Sierra's Homecoming (5 page)

There was no passion.

They were never going to be anything more than what they were—the best of friends. He was mostly resigned to that, but in lonely moments, he ached for things to be different.

“Tell me about my sister,” Meg insisted.

“She's pretty,” Travis said.
Real
pretty, added a voice in his mind. “She's proud, and overprotective as hell of the kid.”

“Liam has asthma,” Meg said quietly. “According to Sierra, he nearly died of it a couple of times.”

Travis forgot his burned fingers, his Salisbury steak and his private sorrow.
“What?”

Meg let out a long breath. “That's the only reason Sierra's willing to have anything to do with Mom and me. Mom put her on the company health plan and arranged for Liam to see a specialist in Flagstaff on a regular basis. In return, Sierra had to agree to spend a year on the ranch.”

Travis stood still, absorbing it all. “Why here?” he asked. “Why not with you and Eve in San Antonio?”

“Mom and I would love that,” Meg said, “but Sierra needs…distance. Time to get used to us.”

“Time to get used to two McKettrick women. So we're talking, say, the year 2050, give or take a decade?”

“Very funny. Sierra
is
a McKettrick woman, remember? She's up to the challenge.”

“She is definitely a McKettrick,” Travis agreed ruefully. And very definitely a woman. “How did you find her?”

“Mom tracked her and Hank down when Sierra was little,” Meg answered.

Travis dropped on to the edge of his bed, which was unmade. The sheets were getting musty, and every night, the pizza crumbs rubbed his hide raw. One of these days he was going to haul off and change them.

“‘Tracked her down'?”

“Yes,” Meg said, with a sigh. “I guess I didn't tell you about that part.”

“I guess you didn't.” Travis had known about the kidnapping, how Sierra's father had taken off with her the day the divorce papers were served, and that the two of them had ended up in Mexico. “Eve knew, and she still didn't lift a finger to get her own daughter back?”

“Mom had her reasons,” Meg answered, withdrawing a little.

“Oh, well, then,” Travis retorted, “that clears everything up. What
reason
could she possibly have?”

“It's not my place to say, Trav,” Meg told him sadly. “Mom and Sierra have to work it all through first, and it might be a while before Sierra's ready to listen.”

Travis sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. “You're right,” he conceded.

Meg brightened again, but there was a brittleness about her that revealed more than she probably wanted Travis to know, close as they were. “So,” she said, “what would you say Mom's chances are? Of reconnecting with Sierra, I mean?”

“The truth?”

“The truth,” Meg said, without enthusiasm.

“Zero to zip. Sierra's been pleasant enough to me, but she's as stubborn as any McKettrick that ever drew breath, and that's saying something.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You said you wanted the truth.”

“How can you be so sure Mom won't be able to get through to her?”

“It's just a hunch,” Travis said.

Meg was quiet. Travis was famous for his hunches. Too bad he hadn't paid attention to the one that said his little brother was in big trouble, and that Travis ought to drop everything and look for Brody until he found him.

“Look, maybe I'm wrong,” he added.

“What's your real impression of Sierra, Travis?”

He took his time answering. “She's independent to a fault. She's built a wall around herself and the kid, and she's not about to let anybody get too close. She's jumpy, too. If it wasn't for Liam, and the fact that she probably doesn't have two nickels to rub together, she definitely wouldn't be on the Triple M.”

“Damn,” Meg said. “We knew she was poor, but—”

“Her car gave out in the driveway as soon as she pulled in. I took a peek under the hood, and believe me, the best mechanic on the planet couldn't resurrect that heap.”

“She can drive my Blazer.”

“That might take some convincing on your part. This is not a woman who wants to be obliged. It's probably all she can do not to grab the kid and hop on the next bus to nowhere.”

“This is depressing,” Meg said.

Travis got up off the bed, peeled back the plastic covering his dinner, and poked warily at the faux meat with the tip of one finger. Talk about depressing.

“Hey,” he said. “Look on the bright side. She's here, isn't she? She's on the Triple M. It's a start.”

“Take care of her, Travis.”

“As if she'd go along with that.”

“Do it for me.”

“Oh, please.”

Meg paused, took aim, and scored a bull's-eye. “Then do it for Liam.”

1919

D
oss left the house after supper, ostensibly to look in on the livestock one last time before heading upstairs to bed, leaving the dishwashing to Tobias and Hannah. He stood still in the dooryard, raising the collar of his coat against the wicked cold. Stars speckled the dark, wintry sky.

In those moments he missed Gabe with a piercing intensity that might have bent him double, if he wasn't McKettrick proud. That was what his mother called the quality, anyhow. In the privacy of his own mind, Doss named it stubbornness.

Thinking of his ma made his pa come to mind, too. He missed them almost as sorely as he did Gabe. His uncles, Rafe and Kade and Jeb, along with their wives, were all down south, around Phoenix, where the weather was more hospitable to their aging bones. Their sons, to a man, were still in the army, even though the war was over, waiting to be mustered out. Their daughters had all married, every one of them keeping the McKettrick name, and lived in places as far-flung as Boston, New York and San Francisco.

