Sierra's Homecoming

by Linda Lael Miller

  Sierra’s mind spun. She squeezed the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger. The piano notes she’d heard the night before tinkled sadly in her memory. “You’re not saying you actually believe—”

  “I’m saying I’ve had experiences,” Eve told her. “I’ve never seen anyone. Just had a strong sense of someone else being present. And, of course, there was the famous disappearing teapot.”

  Sierra sank against the back of the chair, both relieved and confounded. Had she told Meg about the teapot? She couldn’t recall. Perhaps Travis had mentioned it—called Eve to report that her daughter was a little loony?

  “Sierra?” Eve asked.

  “I’m still here.”

  “I would get the teapot out,” Eve recounted, “and leave the room to do something else. When I came back, it was in the china cabinet again. The same thing used to happen to my mother, and my grandmother, too. They thought it was Lorelei.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Who knows?” Eve asked, patently unconcerned. “Life is mysterious.”

  It certainly is, Sierra thought. Little girls get separated from their mothers, and no one even comes looking for them.

  “I’d like to come and see you,” Eve went on, “as soon as the weather clears. Would that be all right, Sierra? If I spent a few days at the ranch? So we could talk in person?”

  Sierra’s heart rose into her throat and swelled there. “It’s your house,” she said, but she wanted to throw down the phone, snatch Liam, jump into the car and speed away before she had to face this woman.

  “I won’t come if you’re not ready,” Eve said gently.

  I may never be ready, Sierra thought. “I guess I am,” she murmured.

  “Good,” Eve replied. “Then I’ll be there as soon as the jet can land. Barring another snowstorm, that should be tomorrow or the next day.”

  The jet? “Should we pick you up somewhere?”

  “I’ll have a car meet me,” Eve said. “Do you need anything, Sierra?”

  I could have used a mother when I was growing up. And when I had Liam and Dad acted as though nothing had changed—well, you would have come in handy then, too, Mom. “I’m fine,” she answered.

  “I’ll call again before I leave here,” Eve promised. Then, after another tentative pause and a brief goodbye, she rang off.

  Sierra sat a long time in that chair, still holding the phone, and might not have moved at all if Liam hadn’t come to tell her breakfast was on the table.

  1919

  It was a cold, seemingly endless ride to the Jessup place, and hard going all the way. More than once Doss glanced anxiously at his nephew, bundled to his eyeballs and jostling patiently alongside Doss’s mount on the mule, and wished he’d listened to Hannah and left the boy at home.

  More than once, he attempted to broach the subject that was uppermost in his mind—he’d been up half the night wrestling with it—but he couldn’t seem to get a proper handle on the matter at all.

  I mean to marry your ma.

  That was the straightforward truth, a simple thing to say.

  But Tobias was bound to ask why. Maybe he’d even raise an objection. He’d loved his pa, and he might just put his old uncle Doss right square in his place.

  “You ever think about livin’ in town?” Tobias asked, catching him by surprise.

  Doss took a moment to change directions in his mind. “Sometimes,” he answered, when he was sure it was what he really meant. “Especially in the wintertime.”

  “It’s no warmer there than it is here,” Tobias reasoned. Whatever he was getting at, it wasn’t coming through in his tone or his manner.

  “No,” Doss agreed. “But there are other folks around. A man could get his mail at the post office every day, instead of waiting a week for it to come by wagon, and take a meal in a restaurant now and again. And I’ll admit that library is an enticement, small as it is.” He thought fondly of the books lining the study walls back at the ranch house. He’d read all of them, at one time or another, and most several times. He’d borrowed from his uncle Kade’s collection, and his ma sent him a regular supply from Texas. Just the same, he couldn’t get enough of the damn things.

  “Ma’s been talking about heading back to Montana,” Tobias blurted, but he didn’t look at Doss when he spoke. Just kept his eyes on the close-clipped mane of that old mule. “If she tries to make me go, I’ll run away.”

