“He hasn’t asked,” Meg said lightly. “And you’re in some pretty personal territory, here. Have I mentioned lately that you’re twelve?”
“I might be twelve,” Carly replied, “but I’m not stupid.”
“You’re definitely not stupid,” Meg agreed good-naturedly, but on the inside, she was dancing to a different tune. Her period, always as regular as the orbit of the moon, was two weeks late. She’d bought a home pregnancy test at a drug store in Flag staff, not wanting word of the purchase to get around Indian Rock as it would have if she’d made the purchase locally, but she hadn’t worked up the nerve to use it yet.
As much as she’d wanted a child, she almost hoped the results would be negative. She knew what would happen if the plus sign came up, instead of the minus. She’d tell Brad, he’d insist on marrying her, just as he’d done with both Valerie and Cynthia, and for the rest of her days, she’d wonder if he’d proposed out of honor, or because he actually loved her.
On the other hand, she wouldn’t dare keep the knowledge from him, not after what had happened before, when they were teenagers. He’d never forgive her if something went wrong; even the truest, deepest kind of love between a man and a woman couldn’t survive if there was no trust.
All of which left Meg in a state of suspecting she was carrying Brad’s child, not knowing for sure, and being afraid to find out.
Carly, whose intuition seemed uncanny at times, blind-sided her again. “I saw the pregnancy-test kit,” she announced.
Meg, in the process of wiping out the sink, froze.
“I didn’t mean to snoop,” Carly said quickly. By turns, she was rebellious and paranoid, convinced on some level that living on the Triple M as a part of the McKettrick family was an interval of sorts, not a permanent arrangement. In her experience, everything was temporary. “I ran out of tooth paste, and I went into your bathroom to borrow some, and I saw the kit.”
Sighing, Meg went to the table and sat down next to Carly, searching for words.
“Are you mad at me?” Carly asked.
“No,” Meg said. “And I wouldn’t send you away even if I was, Carly. You need to get clear on that.”
“Okay,” Carly said, but she didn’t sound convinced. Meg guessed it would take time, maybe a very long time, for her little sister to feel secure. Her face brightened. “It would be so cool if you had a baby!” she spouted.
“Yes,” Meg agreed, smiling. “It would.”
“So what’s the problem with finding out for sure?”
“Brad’s really busy right now. I guess I’m looking for a chance to tell him.”
Just then, as if by the hand of Providence, a rig drove up outside, a door slammed.
Carly rushed to the window, gave a yip of excitement. “He’s here!” she crowed. “And Willie’s with him!”
Meg closed her eyes. So much for procrastination.
Carly hurried to open the back door, and Brad and the dog blew in with a chilly wind.
“Here,” Brad said, handing Carly a DVD case. “It’s your big scene, complete with dialogue and music.”
Carly grabbed the DVD and fled to the study, which contained the only TV set in the house, fairly skipping and Willie, now almost wholly recovered from his injuries, dashed after her, barking happily.
Meg was conscious, in those moments, of everything that was at stake. The child and even the dog would suffer if the conversation she and Brad were about to have went sour.
“Sit down,” she said, turning to watch Brad as he shed his heavy coat and hung it from one of the pegs next to the door.
“Sounds serious,” Brad mused. “Carly get into trouble at school again?”
“No,” Meg answered, after swallowing hard.
Brad frowned and joined her at the table, sitting astraddle the bench while she occupied the chair at the end. “Meg, what’s the trouble?” he asked worriedly.
“I bought a kit—” she began, immediately faltering.
His forehead crinkled. “A kit?” The light went on. “A kit!”
“I think I might be pregnant, Brad.”
A smile spread across his face, shone in his eyes, giving her hope. But then he went solemn again. “You don’t sound very happy about it,” he said, looking wary. “When did you do the test?”
“That’s just it. I haven’t done it yet. Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid? Why?”
“Things have been so good between us, and—”
Gently, he took her hand. Turned it over to trace patterns on her palm with the pad of his thumb. “Go on,” he said, his voice hoarse, obviously steeling himself against who knew what.
