Sierra's Homecoming

by Linda Lael Miller

  Sierra sat, wooden, staring at the stark plea on the screen. Although Allie and Adam had been raised in relative poverty, both of them had done well in life. Adam had been a photojournalist for a major magazine; he and Sierra had met when he did a piece on San Miguel.

  Allie ran her own fund-raising firm, and her husband was a neurosurgeon. They had everything—except what they wanted most. Children.

  You can’t have Liam, Sierra cried, in the silence of her heart. He’s mine.

  She flexed her fingers, sighed, and hit Reply. Allie was a good person, just as Adam had been, for all that he’d told Sierra a lie that shook the foundations of the universe. Adam’s sister sincerely believed she and the doctor could do a better job of raising Liam than Sierra could, and maybe they were right. They had money. They had social status.

  Tears burned in Sierra’s eyes.

  Liam is well. We’re safe on the Triple M, and for the time being, we’re staying put.

  It was all she could bring herself to say.

  She hit Send and logged off the computer.

  The fire was still flourishing on the hearth. She got up, crossed the room, pushed the screen aside to jab at the burning wood with a poker. It only made the flames burn more vigorously.

  She kicked off her shoes, curled up in the big leather chair and pulled a knitted afghan around her to wait for the fire to die down.

  The old clock on the mantel tick-tocked, the sound loud and steady and almost hypnotic.

  Sierra yawned. Closed her eyes. Opened them again.

  She thought about turning the TV back on, just for the sound of human voices, but dismissed the idea. She was so tired, she was going to need all her energy just to go upstairs and tumble into bed. There was none to spare for fiddling with the television set.

  Again, she closed her eyes.

  Again, she opened them.

  She wondered if the lights were still on in Travis’s trailer.

  Closed her eyes.

  Was dragged down into a heavy, fitful sleep.

  She knew right away that she was dreaming, and yet it was so real.

  She heard the clock ticking.

  She felt the warmth of the fire.

  But she was standing in the ranch house kitchen, and it was different, in subtle ways, from the room she knew.

  She was different.

  Her eyes were shut, and yet she could see clearly.

  A bare light bulb dangled overhead, giving off a dim but determined glow.

  She looked down at herself, the dream-Sierra, and felt a wrench of surprise.

  She was wearing a long woolen skirt. Her hands were smaller—chapped and work worn—someone else’s hands.

  “I’m dreaming,” she insisted to herself, but it didn’t help.

  She stared around the kitchen. The teapot sat on the counter.

  “Now what’s that doing there?” asked this other Sierra. “I know I put it away. I know for sure I did.”

  Sierra struggled to wake up. It was too intense, this dream. She was in some other woman’s body, not her own. It was sinewy and strong, this body. She felt the heartbeat, the breath going in and out. Felt the weight of long hair, pinned to the back of her head in a loose chignon.

  “Wake up,” she said.

  But she couldn’t.

  She stood very still, staring at the teapot.

  Emotions stormed within her, a loneliness so wretched and sharp that she thought she’d burst from the inside and shatter. Longing for a man who’d gone away and was never coming home, an unspeakable sorrow. Love for a child, so profound that it might have been mourning.

  And something else. A forbidden wanting that had nothing to do with the man who’d left her.

  Sierra woke herself then, by force of will, only to find her face wet with another woman’s tears.

  She must have been asleep for a while, she realized. The flames on the hearth had become embers. The room was chilly.

  She shivered, tugged the afghan tighter around her, and got out of the chair. She went to the window, looked out. Travis’s trailer was dark.

  “It was just a dream,” she told herself out loud.

  So why was her heart breaking?

  She made her way into the kitchen, navigating the dark hallway as best she could, since she didn’t know where the light switches were. When she reached her destination, she walked to the middle of the room, where she’d stood in the dream, and suppressed an urge to reach up for the metal-beaded cord she knew wasn’t there.

  What she needed, she decided, was a good cup of tea.

  She found a switch beside the back door and flipped it.

