once their family was together. Helping Noah out of his seat and taking him by the hand, she walked up the grass-veined cement path to the front door.

Inside, she smiled at the receptionist. “I’m Vivi Ann Raintree. I have a meeting with Roy.”

“That’s right,” the receptionist said. “Go on through that door. He’s expecting you.”

Roy sat at his desk, talking on the phone. Smiling at her entrance, motioning for her to sit down, he said something else into the phone and hung up.

Vivi Ann put Noah on the sofa behind her, told him to play quietly; then she took a seat opposite Roy’s desk.

“You made it over here in record time,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting years for this phone call, haven’t I? Haven’t we?”

“Oh,” Roy said, frowning. “I should have thought of that.”

“Though of what?”

“What you’d think.”

Vivi Ann felt herself tensing. “You called to tell me his federal appeal has been granted, right?”

“Technically it’s a writ of habeus corpus, but no, that’s not my news.”

Behind her, Noah’s voice grew louder, as did the clacking together of his dinosaurs, but Vivi Ann couldn’t hear much of anything over the sudden roar of white noise in her head. “What is your news?”

“I’m sorry, Vivi Ann. We were denied again.”

Slowly she closed her eyes. How could she have been so naïve? What was wrong with her? She knew better than to believe in hope. She took a deep breath, released it, and looked at him.

She knew she looked calm and composed, as if this new setback were just another bump in a bad stretch of road. She wouldn’t let herself fall apart until tonight. She’d had years of practice at waiting, pretending, hiding. “May I have a glass of water?”

“Sure. It’s right there.”

She got up, walked carefully to the pitcher of water set up on the sideboard. Pouring herself a glass, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of pills, swallowing them before she turned around. “Does Dallas know?”

“Yesterday,” Roy said.

Vivi Ann sat down, hoping the numbness would come fast. She couldn’t stand what she was feeling. “What now? Who do we appeal to?”

“I’ve done everything I can on his case, pled every argument, filed every motion, sought every appeal. I’m not a public defender anymore—you know that. I’ve been doing all this pro bono, but there’s nothing more I can do. You could get another lawyer, say I was incompetent, and hell, maybe I was. I would help you in that if you wanted.” He sighed. “I don’t know, Vivi. I just know we’re done now. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.” She heard the shrill desperation in her voice, the sharp edge of anger, and tried to soften it with a smile. “I’ve been hearing that for years, from everyone. I’m tired of it. We need you, Roy, to prove his innocence.”

Roy glanced away.

In that furtive look, Vivi Ann saw something. “Roy? What is it?”

“Nothing. I just... had a heart-to-heart with Dallas this week. Finally.”

“You know he’s innocent, right, Roy? You’ve said it to me a million times.”

“I really can’t comment on that anymore.”

Now she was afraid. Was Roy implying that Dallas had confessed to him? She got to her feet and stood there, looking down at him. “I can’t take this shit, Roy. Please. Don’t screw with my head.”

He looked up slowly, his eyes sad. “Talk to Dallas, Vivi Ann. I’ve made arrangements for you at the prison for tomorrow.”

“That’s it? That’s what you have for me after all these years?”

“I’m sorry.”

She spun away and went to Noah, grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the office and down the steps and into the truck.

All the way home, she replayed it in her head, trying to change it, soften it. At Aurora’s house, she shoved Noah at her sister, saying, “I can’t deal with him tonight.”

She heard Aurora calling out to her, telling her to come back, but she didn’t care. Fear was like a great black beast standing in her peripheral vision and she was desperate to get away, to get numb.

When she finally got home, she slammed the door shut behind her and went straight to the medicine cabinet. She took too many pills—who cared? anything to numb the pain—and washed them down with tequila.

Crawling into bed, she pulled the covers up and tried not to think about Dallas or Noah or the future. If she thought about any of it, she’d fall apart. And so she lay there, woozy, cottony, staring out the window at the ranch until night fell; after that, she stared at nothing until she was part of it and she couldn’t feel anything at all.

The next morning, feeling like a piece of old, dried-out leather, she climbed out of bed, took a scalding-hot shower, and went to the prison.

“Vivi Ann Raintree to see Dallas Raintree,” she said formally, although by now she was known around here.

The woman at the desk—it was Stephanie today—smiled. “Your lawyer scheduled a contact visit today.”

“Really? No one told me that.”

Normally she would have been thrilled at the idea of a contact visit. In all the years she’d been coming here, she’d only had a few. But now she knew why it had been scheduled. It was Roy’s parting gift to her, a signal that the end had come.