“I know you’ll marry me,” Meg forced herself to say. “If the test is positive, I mean. And I’ll always wonder if you feel trapped, the way you did with Cynthia.”
Brad considered her words, still caressing her palm. “All right,” he said presently. “Then I guess we ought to get married before you take the pregnancy test. Because either way, Meg, I want you to be my wife. Baby or no baby.”
She studied him. “Maybe we should live together for a while. See how it goes.”
“No way, McKettrick,” Brad replied instantly. “I know lots of good people share a house without benefit of a wedding these days, but when it comes down to it, I’m an old-fashioned guy.”
“You’d really do that? Marry me without knowing the results of the test? What if it’s negative?”
“Then we’d keep working on it.” Brad grinned.
Meg bit her lower lip, thinking hard.
Finally, she stood and said, “Wait here.”
But she only got as far as the middle of the back stairway before she returned.
“The McKettrick women don’t change their names when they get married,” she reminded him, though they both knew Sierra had already broken that tradition, and happily so.
“Call yourself whatever you want,” Brad replied. “For a year. At the end of that time, if you’re convinced we can make it, then you’ll go by O’Ballivan. Deal?”
Meg pondered the question. “Deal,” she said at long last.
She went upstairs, slipped into her bathroom and leaned against the closed door, her heart pounding. Her reflection in the long mirror over the double sink stared back at her.
“Pee on the stick, McKettrick,” she told herself, “and get it over with.”
Five minutes later, she was staring at the little plastic stick, filled with mixed emotion. There was happiness, but trepidation, too. What-ifs hammered at her from every side.
A light knock sounded at the door, and Brad came in.
“The suspense,” he said, “is killing me.”
Meg showed him the stick.
And his whoop of joy echoed off every wall in that venerable old house.
“I think I have a future in show business,” Carly confided to Brad later that night when she came into the kitchen to say good-night. She’d watched her scene on the study TV at least fourteen times.
“I think you have a future in the eighth grade,” Meg responded, smiling.
“What if I end up on the cutting-room floor?” Carly fretted. Clearly, she’d been doing some online research into the movie-making process.
“I’ll see that you don’t,” Brad promised. “Go to bed, Carly. A movie star needs her beauty sleep.”
Carly nodded, then went upstairs, DVD in hand. Willie, who had been following her all evening, sighed despondently and lay down at Brad’s feet, muzzle resting on his forepaws.
Brad leaned down to stroke the dog’s smooth, graying back. “Looks like Carly’s already got one devoted fan,” he remarked.
Meg chuckled. “More than one,” she said. “I certainly qualify, and so do you. Eve spoils her, and Rance’s and Keegan’s girls think of her as the family celebrity.”
Brad grinned. “Carly’s a pro,” he said. “But you’re wise to steer her away from show business, at least for the time being. It’s hard enough for adults to hand
le, and kids have it even worse.”
The topics of the baby and marriage pulsed in the air between them, but they skirted them, went on talking about other things. Brad was comfortable with that—there would be time enough to make plans.
“According to her teachers,” Meg said, “Carly has a near-genius affinity for computers, or anything technical. Last week she actually got the clock on the DVD player to stop blinking twelves. This, I might add, is a skill that has eluded presidents.”
“Lots of things elude presidents,” Brad replied, finishing his coffee. “We’re wrapping up the movie next week,” he added. “The indoor scenes, at least. We’ll have to do the stage coach robbery and all the rest next spring. Think you could pencil a wedding into your schedule?”
Meg’s cheeks colored attractively, causing Brad to wonder what other parts of her were turning pink. She hesitated, then nodded, but as she looked at him, her gaze switched to something just beyond his left shoulder.
Brad turned to look, but there was nothing there.
“I hate leaving you,” he said, turning back, frowning a little. “But I’ve got an early call in the morning.” Neither of them were comfortable sleeping together with Carly around, but that would change after they were married.