  Doss swallowed. He knew Hannah thought about moving in with the homefolks, of course, but hearing it said out loud made him feel as if he’d not only been thrown from his horse, but stomped on, too. “Where would you go?” he asked, when he thought he could get the words out easy. He wasn’t entirely successful. “If you ran off, I mean?”

  Tobias turned in the saddle to look him full in the face. “I’d hide up in the hills somewhere,” he said, with the conviction of innocence. “Maybe that canyon where Kade and Mandy faced down those outlaws.”

  Doss suppressed a smile. He’d grown up on that story himself, and to this day, he wondered how much of it was fact and how much was legend. Mandy was a sharpshooter, and she’d given Annie Oakley a run for her money, in her time. Kade had been the town marshal, with an office in Indian Rock back then, so maybe it had happened just the way his pa and uncles related it.

  “Mighty cold up there,” he told the boy mildly. “Just a cave for shelter, and where would you get food?”

  Tobias’s shoulders slumped a little, under all that wool Hannah had swaddled him in. If the kid took a spill from the mule, he’d probably bounce. “I could hunt,” he said. “Pa taught me how to shoot.”

  “McKettricks,” Doss replied, “don’t run away.”

  Tobias scowled at him. “They don’t live in Missoula, either.”

  Doss chuckled, in spite of the heavy feeling that had settled over his heart after he and Hannah had made love and stayed there ever since. Gabe was dead, but it still felt as if he’d betrayed him. “They live in all sorts of places,” Doss said. “You know that.”

  “I won’t go, anyhow,” Tobias said.

  Doss cleared his throat. “Maybe you won’t have to.”

  That got the boy’s full attention. His eyes were full of questions.

  “I wonder what you’d say if I married your ma.”

  Tobias looked as though he’d swallowed a lantern with the wick burning. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot!”

  Too bad Hannah wasn’t as keen on the prospect as her son. “I thought you might not care for the idea,” Doss confessed. “My being your pa’s brother and all.”

  “Pa would be glad,” Tobias said. “I know he would.”

  Secretly, Doss knew it, too. Gabe had been a practical man, and he’d have wanted all of them to get on with their lives.

  Doss’s eyes smarted something fierce, all of a sudden, and he had to pull his hat brim down. Look away for a few moments.

  Take care of Hannah and my boy, Gabe had said. Promise me, Doss.

  “Did Ma say she’d hitch up with you?” Tobias asked, frowning so that his face crinkled comically. “Last night I said she ought to, and she said it wouldn’t be right.”

  Doss stood in the stirrups to stretch his legs. “Things can change,” he said cautiously. “Even in a night.”

  “Do you love my ma?”

  It was a hard question to answer, at least aloud. He’d loved Hannah from the day Gabe had brought her home as his bride. Loved her fiercely, hopelessly and honorably, from a proper distance. Gabe had guessed it right away, though. Waited until the two of them were alone in the barn, slapped Doss on the shoulder and said, Don’t you be ashamed, little brother. It’s easy to love my Hannah.

  “Of course I do,” Doss said. “She’s family.”

  Tobias made a face. “I don’t mean like that.”

  Doss’s belly tightened. The boy was only eight, and he couldn’t possibly know what had gone on last night in the spare room.

  Could he?
>
  “How do you mean, then?”

  “Pa used to kiss Ma all the time. He used to swat her on the bustle, too, when he thought nobody was looking. It always made her laugh, and stand real close to him, with her arms around his neck.”

  Doss might have gripped the saddle horn with both hands, because of the pain, if he’d been riding alone. It wasn’t the reminder of how much Hannah and Gabe had loved each other that seared him, though. It was the loss of his brother, the way of things then, and it all being over for good.

  “I’ll treat your mother right, Tobias,” he said, after more hat-brim pulling and more looking away.

  “You sound pretty sure she’ll say yes,” the boy commented.

  “She already has,” Doss replied.

  Present Day

  More snow began to fall at mid-morning and, worried that the power would go off again, and stay off this time, Sierra gathered her and Liam’s dirty laundry and threw a load into the washing machine. She’d telephoned Liam’s doctor in Flagstaff, from the study, while he and Travis were filling the dishwasher, but she hadn’t mentioned the hallucinations. She’d heard the piano music herself, after all, and then Eve had made such experiences seem almost normal.