  Reality returned in a comforting spill of light.

  She found an electric kettle, filled it at the sink and plugged it in to boil. Earlier she’d been too weary to get out of that chair in the study and turn on the TV. Now she knew it would be pointless to try to sleep.

  Might as well do this up right, she thought.

  She went to the china cabinet, got the teapot out, set it on the table. Added tea leaves and located a little strainer in one of the drawers. The kettle boiled.

  She was sitting quietly, sipping tea and watching fat snowflakes drift past the porch light outside the back door, when Liam came down the back stairway in his pajamas. Blinking, he rubbed his eyes.

  “Is it morning?” he asked.

  “No,” Sierra said gently. “Go back to bed.”

  “Can I have some tea?”

  “No, again,” Sierra answered, but she didn’t protest when Liam took a seat on the bench, close to her chair. “But if there’s cocoa, I’ll make you some.”

  “There is,” Liam said. He looked incredibly young, and so very vulnerable, without his glasses. “I saw it in the pantry. It’s the instant kind.”

  With a smile, Sierra got out of the chair, walked into the pantry and brought out the cocoa, along with a bag of semihard marshmallows. Thanks to Travis’s preparations for their arrival, there was milk in the refrigerator and, using the microwave, she had Liam’s hot chocolate ready in no time.

  “I like it here,” he told her. “It’s better than any place we’ve ever lived.”

  Sierra’s heart squeezed. “You really think so? Why?”

  Liam took a sip of hot chocolate and acquired a liquid mustache. One small shoulder rose and fell in a characteristic shrug. “It feels like a real home,” he said. “Lots of people have lived here. And they were all McKettricks, like us.”

  Sierra was stung, but she hid it behind another smile. “Wherever we live,” she said carefully, “is a real home, because we’re together.”

  Liam’s expression was benignly skeptical, even tolerant. “We never had so much room before. We never had a barn with horses in it. And we never had ghosts.” He whispered the last word, and gave a little shiver of pure joy.

  Sierra was looking for a way to approach the ghost subject again when the faint, delicate sound of piano music reached her ears.

  Chapter Five

  “Do you hear that?” she asked Liam.

  His brow furrowed as he shifted on the bench and took another sip of his cocoa. “Hear what?”

  The tune continued, flowing softly, forlornly, from the front room.

  “Nothing,” Sierra lied.

  Liam peered at her, perplexed and suspicious.

  “Finish your chocolate,” she prompted. “It’s late.”

  The music stopped, and she felt relief and a paradoxical sorrow, reminiscent of the all-too-vivid dream she’d had earlier while dozing in the big chair in the study.

  “What was it, Mom?” Liam pressed.

  “I thought I heard a piano,” she admitted, because she knew her son wouldn’t let the subject drop until she told him the truth.

  Liam smiled, pleased. “This house is so cool,” he said. “I told the Geek—the kids—that it’s haunted. Aunt Allie, too.”

  Sierra, in the process of lifting her cup to her mouth, set it down again, shakily. “When did yo
u talk to Allie?” she asked.

  “She sent me an e-mail,” he replied, “and I answered.”

  “Great,” Sierra said.

  “Would my dad really want me to grow up in San Diego?” Liam asked seriously. The idea had, of course, come from Allie. While Sierra wasn’t without sympathy for the woman, she felt violated. Allie had no business trying to entice Liam behind her back.

  “Your dad would want you to grow up with me,” Sierra said firmly, and she knew that was true, for all that Adam had betrayed her.

  “Aunt Allie says my cousins would like me,” Liam confided.

  Liam’s “cousins” were actually half sisters, but Sierra wasn’t ready to spring that on him, and she hoped Allie wouldn’t do it, either. Although Adam had told Sierra he was divorced when they met, and she’d fallen immediately and helplessly in love with him, she’d learned six months later, when she was carrying his child, that he was still living with his wife when he wasn’t on the road. It had been Allie, earnest, meddling Allie, who traveled to San Miguel, found Sierra and told her the truth.