“I understand,” Meg said.
“Do you, Meg?” he asked very quietly. “I love you. I want to marry you, and I would have, even if the test had been negative.”
She said them then, the words he’d been waiting for. Before that, she’d spoken them only in the throes of passion.
“I love you right back, Brad O’Ballivan.”
He stood, drew her to her feet and kissed her. It was a lingering kiss, gentle but thorough.
“But there’s still one thing I haven’t told you,” she choked out, when their mouths parted.
Brad braced himself. Waited, his mind scrambling over possibilities—there was another man out there some where after all, one with some emotional claim on her, or more she hadn’t told him about the first pregnancy, or the miscarriage…
“Ever since I was a little girl,” she said, “I’ve been seeing Angus McKettrick. In fact, he’s here right now.”
Brad recalled the glance she’d thrown over his shoulder a few minutes before, the odd expression in her eyes. First Livie, with her Dr. Doo little act—now Meg claimed she could see the family patriarch, who had been dead for over a century.
He thrust out a sigh.
She waited, gnawing at her lip, her eyes wide and hopeful.
“If you say so,” he said at last, “I believe you.”
Joy suffused her face. “Really?”
“Really,” he said, though the truth was more like: I’m trying to believe you. As with Livie, he would believe if it killed him, despite all the rational arguments crowding his mind.
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I’d insist that you stay, since we’re engaged,” she whispered, “but Angus is even more old-fashioned than you are.”
He laughed, said good-night and looked down at Willie.
The dog was standing, wagging his tail and grinning, looking up at someone who wasn’t there.
There were indeed, Brad thought, as he and Willie made the lonely drive back to Stone Creek Ranch in his truck, more things in heaven and earth than this world dreams of.
“Where have you been?” Meg demanded, torn between relief at seeing Angus again, and complete exasperation.
“You always knew I wouldn’t be around forever,” Angus said. He looked older than he had the last time she’d seen him, even careworn, but somehow serene, too. “Things are winding down, girl. I figured you needed to start getting used to my being gone.”
Meg blinked, surprised by the stab of pain she felt at the prospect of Angus’s leaving for good. On the other hand, she had always known the last parting would come.
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said, struggling not to cry. “I’ll need you. The baby and Carly will need you.”
Angus seldom touched her, but now he cupped one hand under her chin. His skin felt warm, not cold, and solid, not ethereal. “No,” he said gruffly. “You only need your selves and each other. Things are going to be fine from here on out, Meg. You’ll see.”
She swallowed, wanting to cling to him, knowing it wouldn’t be right. He had a life to live, some where else, beyond some unseen border. There were others there, waiting for him.
“Why did you come?” she asked. “In first place, I mean?”
“You needed me,” he said simply.
“I did,” she confirmed. For all the nannies and “aunts and uncles,” she’d been a lost soul as a child, especially after Sierra was kidnapped and Eve fell apart in so many ways. She’d never blamed her mother, never harbored any resentment for the inevitable neglect she’d suffered, but she knew now that, without Angus, she would have been bereft.
He was carrying a hat in his left hand, and now he put it on, the gesture somehow final. “You say goodbye to Carly for me,” he said. “And tell her that her pa’s just fine where he is.”
Meg nodded, unable to speak.
Angus leaned in, planted a light, awkward kiss on Meg’s forehead. “When you get to the end of the trail,” he said, “and that’s a long ways off, I promise, I’ll be there to say welcome.”
Still, no words would come. Not even ones of farewell. So Meg merely nodded again.
Angus turned his back and, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
She cried that night, for sorrow, for joy and for a thousand other reasons, but when the morning came, she knew Angus had been right.
She didn’t need him anymore.
The wedding was small and simple, with only family and a few friends present. Meg still considered the marriage provisional, and went on calling herself Meg McKettrick, although she and Carly moved in at Stone Creek Ranch right away. All the horses came with them, but Meg still paid regular visits to the Triple M, always hoping, on some level, for just one more glimpse of Angus.