There was hardly a McKettrick left on the place, save himself and Hannah and Tobias. It deepened Doss's loneliness, knowing that. He wished everybody would just come back home, where they belonged, but it would have been easier to herd wild barn cats than that bunch.

Doss looked back toward the house. Saw the lantern glowing at the kitchen window. Smiled.

The moment he'd gone outside, Hannah must have switched off the bulb. She worried about running short of things, he'd noticed, even though she'd come from a prosperous family, and certainly married into one.

His throat tightened. He knew she'd been different before he brought Gabe home in a pine box, but then, they all had. Gabe's going left a hole in the fabric of what it meant to be a McKettrick, and not a tidy one, stitched at the edges. Rather, it was a jagged tear, and judging by the raw newness of his own grief, Doss had little hope of it ever mending.

Time heals,
his mother had told him after they'd laid Gabe in the ground up there on the hill, with his Grandpa Angus and those that had passed after him, but she'd had tears in her eyes as she said it. As for his pa, well, he'd stood a long time by the grave. Stood there until Rafe and Kade and Jeb brought him away.

Doss thrust out a sigh, remembering. “Gabe,” he said, under his breath, “Hannah says it's wrong of me, but I still wish it had been me instead of you.”

He'd have given anything for an answer, but wherever Gabe was, he was busy doing other things. Maybe they had fishing holes up there in the sky, or cattle to round up and drive to market.

“Take care of Hannah and my boy,” Gabe had told him, in that army infirmary, when they both knew there would be no turning the illness around. “Promise me, Doss.”

Doss had swallowed hard and made that promise, but it was a hard one to keep. Hannah didn't seem to want taking care of, and every morning when Doss woke up, he was afraid this would be the day she'd decide to go back to her own people, up in Montana, and stay gone for good.

The back door opened, startling Doss out of his musings. He hesitated for a moment, then tramped in the direction of the barn, trying to look like a man bent on a purpose.

Hannah caught up, bundled into a shawl and carrying a lighted lantern in one hand.

“I think I'm going mad,” she blurted out.

Doss stopped, looked down at her in puzzled concern. “It's the grief, Hannah,” he told her gruffly. “It will pass.”

“You don't believe that any more than I do,” Hannah challenged, catching up with herself. The snow was deep and getting deeper, and the wind bit straight through to the marrow.

Doss moved to the windward side, to be a buffer for her. “I've got to believe it,” he said. “Feeling this bad forever doesn't bear thinking about.”

“I put the teapot away,” Hannah said, her breath coming in puffs of white, “I
know
I put it away. But I must have gotten it out again, without knowing or remembering, and that scares me, Doss. That really scares me.”

They reached the barn. Doss took the lantern from her and hauled open one of the big doors one-handed. It wasn't easy, since the snow had drifted, even in the short time since he'd left off feeding and watering the horses and the milk cow and that cussed mule Seesaw. The critter was a son of Doss's mother's mule, who'd borne the same name, and he was a son of something else, too.

“Maybe you're a mite forgetful these days,” Doss said, once he'd gotten her inside, out of the cold. The familiar smells and sounds of the darkened barn were a solace to him—he came there often, even when he didn't have work to do, which was seldom. On a ranch, there was
always
work to do—wood to chop, harnesses to mend, animals to look after. “That doesn't mean you're not sane, Hannah.”

Don't say it, he pleaded silently. Don't say you might as well take Tobias and head for Montana.

It was a selfish thought, Doss knew. In Montana, Hannah could live a city life again. No riding a mule five miles to fetch the mail. No breaking the ice on the water troughs on winter mornings, so the cattle and horses could drink. No feeding chickens and dressing like a man.

If Hannah left the Triple M, Doss didn't know what he'd do. First and foremost, he'd have to break his promise to Gabe, by default if not directly, but there was more to it than that. A lot more.

“There's something else, too,” Hannah confided.

To keep himself busy, Doss went from stall to stall, looking in on sleepy horses, each one confounded and blinking in the light of his lantern. He was giving Hannah space, enough distance to get out whatever it was she wanted to say.

“What?” he asked, when she didn't speak again right away.

“Tobias. He just told me—he told me—”

Doss looked back, saw Hannah standing in the moonlit doorway, rimmed in silver, with one hand pressed to her mouth.

He went back to her. Set the lantern aside and took her by the shoulders. “What did he tell you, Hannah?”

“Doss, he's seeing things.”

He tensed on the inside. Would have shoved a hand through his hair in agitation if he hadn't been wearing a hat and his ears weren't bound to freeze if he took it off. “What kind of things?”

“A boy.” She took hold of his arm, and her grip was strong for such a small woman. It did curious things to him, feeling her fingers on him, even through the combined thickness of his coat and shirt. “Doss, Tobias says he saw a boy in his room.”

Doss looked around. There was nothing but bleak, frozen land for miles around. “That's impossible,” he said.

“You've got to talk to him.”

“Oh, I'll talk to him, all right.” Doss started for the house, so fixed on getting to Tobias that he forgot all about keeping Hannah sheltered from the wind. She had to lift her skirts to keep pace with him.