  Sierra would never forget the family photos Allie showed her that day—snapshots of Adam with his arm around his smiling wife, Dee. The two little girls in matching dresses posed with them, their eyes wide with innocence and trust.

  “Forget him, kiddo,” Hank had said airily, when Sierra went to him, in tears, with the whole shameful story. “It ain’t gonna fly.”

  She’d written Adam immediately, but her letter came back, tattered from forwarding, and no one answered at any of the telephone numbers he’d given her.

  She’d given birth to Liam eight weeks later, at home, attended by Hank’s long-time mistress, Magdalena. Three days after that, Hank brought her an American newspaper, tossed it into her lap without a word.

  She’d paged through it slowly, possessed of a quiet, escalating dread, and come across the account of Adam Douglas’s death on page four. He’d been shot to death, according to the article, on the outskirts of Caracas, after infiltrating a drug cartel to take pictures for an exposé he’d been writing.

  “Mom?” Liam snapped his fingers under Sierra’s nose. “Are you hearing the music again?”

  Sierra blinked. Shook her head.

  “Do you think my cousins would like me?”

  She reached out, her hand trembling only slightly, and ruffled his hair. “I think anybody would like you,” she said. When he was older, she would tell him about Adam’s other family, but it was still too soon. She took his empty cup, carried it to the sink. “Now, go upstairs, brush your teeth again and hit the sack.”

  “Aren’t you going to bed?” Liam asked practically.

  Sierra sighed. “Yes,” she said, resigned. She didn’t think she’d sleep, but she knew Liam would wonder if she stayed up all night, prowling around the house. “You go ahead. I’m just going to make sure the front door is locked.”

  Liam nodded and obeyed without protest.

  Sierra considered marking the occasion on the calendar.

  She went straight to the front room, and the piano, the moment Liam had gone upstairs. The keyboard cover was down, the bench neatly in place. She switched on a lamp and inspected the smooth, highly polished wood for fingerprints. Nothing.

  She touched the cover, and her fingers left distinct smudges.

  No one had touched the piano that night, unless they’d been wearing gloves.

  Frowning, Sierra checked the lock on the front door.

  Fastened.

  She inspected the windows—all locked—and even the floor. It was snowing hard, and anybody who’d come in out of that storm would have left some trace, no matter how careful they were—a puddle somewhere, a bit of mud.

  Again, there was nothing.

  Finally she went upstairs, found a nightgown, bathed and got ready for bed. Since Travis had left her bags in the room adjoining Liam’s, she opened the connecting door a crack and crawled between sheets worn smooth by time.

  She was asleep in an instant.

  1919

  Hannah closed the cover over the piano keys, stacked the sheet music neatly and got to her feet. She’d played as softly as she could, pouring her sadness and her yearning into the music, and when she returned to the upstairs corridor, she saw light under Doss’s door.

  She paused, wondering what he’d do if she went in, took off her clothes and crawled into bed beside him.

  Not that she would, of course, because she’d loved her husband and it wouldn’t be fitting, but there were times when her very soul ached within her, she wanted so badly to be touched and held, and this was one of them.

  She swallowed, mortified by her own wanton thoughts.

  Doss would send her away angrily.

  He’d remind her that she was his brother’s widow—if he ever spoke to her again at all.

  For all that, she took a single, silent step toward the door.

  “Ma?”

  Tobias spoke from behind her. She hadn’t heard him get out of bed, come to the threshold of his room.

  Thanking heaven she was still fully dressed, she turned to face him.

  “What is it?” she asked gently. “Did you have another bad dream?”

  Tobias shook his head. His gaze slipped past Hannah to Doss’s door, then back to her face, solemn and worried. “I wish I had a pa,” he said.

  Hannah’s heart seized. She approached, pulled the boy close, and he allowed it. During the day, he would have balked. “So do I,” she replied, bending to kiss the top of his head. “I wish your pa was here. Wish it so much it hurts.”