It didn’t happen, of course.
So she sorted old photos and journals when she was there, and with some help from Sierra, catalogued them into something resembling archives. Eve, tired of hotel living, planned on moving back in. A grandmother, she maintained, with Eve-logic, ought to live in the country. She ought to bake pies and cookies and shelter the children of the family under broad, sturdy branches, like an old oak tree.
Meg smiled every time she pictured her rich, sophisticated, well-traveled mother in an apron and sensible shoes, but she had to admit Eve had pulled off a spectacular country-style Christmas. There had been a massive tree, covered in lights and heirloom ornaments, bulging stockings for Carly and Liam and little Brody, and a complete turkey dinner, only partly catered.
She’d already taken over the master bedroom, and she’d brought her two champion jumpers from the stables in San Antonio, and in stalled them in the barn. She rode every chance she got, often with Brad and Carly and some times with Jesse, Rance and Keegan.
Meg, being pregnant and out of practice when it came to horse back riding, usually watched from a perch on the pasture fence. She didn’t believe in being overly cautious—it wasn’t the McKettrick way—but this baby was precious to her, and to Brad. She wasn’t taking any chances.
Dusting off an old photograph of Holt and Lorelei, Meg stepped back to admire the way it looked on the study mantle. She heard her mother at the back of the house.
“Meg? Are you here?”
“In the study,” Meg called back.
Eve tracked her down. “Feeling nostalgic?” she asked, eyeing the picture.
Meg sighed, sat down in a high-backed leather chair, facing the fire place. “Maybe it’s part of the pregnancy. Hormones, or something.”
Eve, always practical, threw off her coat, draping it over the back of the sofa, marched to the fire place and started a crack ling, cheerful blaze. She let Meg’s words hang, all that time, finally turning to study her daughter.
“Are you happy, Meg? With Brad, I mean?”
When it came to happiness, she and Brad were constantly charting fresh territory. Learning new things about each other, stumbling over surprises both profound and prosaic. For all of that, there was a sense of fragility to the relationship.
“I’m happy,” she said.
“But?” Eve prompted. She stood with her back to the fire place, looking very ungrandmotherly in her tailored slacks and silk sweater.
“It feels—well—too good to be true,” Meg admitted.
Eve crossed to drag a chair closer to Meg’s and sit beside her. “You’re holding back a part of yourself, aren’t you? From Brad, from the marriage?”
“I suppose I am,” Meg said. “It’s sort of like the first day we were allowed to swim in the pond, late in the spring, when Jesse and Rance and Keegan and I were kids. The water was always freezing. I’d stick a toe in and stand shivering on the bank while the boys can non balled into the water, howling and whooping and trying to splash me. Finally, more out of shame than courage, I’d jump in.” She shuddered. “I still remember that icy shock—it always knocked the wind out of me for a few minutes.”
Eve smiled, probably remembering similar swimming fests from her own child hood, with another set of McKettrick cousins. “But then you got used to the temperature and had as much fun as the boys did.”
Meg nodded.
“It’s not smart to hold yourself apart from the shocks of life, Meg—the good ones or the bad. They’re all part of the mix, and paradoxically, shying away from them only makes things harder.”
Meg was quiet for a long time. Then she said quietly, “Angus is gone.”
Eve waited.
“I miss him,” Meg confessed. “When I was a teenager, especially, I used to wish he’d leave me alone. Now that he’s gone—well—every day, the memories seem less and less real.”
Eve took her hand, squeezed. “Some times,” she said very softly, “just at twilight, I think I see them—Angus and his four sturdy, handsome sons—riding single-file along the creek bank. Just a glimpse, a heart beat really, and then they’re gone. It’s odd, because they don’t look like ghosts. Just men on horse back, going about their ordinary business. I could almost convince myself that, for a fraction of a moment, a curtain had opened between their time and ours.”
The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's HomecomingThe McKettrick Way (Hqn) Page 43