Present Day

“Tell me about the boy you saw in your room,” Sierra said, when they'd eaten their fill of fried chicken, macaroni salad, mashed potatoes with gravy, and corn on the cob.

Liam's gaze was clear as he regarded her from his side of the long table. “He's a ghost,” he replied, and waited, visibly expecting the statement to be refuted.

“Maybe an imaginary playmate?” Sierra ventured. Liam was a lonely little boy; their lifestyle had seen to that. After her father had died, drunk himself to death in a back-street cantina in San Miguel, the two of them had wandered like gypsies. San Diego. North Carolina, Georgia, and finally Florida.

“There's nothing imaginary about him,” Liam said staunchly. “He wears funny clothes, like those kids on those old-time shows on TV. He's a
ghost,
Mom. Face it.”

“Liam—”

“You never believe anything I tell you!”

“I believe
everything
you tell me,” Sierra insisted evenly. “But you've got to admit, this is a stretch.” Again she thought of the teapot. Again she pushed the recollection aside.

“I never lie, Mom.”

She moved to pat his hand, but he pulled back. The set of his jaw was stubborn, and his gaze drilled into her, full of challenge. She tried again. “I know you don't lie, Liam. But you're in a strange new place and you miss your friends and—”

“And you won't even let me see if they sent me e-mails!” he cried.

Sierra sighed, rested her elbows on the tabletop and rubbed her temples with the fingertips of both hands. “Okay,” she relented. “You can log on to the Internet. Just be careful, because that computer is expensive, and we can't afford to replace it.”

Suddenly Liam's face was alight. “I won't break it,” he promised, with exuberance.

Sierra wondered if he'd just scammed her, if the whole boy-in-the-bedroom thing was a trick to get what he wanted.

In the next instant she was ashamed. Liam was direct to a fault. He
believed
he'd seen another child in his empty bedroom. She'd call his new doctor in Flagstaff in the morning, talk to the woman, see what a qualified professional made of the whole thing. She offered a silent prayer that her car would start, too, because the doctor was going to want to see Liam, pronto.

Meanwhile, Liam got to his feet and scrambled out of the room.

Sierra cleared away the supper mess, then followed him, as casually as she could, to the room at the front of the house.

He was already online.

“Just what I thought!” he crowed. “My mailbox is
bulging
.”

The TV was still on, a narrator dolefully describing the effects of a second ice age, due any minute. Run for the hills. Sierra shut it off.

“Hey,” Liam objected. “I was listening to that.”

Sierra approached the computer. “You're only seven,” she said. “You shouldn't be worrying about the fate of the planet.”

“Somebody's got to,” Liam replied, without looking at her. “
Your
generation is doing a lousy job.” He was staring, as if mesmerized, into the computer screen. Its bluish-gray light flickered on the lenses of his glasses, making his eyes disappear. “Look! The whole Geek Group wrote to me!”

“I asked you not to—”

“Okay,” Liam sighed, without looking at her. “The brilliant children in the gifted program are engaging in communication.”

“That's better,” Sierra said, sparing a smile.

“You've got a few e-mails waiting yourself,” Liam announced. He was already replying to the cybermissives, his small fingers ranging deftly over the keyboard. He'd skipped the hunt-and-peck method entirely, as had all the other kids in his class. Using a computer came naturally to Liam, almost as if he'd been born knowing how, and she knew this was a common phenomenon, which gave her some comfort.

“I'll read them later,” Sierra answered. She didn't have that many friends, so most of her messages were probably sales pitches of the penis-enlargement variety. How had she gotten on that kind of list? It wasn't as if she visited porn sites or ordered battery-operated boyfriends online.

“They get to watch a real rocket launch!” Liam cried, without a trace of envy.
“Wow!”

“Wow indeed,” Sierra said, looking around the room. According to Meg, it had originally been a study. Old books lined the walls on sturdy shelves, and there was a natural rock fireplace, too, with a fire already laid.

Sierra found a match on the mantelpiece, struck it and lit the blaze.

A chime sounded from the computer.

“Aunt Meg just IM'd you,” Liam said.

Where had he gotten this “Aunt Meg” thing? He'd never even met the woman in person, let alone established a relationship with her. “‘IM'd'?” she asked.

“Instant Message,” Liam translated. “Guess you'd better check it out. Just make it quick, because I've still got a
pile
of mail to answer.”

Smiling again, Sierra took the chair Liam so reluctantly surrendered and read the message from Meg.

 

Travis tells me your car died. Use my Blazer. The keys are in the sugar bowl beside the teapot.

Sierra's pride kicked in. Thanks, she replied, at a fraction of Liam's typing speed, but I probably won't need it. My car is just…She paused. Her car was just what? Old? tired, she finished, inspired.

The Blazer won't run when I come back if somebody doesn't charge up the battery. It's been sitting too long, Meg responded quickly. She must have been as fast with a keyboard as Liam.

Is Travis going to report on everything I do? Sierra wrote. She made so many mistakes, she had to retype the message before hitting Send, and that galled her.

Yes, Meg wrote. Because I plan to nag every last detail out of him.