  Tobias pulled back, looked up at her. “But Pa’s dead,” he said. “Maybe you and Doss could get hitched. Then he wouldn’t be my uncle any more, would he? He’d be my pa.”

  “Tobias,” Hannah said very softly, praying Doss hadn’t overheard somehow. “That wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not?” Tobias asked.

  She crouched, looked up into her son’s face. One day, he’d be handsome and square-jawed, like the rest of the McKettrick men. For now he was still a little boy, his features childishly innocent. “I was your pa’s wife. I’ll love him for the rest of my days.”

  “That might be a long time,” Tobias said, with a measure of dubiousness, as well as hope. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t want Doss to marry somebody else, Ma,” he said. “All the women in Indian Rock are sweet on him, and one of these days he might take a notion to get himself a wife.”

  “Tobias,” Hannah reasoned, “you must put this foolishness out of your head. If Doss chooses to take a bride, that’s certainly his right. But it won’t be me he marries. It’s too hard to explain right now, but Doss was your pa’s brother. I couldn’t—”

  “You’d marry some man in Montana, though, wouldn’t you?” Tobias demanded, suddenly angry, and this time, he made no effort to keep his voice down. “Some stranger who wears a suit to work!”

  “Tobias!”

  “I won’t go to Montana, do you hear me? I won’t leave the Triple M unless Doss goes, too!”

  Hannah reddened with embarrassment and anger—Doss had surely heard—and rose to her full height. “Tobias McKettrick,” she said sternly, “you go to bed this instant, and don’t you ever talk to me like that again!”

  Tobias’s chin jutted out, in the McKettrick way, and his eyes flashed. “You go anyplace you want to,” he told her, turning on one bare heel to flee into his room, “but I’m not going with you!” With that, he slammed the door in her face.

  Hannah took a step toward it, even reached for the knob.

  But in the end she couldn’t face her son.

  “Hannah.”

  Doss.

  She stiffened but didn’t turn. Doss would see too much if she did. Guess too much.

  He caught hold of her arm, brought her gently around.

  She whispered his name, despondent.

  He took her hand, led her to the opposite end of the hall, opened the last door on the right, the on
e where she kept her sewing machine.

  “What are you—?”

  Doss stepped over the threshold first, turned, and drew her in behind him. Reached around her to shut the door.

  She leaned against the panel. It was hard at her back.

  “Doss,” she said.

  He cupped her face in his hands, bent his head, and kissed her, full on the mouth.

  A sweet shock went through her. She knew she ought to break away, knew he wouldn’t force himself on her if she uttered the slightest protest, but she couldn’t say a word. Her body came alive as he pressed himself against her. His weight was hard and warm and blessedly real.

  Doss reached behind her head, pulled the pins from her hair, let it fall around her shoulders, to her waist. He groaned, buried his face in it, burrowed through to take her earlobe between his lips and nibble on it.

  Hannah gasped with guilty pleasure. Her knees went weak, and Doss held her upright with the lower part of his body.

  She moaned softly.

  “We can’t,” she whispered.

  “We’d damn well better,” Doss answered, “before we both go crazy.”

  “What if Tobias…?”

  Doss leaned back, opened the buttons on her bodice, put his hands inside, under her camisole, to take the weight of her breasts. Chafed the nipples lightly with the sides of his thumbs.

  “He won’t hear,” he said.

  He bent to find a nipple, take it into his mouth. Suckled in the same nibbling, teasing way he’d tasted her earlobe.

  Hannah plunged her fingers into his hair, groaned and tilted her head back, already surrendering. Already lost.

  She tried to bring Gabe’s face to her mind, hoping the image would give her the strength to stop—stop—before it was too late, but it wouldn’t come.

  Doss made free with her breasts, tonguing them until she was in a frenzy.

  She sank against the door, barely able to breathe.

  And then he knelt.

  Hannah trembled. Even though the room was cold, perspiration broke out all over her body. She made a slight whimpering sound when Doss lifted her skirts, went under them and pulled down her drawers.