She went down to the metal detector. Once she was through it, a big man in uniform said brusquely, “This way.” He stamped her hand and gave her an identification tag to wear around her neck.

She followed him down a wide, gray hallway. Doors opened and closed automatically, swinging wide slowly and clicking shut with a loud thud behind them. The noise seemed to grow closer and louder with each new open door, until Vivi Ann was in the prison itself, the part where the prisoners were housed.

At last, the guard led her into a room at the end of the last hallway. It was small, without windows or cubicles. A uniformed guard stood in the corner opposite the door. He took note of her arrival but didn’t move or nod.

In the center of the room was a large wooden table, scarred and scratched from years of use. Several molded plastic chairs were pushed up to it. She went to the table, sat down, and scooted close, waiting. On the wall, the minutes ticked past.

Finally, the door in the back of the room buzzed and swung open. The guard turned slightly to face the door.

Dallas hobbled into the room; his wrist and ankle cuffs were linked to chains cuffed together around his waist.

She got to her feet, waiting, unable to believe they were this close again after all these years.

He shuffled over and she took him in her arms, holding him tightly, feeling how thin and bony they’d both grown.

“That’s enough,” the guard said. “Take your seats.”

Vivi Ann reluctantly let him go. He hobbled back to the opposite side of the table and sat down.

He slid back in his chair, putting his feet forward. His hair was really long now, almost past the curl of his shoulder.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the latest picture of Noah, handing it to him. In it, their son was sitting in a big western saddle on Renegade, waving to the camera. “You should see your son ride. He’s going to be as good with horses as you are.”

Dallas took the photograph in a trembling hand. “We’re not good for each other, Vivi.”

“Don’t say that. Please.”

“I tried to be good enough for you.”

She swallowed hard. “What did you tell Roy?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He was so still it was almost as if he wasn’t breathing, which made no sense because she was gasping like a sprinter, unable to catch her breath.

“You know what I loved most about you, Vivi? Y’never asked if I killed her. Never.”

She went to him, pulled him into her arms, and kissed him, wanting to feel him, touch him, but all she tasted were her tears. “Don’t you try to tell me you did it, Dallas. I won’t believe you. And don’t you dare give up. We’re in this together. We have to keep fighting—”

“Back away,” the guard said, moving toward them.

Through the blur of her tears, Vivi Ann could see that Dallas was smiling. It was the same sexy, easy, come-hither smile he’d given her all that time ago at the Outlaw Tavern on the night they’d met. “You should have married Luke.”

“Don’t,” she said, but it was barely a whisper, that plea.

The guard opened the door and led Dallas out.

And when she looked down, she saw the photograph of Noah still on the table, and she knew he had given up.

Saturday after Saturday, as September turned into October, and then into November, Vivi Ann went to the prison and signed in. She sat in a cubicle, alone, watching the minutes of her life tick away.

Dallas never came out to see her again. Her weekly letters were returned unopened. In December, six years to the day after his arrest, he sent a postcard that read: Give Noah my truck and tell him the truth.

The truth.

She didn’t even know what that meant. Which truth? That his parents had loved each other, or that it had ruined all of them, that love? Or did he mean to imply, as Roy had, that he had confessed to Cat’s murder (she would never tell her son that, and she wouldn’t believe it, either). She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was past falling apart these days. It had been bad going to prison to see him all those years. Now not seeing him was worse. She’d thought until today that it couldn’t get worse.

Then the mail had come. When she saw the big manila envelope from the prison, she tore into it, thinking, Thank God.

Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Nothing had ever hurt like that, not even losing Mom or Clem. Nothing.

She’d gone straight to the medicine cabinet for her pills and took too many, washing them down with tequila. Then she crawled into bed and closed her eyes, praying to God that she didn’t dream...

“Mommy. Is it time yet?”

“Mommy?”

She lifted her heavy head from the pillow.

Noah stood beside her bed. “We gotta go to Sam’s house, remember?”

“Huh?”

His face pursed into a frown that was becoming familiar. “The party starts at three o’clock. All the other moms know that.”

“Oh...” She shoved at the covers and stumbled out of bed. Moving slowly—her head was pounding and her body felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton—she tried to take a shower, but her hands were so numb she couldn’t turn the faucet on. Instead, she ran her fingers through her lank, dirty hair and made a sloppy ponytail. Dressing seemed to take forever; her focus was off and her fingers were trembling and her balance was shot. Finally, though, she got herself into a pair of old gray sweats, cowboy boots, and a flannel shirt. “Less go, little man,” she said, trying to smile, thinking that maybe she’d slurred the words.