  Sierra didn’t know precisely what was happening, and she was still unsettled by Liam’s claims of seeing a boy in old-time clothes, but she wasn’t ready to bring up the subject with an outsider, whether that outsider had a medical degree or not.

  Dr. O’Meara had reviewed Liam’s records, since they’d been expressed to her from the clinic in Florida, and she wanted to make sure he had an inhaler on hand. She’d promised to call in a prescription to the pharmacy in Indian Rock, and they’d made an appointment for the following Monday afternoon.

  Now Liam was in the study, watching TV, and Travis was outside splitting wood for the stove and the fireplaces. If the power went off again, she’d need firewood for cooking. The generator kept the furnace running, along with a few of the lights, but it burned a lot of gas and there was always the possibility that it would break down or freeze up.

  Travis came in with an armload just as she was starting to prepare lunch.

  Watching him, Sierra thought about what Eve had said on the phone earlier. Travis’s younger brother had died horribly, and very recently. He’d left his job, Travis had, and come to the ranch to live in a trailer and look after horses.

  He didn’t look like a man carrying a burden, but appearances were deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Sierra did.

  “What kind of work did you do, before you came here?” she asked, and then wished she hadn’t brought the subject up at all. Travis’s face closed instantly, and his eyes went blank.

  “Nothing special,” he said.

  She nodded. “I was a cocktail waitress,” she told him, because she felt she ought to offer him something after asking what was evidently an intrusive question.

  Standing there, beside the antique cookstove and the wood box, in his leather coat and cowboy hat, Travis looked as though he’d stepped through a time warp, out of an earlier century.

  “I know,” he said. “Meg told me.”

  “Of course she did.” Sierra poured canned soup into a saucepan, stirred it industriously and blushed.

  Travis didn’t say anything more for a long time. Then, “I was a lawyer for McKettrickCo,” he told her.

  Sierra stole a sidelong glance at him. He looked tense, standing there holding his hat in one hand. “Impressive,” she said.

  “Not so much,” he countered. “It’s a tradition in my family, being a lawyer, I mean. At least, with everyone but my brother, Brody. He became a meth addict instead, and blew himself to kingdom-come brewing up a batch. Go figure.”

  Sierra turned to face Travis. Noticed that his jaw was hard and his eyes even harder. He was angry, in pain, or both.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Travis replied tersely. “Me, too.”

  He started for the door.

  “Stay for lunch?” Sierra asked.

  “Another time,” he answered, and then he was gone.

  1919

  It was near sunset when Doss and Tobias rode in from the Jessup place, and by then Hannah was fit to be tied. She’d paced for most of the afternoon, after it started to snow again, fretting over all the things that could go wrong along the way.

  The horse or the mule could have gone lame or fallen through the ice crossing the creek.

  There could have been an avalanche. Just last year, a whole mountainside of snow had come crashing down on to the roof of a cabin and crushed it to the ground, with a family inside.

  Wolves prowled the countryside, too, bold with the desperation of their hunger. They killed cattle and sometimes people.

  Doss hadn’t even taken his rifle.

  When Hannah heard the horses, she ran to the window, wiped the fog from the glass with her apron hem. She watched as they dismounted and led their mounts into the barn.

  She’d baked pies that day to keep from going crazy, and the kitchen was redolent with the aroma. She smoothed her skirts, patted her hair and turned away so she wouldn’t be caught looking if Doss or Tobias happened to glance toward the house.

  Almost an hour passed before they came inside—they’d done the barn chores—and Hannah had the table set, the lamps lighted and the coffee made. She wanted to fuss over Tobias, check his ears and fingers for frostbite and his forehead for fever, but she wouldn’t let herself do it.

  Doss wasn’t deceived by her smiling restraint, she could see that, but Tobias looked downright relieved, as though he’d expected her to pounce the minute he came through the door.

