Hannah stood on tiptoe. Kissed the doctor on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said.
Doss came out of the barn to greet Kody and the other men.
They all went down the hill together to set the other wagon upright, leading the team along behind them. Doss put Cain and Abel away, while Kody drove the rig up along side the house.
Doc was outside by then, ready to go, with his medical bag clutched in one hand and his cane in the other. He turned and waved at Hannah through the window, and she waved back, watching fondly as Doss and another man helped him up into the wagon box.
When Doss didn’t come back in right away, Hannah busied her self making the kitchen presentable. Tobias was upstairs, resting in his new bed room at the front of the house. Now that he’d adjusted to the change, he liked being able to see so clear across the valley from the gabled window, but what had really swayed him was the reminder that Doss and Gabe had shared that room when they were boys.
She swept the floor and put fresh coffee on to brew and even switched on the light bulb instead of lighting lamps, as wintry afternoon shadows darkened the room.
Still, there was no sign of Doss, so she built up the fire in the stove, opened the drawer of the china cabinet, lifted the cover of the album and took out her remembrance book.
In the three busy days since she’d seen the other woman and her boy, up there in Tobias’s bedroom, she’d thought often of the journal, and kept a close eye on the teapot, too.
Nothing extraordinary happened, but inside, in a quiet part of herself, Hannah was waiting. She carried the remembrance book over to the rocking chair drawn up close to the stove and sat down. Perhaps she’d begin making regular entries in that journal.
She’d write about her and Doss, and make notes as Tobias grew toward manhood. She’d record the dates the peonies bloomed, and tuck a photograph inside, now and then. Doss had promised her they’d build a house in Indian Rock, and pass the hard high-country winters there. She would capture the dimensions of the new place in these pages, and perhaps even make sketches. One day she’d take up a pen and write that the baby had come, safe and strong and well.
She was so caught up in the prospect of all the years ahead, just waiting to be lived and then set down on paper, that a few moments passed before she realized that another hand had written beneath her own short paragraphs.
My name is Sierra McKettrick, and today is January 20, 2007.
I have a son, too, and his name is Liam. He’s seven, and he has asthma. He’s the center of my life.
You have nothing to fear from me. I’m not a ghost, just an ordinary flesh-and-blood woman. A mother, like you.
Hannah stared at the words in disbelief.
Read them again, and then again.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
The woman she’d seen was a McKettrick, too, living far in the future. She had the proof right here—not that she meant to show it to just every body. Some folks would say she’d written those words herself, of course, but Hannah knew she hadn’t.
She touched the clear blue ink in wonder. It looked different, somehow, from the kind that came in a bottle.
The door opened, and Doss came in. He took off his coat and hat, hung them up neatly, like he always did.
Hannah held the remembrance book close against her chest. Should she let Doss see? Would he believe, as she did, that two different centuries had somehow managed to touch and blend, right here in this house?
Her heart fluttered in her breast.
“Hannah?” He sounded a little worried.
“Come and look at this, Doss,” she said.
He came, crouched beside her chair, read the two entries in the journal, hers and Sierra’s.
She watched his face, hopeful and afraid.
Doss raised his eyes to meet hers. “That,” he said, “is the strangest thing I’ve ever run across.”
“There’s more,” Hannah said. “I saw her, Doss. I saw this woman, and her little boy, the night of your accident.”
He closed a hand over hers. “If you say so, Hannah,” he told her quietly, “then I believe you.”
“You do?”
He grinned. “Does that surprise you?”
“A little,” she admitted. “When Tobias mentioned seeing the boy, you said it must be his imagination.”
Doss handed back the book. “Life is strange,” he said. “There’s a mystery just about every where you look, when you think about it. Babies being born. Grass poking up through hard ground after a long winter. The way it makes me feel in side when you smile at me.”
Hannah leaned, kissed his forehead. “Flatterer,” she said.
“Is Tobias asleep?” he asked.
She blushed. “Yes.”
He pulled her to her feet, set the remembrance book aside on the counter and kissed her.
“I think we’ve waited long enough, don’t you?” he asked.
Hours later, hair askew, bundled in a wrapper, well and thoroughly loved, Hannah sneaked back down stairs.
She gathered ink and a pen from the study and lit a lantern in the kitchen.
Then, smiling, she sat down to write.
Present Day
Travis lay sprawled on his stomach in Sierra’s bed, sound asleep. She sat up beside him, stroked his bare back once with a gentle pass of her hand. In the three days since he’d moved out of the trailer, he’d been back several times, on one pretext or another. Finally Meg had packed some of her things and some of Liam’s, and the two of them had gone to stay in town with friends of hers.
“You two really need some time alone,” she’d said, with a wicked grin lighting her eyes.
Sierra smiled down at Travis. So far they’d made good use of that time alone. They’d talked a lot, in between bouts of lovemaking, and they still had plenty to say to each other—maybe enough to last a lifetime.
She switched on the lamp, took Hannah’s remembrance book from the bedside table, and opened it. Her eyes widened, and she drew in a breath.
