Sierra's Homecoming (19 page)

“Willie wouldn't have gone through our things, would he?”

Doss shook his head. “Not likely it would even have occurred to him to do that,” he said. “Judging by how cold it was in here when we got home, he probably didn't set foot in the house once he'd finished off that chicken soup you made before we left.”

Hannah wrung her hands, took a step toward the table and then paused. “Do you…do you ever get the feeling we're not alone in this house?” she asked, almost whispering the words.

“No,” Doss said, with conviction.

“It was bad enough when the teapot kept moving. Now, the album—”

“Hannah.” He touched her arm. “You sound like Tobias, going on about seeing a boy in his room.”

“Maybe,” Hannah ventured to speculate, almost breathless with the effort of speaking the words aloud, “he's not imagining things. Maybe it wasn't the fever.”

Doss cupped Hannah's elbow in one hand and steered her to the table, letting go only to pull back a chair. It was pure fancy, of course, but as Hannah sat down, it seemed to her that the album, fairly new and reverently cared for, was very old. The sensation lasted only a moment or so, but it was so powerful that it left her feeling weak.

“We've all been under a strain, Hannah,” Doss reasoned. “One of us must have gotten the album out and forgotten about it.”

She looked up into his face. “Did you?” she challenged softly.

He paused, shook his head.

“I know
I
didn't,” she insisted.

“Tobias, then,” Doss said.

“No,” Hannah replied. “He was too sick.”

Doss set his coffee on the table, sat astride the bench, facing her. “There's a simple explanation for this, Hannah. Somebody might have come up from one of the other places, let themselves in.”

As close as the McKettricks were, they didn't go into each other's houses when no one was at home. If one of them had wanted to see the album, they'd have said so. Anyway, the aunts and uncles were all in Phoenix, their children grown and gone. The people who looked after their places wouldn't have considered snooping like this, even if they'd been interested, which seemed unlikely.

“The biscuits will burn if you don't take them out of the oven,” Hannah said, staring at the album, almost expecting it to move on its own, float through the air like a spirit medium's trumpet at a séance.

Doss got up, crossed the room and rescued the biscuits. The sausage gravy was done, warming at the back of the stove, so he retrieved one of the plates Hannah had gotten out, filled it for her and brought it to the table.

“Tobias will be hungry,” she said, thinking aloud.

“I'll see to him,” Doss answered. “Eat.”

Hannah moved the album out of the way and pulled the plate toward her, resigned to taking her supper, even though she didn't want it. Doss brought her silverware, then filled another plate for Tobias and took it downstairs.

When he returned, he dished up his own meal and joined Hannah at the table. She was still staring at her scrambled eggs, sausage gravy and biscuits.

“Eat,” he repeated.

She took up a fork. “There's someone here,” she said. “Someone we can't see. Someone who moves the teapot and now the album, too.”

“Let's assume, for a moment, that that's true,” Doss ruminated, tucking into his food with an energy Hannah envied. “What do you plan to do about it?”

Hannah swallowed a bite of tasteless food. “I don't know,” she answered, but it wasn't the complete truth. An idea was already brewing in her mind.

They finished their supper.

Hannah cleared the table, put the album back in its drawer in the china cabinet, and went upstairs to look in on Tobias while Doss washed the dishes.

Her son was sitting up in bed when she entered his room, his supper half-eaten and set aside on the bedside table. “The boy's not here,” he said. “I wonder if he's gone away.”

Hannah frowned. “What boy?” she asked, even though she knew.

“The one I see sometimes. With the funny clothes.”

Hannah stroked her boy's hair. Sat down on the edge of his bed. “Does this boy ever speak to you? Does he have a name?”

Tobias shook his head. His eyes were large in his pale face. The trip back from Indian Rock had been hard on him, and Hannah was both worried about her son and determined not to let on.

“We mostly just look at each other. I reckon he's as surprised to see me as I am to see him.”

“Next time he shows up, will you tell me?”

Tobias bit his lower lip, then nodded. “You believe me?”

“Of course I do, Tobias.”

“Pa said he was imaginary. When we talked about it, I mean.”

Hannah sighed. “Tobias, Doss is your uncle, not your pa.”

Suddenly, Tobias's eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Why won't you let him be my pa?” he asked. “He's your husband, isn't he? If you can have a husband, why can't
I
have a pa?”

Had Tobias been older, Hannah thought, she might have explained that Doss wasn't a
real
husband, that theirs was a marriage of convenience, but he was still far too young to understand.

In point of fact, she didn't entirely understand the situation herself.

“A woman can have more than one husband,” she said cautiously. “A boy has only one father. And your father was Gabriel Angus McKettrick. I don't want you to forget that.”

“I
won't
forget,” Tobias said. “You can wash my mouth out with soap, if you want to, but I'm still going to call Uncle Doss my pa. I've got enough uncles—Jeb and Kade and Rafe, and John Henry, too. What I need is a
pa.
”

Hannah was too exhausted to argue, and she knew she wouldn't win anyhow. “So long as you promise me you will never forget who your real father is,” she said. “And I would appreciate it if you would include your uncle David—my brother—in that list of relations you just mentioned.”

Tobias brightened and put out one small hand for a shake. “It's a deal,” he agreed. “I like Uncle David. He can spit a long way.”

“Go to sleep,” Hannah told him with a smile, reaching to turn down the wick in the lantern next to his bed.