“Where’s the present?”

“Huh?”

“It’s his birthday, Mom.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She walked unsteadily around the house, wishing this fog in her head would go away. She found a nearly new halter on the kitchen counter (what the hell was it doing there?) and wrapped it up in the comics section from last weekend’s newspaper. “There. He got a new horse, right?”

“That’s a dumb present.”

“It’s this or nothin’.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

They went outside, into a falling rain, and headed for the truck.

It took her too long to strap him into his bumper seat, and by the time she finished, she was soaking wet. Her shaking fingers were so slick she had trouble grasping the wheel.

Rain pummeled them, turned the windshield into a river. The wipers could barely keep up.

She hit the gas. Driving through town, she tried to focus only on the road in front of her; it was impossible to see. The world looked watery and bleak, insubstantial, like the last time she’d gone to the prison to see Dallas... when she’d kissed him and begged him not to give up on her, on them... she’d come out into the rain on that day, too, had—

“Mommy!”

She blinked and tried to focus. She was in the wrong lane; a car was coming at her fast, its horn honking.

Swerving hard, she felt the truck lurch sideways and careen over the sidewalk. She slammed on the brakes but it was too late, or too hard. The truck skidded through the wet grass and crashed into a tree.

She hit her head on the steering wheel so hard that for a second she didn’t know where she was. The taste of blood filled her mouth.

Then she heard Noah’s screaming.

It seemed to come at her from far away, that high-pitched, hysterical sound. Somewhere deep inside, she reacted to that scream, wept for it, but her head was so fuzzy that she couldn’t make sense of it all.

“Mommy!”

With shaking hands, she undid her seat belt and unhooked his bumper seat. Noah launched himself into her arms, sobbing against her neck.

Slowly, slowly, she began to feel him in her arms, to realize what had just happened. She clung to him, breathing in his little boy scent. For so long, she’d held back from Noah, been afraid of him, but now her love for him came rushing back like water through a storm drain, almost drowning her. “Oh, my God,” she cried. “I’m so sorry...”

He looked up at her, sniffling, his eyes dark with tears. “Are you okay, Mommy?”

“I will be, Noah. I promise you.”

Vivi Ann put the truck in reverse and backed away from the scarred and dented tree trunk. The truck’s engine idled too fast, revved when she hit the gas, but it backed up, dropped down from the curb.

Her whole body was shaking as she drove; still, she tried to hide that from her son, who was back to playing with his dinosaurs as if nothing had happened. But he’d remember this; she was sadly certain of it.

She drove to the party and dropped him off, holding him so tightly he squirmed to be free.

“I love you, Noah,” she said, wondering how long it had been since she’d let herself say those three words.

“Love you, too, Mommy.”

Straightening slowly, she watched him walk up to the front door. In another life—the one she’d once imagined for herself—she would have walked up with him, held his hand the whole way, and then joined in with the other mothers inside, organizing games and handing out cupcakes.

Now she stood here, alone and separated from her own life.

It had to stop.

She went back to the dented, smoking truck and climbed into the driver’s seat.

What a joke that was: her in the driver’s seat. She’d been a passenger for years, but what was she going to do? What could she do? The answers seemed too big to grasp, too far away to see clearly.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she needed help. She couldn’t handle being alone anymore.

And Winona’s house was across the street.

She got out of the truck and walked to her sister’s property line, standing at the closed white picket fence. Rain pelted her, blurred her vision, but it couldn’t obscure the sudden knowledge of what needed to be done. Noah deserved more from her.

Finally, with a heavy sigh, she walked up to Winona’s front door.

“Winona? Your sister, Vivi Ann, is here to see you.”

Winona had been waiting for that sentence so long that when it finally came, she stood upright immediately, almost forgetting to tell Lisa to send her in.

She stood there, uncertain, hopeful, afraid, trying to think of what to say. Then Vivi Ann opened the door and walked in, and Winona was so taken aback that she couldn’t say anything at all.

Vivi Ann wasn’t just crying; she was sobbing. Great, gulping tears that shook her shoulders and ravaged her pale, drawn face.

Winona went to her, opening her arms instinctively.

Vivi Ann shrank away, stumbled over to the couch, and collapsed onto it.

Winona took the chair opposite her, sat stiff and erect, barely breathing, waiting. For once she needed to keep her mouth shut and not speak first. It was torture. She had so many things to say to her sister, words she’d hoarded for years, polishing like the bits of beach glass their mom had loved.

It seemed silent forever. Then, quietly, Vivi Ann said, “I almost killed Noah and me today.”

“What happened?”

“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.”