Sierra's Homecoming

by Linda Lael Miller

  Hannah waited. If Doss McKettrick thought he was going to have his way with her—in the barn, of all places—well, he was just…

  She got up, went to the stove and banked the fire with a poker.

  He was just right, that was what he was.

  She chose her biggest shawl, wrapped herself in it, and hurried after him.

  Present Day

  As soon as Sierra put supper on the table that night, the power went off again. While she scrambled for candles, Liam rushed to the nearest window.

  “Travis’s trailer’s dark,” he said. “He’ll get hypothermia out there.”

  Sierra sighed. “I’ll bet he comes back to see to the furnace, just like he did this morning. We’ll ask him to have supper with us.”

  “I see him!” Liam cried gleefully. “He’s coming out of the barn, with a lantern!” He raced for the door, and before Sierra could stop him, he was outside, with no coat on, galloping through the deepening snow and shouting Travis’s name.

  Sierra pulled on her own coat, grabbed Liam’s and hurried after him.

  Travis was already herding him toward the house.

  “Mom made meat loaf, and she says you can have some,” Liam was saying, as he tramped breathlessly along.

  Sierra wrapped his coat around him, and would have scolded him, if her gaze hadn’t collided unexpectedly with Travis’s.

  Travis shook his head.

  She swallowed all that she’d been about to say and hustled her son into the house.

  “I’ll start the generator,” Travis said.

  Sierra nodded hastily and shut the door.

  “Liam McKettrick,” she burst out, “what were you thinking, going out in that cold without a coat?”

  In the candlelight, she saw Liam’s lower lip wobble. “Travis said it isn’t the cowboy way. He was about to put his coat on me when you came.”

  “What isn’t the ‘cowboy way’?” she asked, chafing his icy hands between hers and praying he wouldn’t have an asthma attack or come down with pneumonia.

  “Not wearing a coat,” Liam replied, downcast. “A cowboy is always prepared for any kind of weather, and he never rushes off half-cocked, without his gear.”

  Sierra relaxed a little, stifled a smile. “Travis is right,” she said.

  Liam brightened. “Do cowboys eat meat loaf?”

  “I’m pretty sure they do,” Sierra answered.

  The furnace came on, and she silently blessed Travis Reid for being there.

  He let himself into the kitchen a few minutes later. By then Sierra had set another place at the table and lit several more candles. They all sat down at the same time, and there was something so natural about their gathering that way that Sierra’s throat caught.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” she said, feeling awkward.

  “I’m starved,” Travis replied.

  “Cowboys eat meat loaf, right?” Liam inquired.

  Travis grinned. “This one does,” he said.

  “This one does, too,” Liam announced.

  Sierra laughed, but tears came to her eyes at the same time. She was glad of the relative darkness, hoping no one would notice.

  “Once,” Liam said, scooping a helping of meat loaf on to his plate, his gaze adoring as he focused on Travis, “I saw this show on the Science Channel. They found a cave man, in a block of ice. He was, like fourteen thousand years old! I betcha they could take some of his DNA and clone him if they wanted to.” He stopped for a quick breath. “And he was all blue, too. That’s what you’ll look like, if you sleep in that trailer tonight.”

  “You’re not a kid,” Travis teased. “You’re a forty-year-old wearing a pygmy suit.”

  “I’m really smart,” Liam went on. “So you ought to listen to me.”

  Travis looked at Sierra, and their eyes caught, with an almost audible click and held.

  “The generator’s low on gas,” Travis said. “So we have two choices. We can get in my truck and hope there are some empty motel rooms at the Lamplight Inn, or we can build up the fire in that cookstove and camp out in the kitchen.”

  Liam had no trouble at all making the choice. “Camp out!” he whooped, waving his fork in the air. “Camp out!”

  “You can’t be serious,” Sierra said to Travis.

  “Oh, I’m serious, all right,” he answered.

  “Lamplight Inn,” Sierra voted.

  “Roads are bad,” Travis replied. “Real bad.”

  “Once on TV, I saw a thing about these people who froze to death right in their car,” Liam put in.