Beneath her own entry, in the same stately, faded writing as before, Hannah had written:
It’s nice to know there’s another woman in the house, even if I can’t see or hear you, most of the time. We must be family, since your name is McKettrick. Maybe you’re descended from us, from Doss and me. I told my son, Tobias, that your name is Sierra. He said that was pretty, and he’d like the new baby to be called that, too, if it’s a girl…
There was more, but Sierra couldn’t read it, because her eyes were blurred with tears of amazement. She bounded out of bed, not caring if she awakened Travis, and hurried down stairs, switching on lights as she went. She had the album out and was flipping through the pages at the middle when he joined her, blinking and shirtless, with his jeans misbuttoned.
“What’s going on?” he asked, yawning.
Sierra’s heart thumped at the base of her throat.
She forced herself to slow down, turn the pages gently. And then she found what she was looking for—an old, old photograph of two children, smiling for the camera lens. The little boy she’d seen in Liam’s room, with Hannah, holding a baby wearing a long, lacy gown.
Beneath the picture, Hannah had written Tobias’s name and the baby’s.
Sierra Elizabeth McKettrick.
Sierra put a hand to her mouth and gasped.
Travis drew closer. “Sierra—”
“Look at this,” Sierra said, stabbing at the image with one finger. “What do you see?”
Travis frowned. “An old picture of two kids.”
“Look at the baby’s name.”
“Sierra. You must have been named for her.”
“I think she was named for me,” Sierra said.
“How could she be named for you?”
“Sit down,” Sierra told him. She reached for Hannah’s remembrance book, offered it when he was seated. “Read this.”
He read. Looked up at her with wide eyes. “You don’t really th
ink—”
“That I’ve been communicating with a woman who lived in this house in 1919, and probably for years after that? Yes, Travis, that is exactly what I think!”
“But, how?”
“You said it yourself, when I first got here. Strange things happen in this house.”
“This is beyond strange. Are you going to tell anybody else about this?”
“Mother and Meg,” Sierra said. “Liam, too, when he’s a little older.”
He reached for her hand, wove his fingers through hers, squeezed. “And me. You told me, Sierra.”
“Well, yeah.”
“You must trust me.”
She grinned. “You’re right,” she said. “I must trust you a whole lot, Travis Reid.”
“Can we go back to bed now?”
She closed the album and tucked Hannah’s remembrance book care fully inside. “Race you!” she cried, and dashed for the stairs.
THE MCKETTRICK WAY
In memory of my dad, Grady “Skip” Lael.
Happy trails, Cowboy.
CHAPTER ONE
BRAD O’BALLIVAN OPENED the driver’s-side door of the waiting pickup truck, tossed his guitar case inside and turned to wave a farewell to the pilot and crew of the private jet he hoped never to ride in again.
A chilly fall wind slashed across the broad, lonesome clearing, rippling the fading grass, and he raised the collar of his denim jacket against it. Pulled his hat down a little lower over his eyes.
He was home.
Some thing inside him resonated to the Arizona high country, and more particularly to Stone Creek Ranch, like one prong of a perfectly balanced tuning fork. The sensation was peculiar to the place—he’d never felt it in his sprawling lakeside mansion outside Nashville, on the periphery of a town called Hendersonville, or at the villa in Mexico, or any of the other fancy digs where he’d hung his hat over the years since he’d turned his back on the spread—and so much more—to sing for his supper.
His grin was slightly ironic as he stood by the truck and watched the jet soar back into the sky. His retirement from the country music scene, at the age of thirty-five and the height of his success, had caused quite a media stir. He’d sold the jet and the big houses and most of what was in them, and given away the rest, except for the guitar and the clothes he was wearing. And he knew he’d never regret it.
He was through with that life. And once an O’Ballivan was through with something, that was the end of it.
The jet left a trail across the sky, faded to a silver spark, and disappeared.
Brad was about to climb into the truck and head for the ranch house, start coming to terms with things there, when he spotted a familiar battered gray Suburban jostling and gear-grinding its way over the rough road that had never really evolved beyond its beginnings as an old-time cattle trail.
He took off his hat, even though the wind nipped at the edges of his ears, and waited, partly eager, partly resigned.
The old Chevy came to a chortling stop a few inches from the toes of his boots, throwing up a cloud of red-brown dust, and his sister Olivia shut the big engine down and jumped out to round the hood and stride right up to him.
“You’re back,” Olivia said, sounding nonplussed. The eldest of Brad’s three younger sisters, at twenty-nine, she’d never quite forgiven him for leaving home—much less getting famous. Practical to the bone, she was small, with short, glossy dark hair and eyes the color of a brand-new pair of jeans, and just as starchy. Olivia was low-woman-on-the-totem-pole at a thriving veterinary practice in the nearby town of Stone Creek, specializing in large animals, and Brad knew she spent most of her workdays in a barn some place, or out on the range, with one arm shoved up where the sun didn’t shine, turning a cross ways calf or colt.
“I’m delighted to see you, too, Doc,” Brad answered dryly.
With an exasperated little cry, Olivia sprang off the soles of her worn-out boots to throw her arms around his neck, knocking his hat clear off his head in the process. She hugged him tight, and when she drew back, there were tears on her dirt-smudged cheeks, and she sniffled self-consciously.