  “How did you find Widow Jessup?” she asked.

  “She was right where we left her last time,” Doss said with a slight grin.

  Hannah gave him a look.

  “She was fresh out of firewood,” Tobias expounded importantly, unwrapping himself, layer by layer, until he stood in just his trousers and shirt, with melted snow pooling around his feet. “It’s a good thing we went down there. She’d have froze for sure.”

  Doss looked tired, but his eyes twinkled. “For sure,” he confirmed. “She got Tobias here by the ears and kissed him all over his face, she was so grateful that he’d saved her.”

  Tobias let out a yelp of mortification and took a swing at Doss, who sidestepped him easily.

  “Stop your roughhousing and wash up for supper,” Hannah said, but it did her heart good to see it. Gabe used to come in from the barn, toss Tobias over one shoulder and carry him around the kitchen like a sack of grain. The boy had howled with laughter and pummeled Gabe’s chest with his small fists in mock resistance. She’d missed the ordinary things like that more than anything except being held in Gabe’s arms.

  She served chicken and dumplings, in her best Blue Willow dishes, with apple pie for dessert.

  Tobias ate with a fresh-air, long-ride appetite and nearly fell asleep in his chair once his stomach was filled.

  Doss got up, hoisted him into his arms and carried him, head bobbing, toward the stairs.

  Hannah’s throat went raw, watching them go.

  She poured a second cup of coffee for Doss, had it waiting when he came back a few minutes later.

  “Did you put Tobias in his nightshirt and cover him with the spare quilt?” she asked, when Doss appeared at the bottom of the steps. “He mustn’t take a chill—”

  “I took off his shoes and threw him in like he was,” Doss interrupted. That twinkle was still in his eyes, but there was a certain wariness there, too. “I made sure he was warm, so stop fretting.”

  Hannah had put the dishes in a basin of hot water to soak, and she lingered at the table, sipping tea brewed in Lorelei’s pot.

  Doss sat down in his father’s chair, cupped his hands around his own mug of steaming coffee. “I spoke t Tobias about our getting married,” he said bluntly. “And he’s in favor of it.”

  Heat pounded in Hannah’s cheeks, s
pawned by indignation and something else that she didn’t dare think about. “Doss McKettrick,” she whispered in reproach, “you shouldn’t have done that. I’m his mother and it was my place to—”

  “It’s done, Hannah,” Doss said. “Let it go at that.”

  Hannah huffed out a breath. “Don’t you tell me what’s done and ought to be let go,” she protested. “I won’t take orders from you now or after we’re married.”

  He grinned. “Maybe you won’t,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t give them.”

  She laughed, surprising herself so much that she slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. That gesture, in turn, brought back recollections of the night before, when Doss had made love to her, and she’d wanted to cry out with the pleasure of it.

  She blushed so hard her face burned, and this time it was Doss who laughed.

  “I figure we’re in for another blizzard,” he said. “Might be spring before we can get to town and stand up in front of a preacher. I hope you’re not looking like a watermelon smuggler before then.”

  Hannah opened her mouth, closed it again.

  Doss’s eyes danced as he took another sip of his coffee.

  “That was an insufferably forward thing to say!” Hannah accused.

  “You’re a fine one to talk about being forward,” Doss observed, and repeated back something she’d said at that very height of her passion.

  “That’s enough, Mr. McKettrick.”

  Doss set his cup down, pushed back his chair and stood. “I’m going out to the barn to look in on the stock again. Maybe you ought to come along. Make the job go faster, if you lent a hand.”

  Hannah squirmed on the bench.

  Doss crossed the room, took his coat and hat down from the pegs by the door. “Way out there, a person could holler if they wanted to. Be nobody to hear.”

  Hannah did some more squirming.

  “Fresh hay to lie in, too,” Doss went on. “Nice and soft, and if a man were to spread a couple of horse blankets over it—”

  Heat surged through Hannah, brought her to an aching simmer. She sputtered something and waved him away.

  Doss chuckled, opened the door and went out, whistling merrily under his breath.