  “Be quiet,” Sierra told him.

  “Happens all the time,” Travis said.

  Which was how the three of them ended up bundled in sleeping bags, with couch and chair cushions for a makeshift mattress, lying side by side within the warm radius of the wood-burning stove.

  Chapter Seven

  1919

  Hannah and Doss returned separately from the barn, by tacit agreement. Hannah, weak-kneed with residual pleasure and reeling with guilt, pumped water into a bucket to pour into the near-empty reservoir on the cookstove, then filled the two biggest kettles she had and set them on the stove to heat. She was adding wood to the fire when she heard Doss come in.

  She blushed furiously, unable to meet his gaze, though she could feel it burning into her flesh, right through the clothes he’d sweet-talked her out of just an hour before, laying her down in the soft, surprisingly warm hay in an empty stall, kissing and caressing and nibbling at her until she’d begged him to take her.

  Begged him.

  She’d carried on something awful while he was at it, too.

  “Look at me, Hannah,” he said.

  She glared at Doss, marched past him into the pantry and dragged out the big wash tub stored there under a high shelf. She set it in front of the stove with an eloquent clang.

  “Hannah,” Doss repeated.

  “Go upstairs,” she told him, flustered. “Leave me to my bath.”

  “You can’t wash away what we did,” he said.

  She whirled on him that time, hands on her hips, fiery with temper. “Get out,” she ordered, keeping her voice down in case Tobias was still awake or even listening at the top of the stairs. “I need my privacy.”

  Doss raised both hands to shoulder height, palms out, but his words were juxtaposed to the gesture. “If we’re going to talk about what you need, Hannah, it’s not a bath. It’s a lot more of what we just did in the barn.”

  “Tobias might hear you!” Hannah whispered, outraged. If the broom hadn’t been on the back porch, she’d have grabbed it up and whacked him silly with it.

  “He wouldn’t know what we were talking about even if he did,” Doss argued mildly, lowering his hands. He approached, plucked a piece of straw from Hannah’s hair and tickled her under the chin with it.

  She felt as though she’d been electrified, and slapped his hand away.

  He laughed, a low, masculine sound, leaned in and nibbled at her lower lip. “Good night, Hannah,” he said.

  A hot shiver of renewed need went through her. How could that be? He’d satisfied her that night, and the one before. Both times he’d taken her to heights she hadn’t even reached with Gabe.

  The difference was, she’d been Gabe’s wife, in the eyes of God and man, and she’d loved him. She not only wasn’t married to Doss, she didn’t love him. She just wanted him, that was all, and the realization galled her.

  “You’ve turned me into a hussy,” she said.

  Doss chuckled, shook his head. “If you say so, Hannah,” he answered, “it must be true.”

  With that, he kissed her forehead, turned and left the kitchen.

  She listened to the sound of his boot heels on the stairs, heard his progress along the second-floor hallway, even knew when he opened Tobias’s door to look in on the boy before retiring to his own room. Only when she’d heard his door close did Hannah let out her breath.

  When the water in the kettles was sca
lding hot, Hannah poured it into the tub, sneaked upstairs for a towel, a bar of soap and a nightgown. By the time she’d put out all the lanterns in the kitchen and stripped off her clothes, her bathwater had cooled to a temperature that made her sigh when she stepped into it.

  She soaked for a few minutes, and then scrubbed with a vengeance.

  It turned out that Doss had been right.

  She tried but she couldn’t wash away the things he’d made her feel.

  A tear slipped down her cheek as she dried herself off, then donned her nightgown. She dragged the tub to the back door and on to the step, drained it over one side and dashed back in, covered with gooseflesh from the chill.

  “I’m sorry, Gabe,” she said, very quietly, huddling by the stove. “I’m sorry.”

  Present Day

  Travis was building up the fire when Sierra opened her eyes the next morning. “Stay in your sleeping bag,” he told her. “It’s colder than a meat locker in here.”

  Liam, lying between them throughout the night, was still asleep, but his breathing was a shallow rattle. Sierra sat bolt-upright, watchful, holding her own breath. Not feeling the external chill at all, except as a vague biting sensation.