“I didn't wash my face or brush my teeth,” he confessed, settling back on to his pillows.

“Just this once we'll pretend you did,” she said.

The lamp went out.

She kissed his forehead, found it blessedly cool and tucked the covers in close around him. “Good night, Tobias,” she said.

“Good night, Ma,” Tobias replied with a yawn.

He was probably asleep before she reached the door.

She'd hoped Doss would have turned in by the time she went downstairs, so she wouldn't have to be alone with him in the intimacy of evening, but he was right there in the kitchen, with the bathtub set out in the middle of the floor and buckets and kettles of water heating on the stove.

“I just came down to say good night,” she lied. Actually, she'd been planning to sit up awhile, pondering her plan. It wasn't much, but she was bound and determined to find out something about the strange goings-on in that house.

“You can have this bath if you want,” Doss told her. “I can always take one later.”

“You have it,” Hannah said, even though she would have loved to soak the chill out of her bones in a tub of hot water. She wondered if he was planning to share her bed, but she'd have broken the ice on top of the horse trough and stripped bare for a dunking before asking him outright.

He simply nodded.

“Don't forget to bank the fire,” she said.

He grinned. “I never do, Hannah,” he reminded her.

She turned, blushing a little, and went back upstairs. Entering her room, the one she'd shared with Gabe, she exchanged her clothes for a nightgown. She took her hair down, brushed it, plaited it into a long braid, trying all the while not to imagine Doss right downstairs, naked as the day he was born, lounging in that tub in front of the stove.

Would he join her later?

He was her legal husband, and he had every right to sleep beside her. She, on the other hand, had every right to turn him away, wedding band or none.

Would she?

She honestly didn't know, and in the end, it didn't matter.

She put out her lamp, threw back the covers on her bed and stretched out, waiting and listening.

Presently she heard Doss climb the stairs, walk along the hallway and pass her room.

His door closed moments later.

Hannah told herself she was relieved, and then cried herself into a fitful sleep.

Present Day

The roads had been plowed, and Sierra was secretly proud of the way she handled the Blazer. She'd grown up in Mexico, after all, and spent the last few years in Florida, which precluded driving in snow. This was an accomplishment.

At the elementary school, she got Liam registered and watched as he rushed off to join his class before she could even suggest that he start slowly. His eagerness left her feeling a little bereft.

She shook that off. He had his inhaler. The school nurse had been apprised of his asthma. She had to let go.

She would be living on the Triple M for a year, per her agreement with Eve. Might as well drive around a bit, see what the town was like.

Thirty minutes later she'd seen it all.

The supermarket. The library. The Cattleman's Bank. Two cafés, three bars, a gas station. A dry cleaners, and the ubiquitous McDonald's. The Indian Rock Historical Society. A real estate firm. A few hundred houses, many of them old and, at the edge of town, a spanking-new office complex with the word McKettrickCo inlaid in colored stone over a gleaming set of automatic doors.

I'm sure there will be a place for you in the organization, if you want one,
she heard Eve's voice say.

Slowing the Blazer, she studied the place, imagined herself going inside, in her jeans, sweatshirt and ratty coat, her hair combed in a slap-dash method, no mirror required. Face bare of makeup. “Hi, there,” she would say to her cousin Keegan, who would no doubt be less than thrilled to see her but manage a polite greeting, anyway. “My name is Sierra and, what do you know? Turns out, I'm a McKettrick, just like you. Go figure. Oh, and by the way, my mother says you're to give me a job. Top-dollar salary and all the fringe benefits, if you don't mind.”

She smiled ruefully at the thought. “Of course, all I know how to do is serve cocktails and speak Spanish,” she might add. “No problem, I'm sure.”

She pulled up in front of the Cattleman's Bank, patted her purse, which contained a few hundred dollars in traveler's checks, all the money she had in the world, and went in to open a checking account.

“You already have one, Ms. McKettrick,” a perky young teller told her, after a few taps on her computer keyboard. The girl's eyes widened as she peered at the screen. “It's pretty substantial, too.”

Sierra frowned, momentarily puzzled. “There must be some mistake. I've only been in town a few days, and I haven't—”

And then it struck her. Eve had been up to her tricks again.

The teller turned her pivoting monitor around so Sierra could read the facts for herself. The bottom line made her catch hold of the counter with both hands, lest she faint dead away.

Two million dollars?

“Of course you'll need to sign a signature card,” the clerk said, still chipper. “Do you have two forms of personal identification?”

“I need to use your telephone,” Sierra managed to say. The floor was still at an odd tilt, and her knuckles hurt where she gripped the edge of the counter.

The teller blinked. “You don't carry a cell phone?” she marveled, in a tone usually reserved for people who think they've been abducted by aliens and subjected to a lot of very painful and explicit medical procedures.

“No,” Sierra said, trying not to hyperventilate, “I do not carry a cell phone.”

“Over there,” the teller said, pointing to a friendly looking nook marked off in brass letters as the Customer Comfort area.

Sierra made her way to the telephone, rummaged through her purse for Eve's cell number and dialed. The operator came on and informed her the call was long distance, and there would be charges.

“Make it collect,” Sierra snapped.

One ring. Two. Eve was probably still in flight, aboard the company jet, with her phone shut off. Sierra was about to give up when, after the third ring, her mother chimed, “Eve McKettrick.”

“I have a bank account with two million dollars in it!” Sierra whispered into the receiver, bent around it like someone calling a 900 number during a church service.