“If this is some kind of publicity stunt,” Livie said, once she’d rallied a little, “I’m never going to forgive you.” She bent to retrieve his hat, handed it over.
God, she was proud. She’d let him pay for her education, but returned every other check he or his accountant sent with the words NO THANKS scrawled across the front in thick black capitals.
Brad chuckled, threw the hat into the pickup, to rest on top of the guitar case. “It’s no stunt,” he replied. “I’m back for good. Ready to ‘take hold and count for something,’ as Big John used to say.”
The mention of their late grandfather caused a poignant and not entirely comfortable silence to fall between them. Brad had been on a concert tour when the old man died of a massive coronary six months before, and he’d barely made it back to Stone Creek in time for the funeral. Worse, he’d had to leave again right after the services, in order to make a sold-out show in Chicago. The large infusions of cash he’d pumped into the home place over the years did little to assuage his guilt.
How much money is enough? How famous do you have to be? Big John had asked, in his kindly but irascible way, not once but a hundred times. Come home, damn it. I need you. Your little sisters need you. And God knows, Stone Creek Ranch needs you.
Shoving a hand through his light brown hair, in need of trimming as always, Brad thrust out a sigh and scanned the surrounding country side. “That old stallion still running loose out here, or did the wolves and the barbed wire finally get him?” he asked, raw where the memories of his grandfather chafed against his mind, and in sore need of a distraction.
Livie probably wasn’t fooled by the dodge, but she was gracious enough to grant Brad a little space to recover in, and he appreciated that. “We get a glimpse of Ransom every once in a while,” she replied, and a little pucker of worry formed between her eyebrows. “Always off on the horizon some where, keeping his distance.”
Brad laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. She’d been fascinated with the legendary wild stallion since she was little. First sighted in the late nineteenth century and called King’s Ransom because that was what he was probably worth, the animal was black and shiny as wet ink, and so elusive that some people maintained he wasn’t flesh and blood at all, but spirit, a myth believed for so long that thought itself had made him real. The less fanciful maintained that Ransom was one in a long succession of stallions, all descended from that first mysterious sire. Brad stood squarely in this camp, as Big John had, but he wasn’t so sure Livie took the same rational view.
“They’re trying to trap him,” she said now, tears glistening in her eyes. “They want to pen him up. Get samples of his DNA. Turn him out to stud, so they can sell his babies.”
“Who’s trying to trap him, Liv?” Brad asked gently. It was cold, he was hungry, and setting foot in the old ranch house, without Big John there to greet him, was a thing to get past.
“Never mind,” Livie said, bucking up a little. Setting her jaw. “You wouldn’t be interested.”
There was no point in arguing with Olivia O’Ballivan, DVM, when she got that look on her face. “Thanks for bringing my truck out here,” Brad said. “And for coming to meet me.”
“I didn’t bring the truck,” Livie replied. Some people would have taken the credit, but Liv was half again too stubborn to admit to a kindness she hadn’t committed, let alone one she considered unwarranted. “Ashley and Melissa did that. They’re probably at the ranch house right now, hanging streamers or putting up a Welcome Home, Brad banner or something. And I only came out here because I saw that jet and figured it was some damn movie star, buzzing the deer.”
Brad had one leg inside the truck, ready to hoist himself into the driver’s seat. “That’s a problem around here?” he asked, with a wry half grin. “Movie stars buzzing deer in Lear jets?”
“It happens in
Montana all the time,” Livie insisted, plainly incensed. She felt just as strongly about snow mobiles and other off-road vehicles.
Brad reached down, touched the tip of her nose with one index finger. “This isn’t Montana, short stop,” he pointed out. “See you at home?”
“Another time,” Livie said, not giving an inch. “After all the hoopla dies down.”
Inwardly, Brad groaned. He wasn’t up for hoopla, or any kind of celebration Ashley and Melissa, their twin sisters, might have cooked up in honor of his return. Classic between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place stuff—he couldn’t hurt their feelings, either.
“Tell me they’re not planning a party,” he pleaded.
Livie relented, but only slightly. One side of her mouth quirked up in a smile. “You’re in luck, Mr. Multiple Grammy Winner. There’s a McKettrick baby shower going on over in Indian Rock as we speak, and practically the whole county’s there.”
The name McKettrick unsettled Brad even more than the prospect of going home to banners, streamers and a collection of grinning neighbors, friends and sisters. “Not Meg,” he muttered, and then blushed, since he hadn’t intended to say the words out loud.
Livie’s smile intensified, the way it did when she had a solid hand at gin rummy and was fixing to go out and stick him with a lot of aces and face cards. She shook her head. “Meg’s back in Indian Rock for good, rumor has it, and she’s still single,” she assured him. “Her sister Sierra’s the one having a baby.”
In a belated and obviously fruitless attempt to hide his relief at this news, Brad shut the truck door between himself and Livie and, since the keys were waiting in the ignition, started up the rig.
Looking smug, Livie waved cheerily, climbed back into the Suburban and drove off, literally in a cloud of dust.
Brad sat waiting for it to settle.
The feelings took a little longer.
The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's HomecomingThe McKettrick Way (Hqn) Page 23