  Liam opened his eyes, blinked. “Mom,” he said. “I can’t—”

  Breathe, Sierra finished the sentence for him, replayed it in her mind.

  Mom, I can’t breathe.

  She bounded out of the sleeping bag, scrambled for her purse, which was lying on the counter and rummaged for Liam’s inhaler.

  He began to wheeze, and when Sierra turned to rush back to him, she saw a look of panic in his eyes.

  “Take it easy, Liam,” she said, as she handed him the inhaler.

  He grasped it in both hands, all too familiar with the routine, and pressed the tube to his mouth and nose.

  Travis watched grimly.

  Sierra dropped on to her knees next to her boy, put an arm loosely around his shoulders. Let it work, she prayed silently. Please let it work!

  Liam lowered the inhaler and stared apologetically up into Sierra’s eyes. He could barely get enough wind to speak. He was, in essence, choking. “It’s—I think it’s broken, Mom—”

  “I’ll warm up the truck,” Travis said, and banged out of the house.

  Desperate, Sierra took the inhaler, shook it and shoved it back into Liam’s hands. It wasn’t empty—she wouldn’t have taken a chance like that—but it must have been clogged or somehow defective. “Try again,” she urged, barely avoiding panic herself.

  Outside, Travis’s truck roared audibly to life. He gunned the motor a couple of times.

  Liam struggled to take in the medication, but the inhaler simply wasn’t working.

  Travis returned, picked Liam up in his arms, sleeping bag and all, and headed for the door again. Sierra, frightened as she was, had to hurry to catch up, snatching her coat from the peg and her purse from the counter on the way out.

  The snow had stopped, but there must have been two feet of it on the ground. Travis shifted the truck into four-wheel drive and the tires grabbed for purchase, finally caught.

  “Take it easy, buddy,” he told Liam, who was on Sierra’s lap, the seat belt fastened around both of them. “Take it real easy.”

  Liam nodded solemnly. He was drawing in shallow gasps of air now, but not enough. Not enough. His lips were turning blue.

  Sierra held him tight, but not too tight. Rested her chin on top of his head and prayed.

  The roads hadn’t been plowed—in fact, except for sloping drifts on either side, Sierra wouldn’t have known where they were. Still, the truck rolled over them as easily as if they were bare.

  What if we’d been alone, Liam and me? Sierra thought frantically. Her old station wagon, a snow-covered hulk in the driveway in front of the house, probably wouldn’t have started, and even if it had by some miracle, the chances were good that they’d have ended up in the ditch somewhere along the way to safety.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she heard Travis say, and she’d thought he was talking to Liam. When she glanced at him, though, she knew he’d meant the words for her.

  She kept her voice even. “Is there a hospital in Indian Rock?” She and Liam had passed through the town the day they arrived, but she didn’t remember seeing anything but houses, a diner or two, a drugstore, several bars and a gas station. She’d been too busy trying to follow the hand-drawn map Meg had scanned and sent to her by e-mail—the McKettricks’private cemetery was marked with an X, and the ranch house an uneven square with lines for a roof.

  “A clinic,” Travis said. He looked down at Liam again, then turned his gaze back to the road. The set of his jaw was hard, and he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his coat and handed it to Sierra.

  She dialed 411 and asked to be connected.

  When a voice answered, Sierra explained the situation as calmly as she could, keeping it low-key for Liam’s sake. They’d been through at least a dozen similar episodes during his short life, and it never got easier. Each time, Sierra was hysterical, though she didn’t dare let that show. Liam was taking his cues from her. If she lost it, he would, too, and the results could be disastrous.

  The clinic receptionist seemed blessedly unruffled. “We’ll be ready when you get here,” she said.

  Sierra thanked the woman and ended the call, set the phone on the seat.

  By the time they arrived at the town’s only medical facility, Liam was struggling to remain conscious. Travis pulled up in front, gave the horn a hard blast and was around to Sierra’s side with the door open before she managed to get the seat belt unbuckled.

  Two medical assistants, accompanied by a gray-haired doctor, met them with a gurney. Liam was whisked away. Sierra tried to follow, but Travis and one of the nurses stopped her.

  Her first instinct was to fight.

  “My son needs me!” She’d meant it for a scream, but it came out as more of a whimper.

  “We’ll need your name and that of the patient,” a clerk informed her, advancing with a clipboard. “And of course there’s the matter of insurance—”

  Travis glared the woman into retreat. “Her name,” he said, “is McKettrick.”

  “Oh,” the clerk said, and ducked behind her desk.

  Sierra needed something, anything, to do, or she was going to rip apart every room in that place until she found Liam, gathered him into her arms. “My purse,” she said. “I must have left it in the truck—”

  “I’ll get it,” Travis said, but first he steered her toward a chair in the waiting area and sat her down.

  Tears of frustration and stark terror filled her eyes. What was happening to Liam? Was he breathing? Were they forcing the hated tube down into his bronchial passage even at that moment?

  Travis cupped her face between his hands, for just a moment, and his palms felt cold and rough from ranch work.

  The sensation triggered something in Sierra, but she was too distraught to know what it was.

  “I’ll be right back,” he promised.

  And he was.

  Sierra snatched her bag from his hands, scrabbled through it to find her wallet. Found the insurance card Eve had sent by express the same day Sierra agreed to take the McKettrick name and spend a year on the Triple M, with Liam. She might have kissed that card, if Travis hadn’t been watching.

  The clerk nodded a little nervously when Sierra walked up to the desk and asked for the papers she needed to fill out.

  Patient’s Name. Well, that was easy enough. She scrawled Liam Bres—crossed out the last part, and wrote McKettrick instead.

  Address? She had to consult Travis on that one. Everybody in Indian Rock knew where the Triple M was, she was sure, but the people in the insurance company’s claims office might not.

  Occupation? Child.

  Damn it, Liam was a little boy, hardly more than a baby. Things like this shouldn’t happen to him.

  Sierra printed her own name, as guarantor. She bit her lip when as
ked about her job. Unemployed? She couldn’t write that.

  Travis, watching, took the clipboard and pen from her and inserted, Damn good mother.

  The tears came again.

  Travis got up, with the forms and the clipboard and the insurance card, inscribed with the magical name and carried them over to the waiting clerk.

  He was halfway back to Sierra when the doctor reappeared.

  “Hello, Travis,” he said, but his gaze was on Sierra’s face, and she couldn’t read it, for all the practice she’d had.

  “I’m Sierra McKettrick,” she said. The name still felt like a garment that didn’t quite fit, but if it would help Liam in any way, she would use it every chance she got. “My son—”

  “He’ll be fine,” the doctor said kindly. His eyes were a faded blue, his features craggy and weathered. “Just the same, I think we ought to send him up to Flagstaff to the hospital, at least overnight. For observation, you understand. And because they’ve got a reliable power source up there.”

  “Is he awake?” Sierra asked anxiously.

  “Partially sedated,” replied the doctor, exchanging glances with Travis. “We had to perform an intubation.”

  Sierra knew how Liam hated tubes, and how frightened he probably was, sedated or not. “I have to see him,” she said, prepared for an argument.

  “Of course” was the immediate and very gentle answer.

  Sierra felt Travis’s hand close around hers. She clung, instead of pulling away, as she would have done with any other virtual stranger.

  A few minutes later they were standing on either side of Liam’s bed in one of the treatment rooms. His eyes widened with recognition when he saw Sierra, and he pointed, with one small finger, to the mouthpiece of his oxygen tube.

  She nodded, blinking hard and trying to smile. Took his hand.

  “You have to spend the night in the hospital in Flagstaff,” she told him, “but don’t be scared, okay? Because I’m going with you.”

  Liam relaxed visibly. Turned his eyes to Travis. Sierra’s heart twisted at the hope she saw in her little boy’s face.

  “Me, too,” Travis said hoarsely.

  Liam nodded and drifted off to sleep.