“She’s about the same age as your baby would have been,” Eve said. “It’s fate.”
Meg’s mouth fell open.
“Of course I knew,” Eve told her, venturing as far as the white velvet chair and perching grace fully on the edge of its cushion. “I’m your mother.”
Meg closed her mouth. Tightly.
Eve’s eyes were on the door through which Ted Ledger and Carly had just passed. “I loved him,” she said. “But when he admitted stealing all that money, there was nothing I could do to keep him out of prison. We divorced after his conviction, and he asked me not to tell you where he was.”
Meg sagged back in her own chair, still dizzy. Still speechless.
“She’s a beautiful child,” Eve said, referring, of course, to Carly. “You looked just like her, at that age. It’s uncanny, really.”
“She’s bound to have a lot of problems,” Meg managed.
“Of course she will. She lost her mother, and now her father is at death’s door. But she has you, Meg. That makes her lucky, in spite of everything else.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea how to raise a child,” Meg pointed out.
“Nobody does, when they start out,” Eve reasoned. “Children don’t come with a handbook, you know.”
Suddenly, Meg remembered the lunch she had scheduled with Cheyenne, the groceries she’d intended to buy. Instantaneous motherhood hadn’t been on her to-do list for the day.
She imagined making a call to Cheyenne. Gotta postpone lunch. You see, I just gave birth to a twelve-year-old in my mother’s living room.
“I had plans,” she said lamely.
“Didn’t we all?” Eve countered.
“There’s no food in my refrigerator.”
“Supermarket’s right down the road.”
“Where have they been living? What kind of life has she had, up to now?”
“A hard one, I would imagine. Ted’s something of a drifter—I suspect they’ve been living out of that old car he drives. He claims he home schooled her, but knowing Ted, that probably means she knows how to read a racing form and cal cu late the odds of winning at Power ball.”
“Great,” Meg said, but something motherly was stirring inside her, something hopeful and brave and very, very fragile. “Can I count on you for help, or just the usual interference?”
Eve laughed. “Both,” she said.
Meg found her purse, fumbled for her cell phone, dialed Cheyenne’s number.
It was something of a relief that she got her friend’s voice mail.
“This is Meg,” she said. “I can’t make it for lunch. How about a rain check?”
CHAPTER NINE
MEG MOVED THROUGH THE super market like a robot, programmed to take things off the shelves and drop them into the cart. When she got home and started putting away her groceries, she was surprised by some of the things she’d bought. There were ingredients for actual meals, not just things she could nuke in the microwave or eat right out of the box or bag.
She was brewing coffee when a knock sounded at the back door.
Glancing over, she saw her cousin Rance through the little panes of glass and gestured for him to come in. Tall and dark-haired, he looked as though he’d just come off a nineteenth-century cattle drive, in his battered boots, old jeans and Western-cut shirt. Favoring her with a lopsided grin, he removed his hat and hung it on one of the pegs next to the door.
“Heard you had a little shock this morning,” he said.
Meg shook her head. She’d never gotten over how fast word got around in a place like Indian Rock. Then again, maybe Eve had called Rance, thinking Meg might need emotional support. “You could say that,” she replied. “Who told you?”
Rance proceeded to the coffeemaker, which was still doing its steaming and gurgling number, took a mug down from the cupboard above and filled it, heedless of the brew dripping, fragrant and sizzling, onto the base. Of course, being a man, he didn’t bother to wipe up the overflow.
“Eve,” he said, confirming her suspicions.
Meg, not usually a neatnik, made a big deal of paper-toweling up the spill around the bottom of the coffeemaker. “It’s no emergency, Rance,” she told him.
He looked ruefully amused. “Your dad walks into your life after something like thirty years and it’s not an emergency?”
“I suppose Mom told you about Carly.”
Rance nodded. Ushered Meg to a seat at the table, set down his coffee mug and went back to pour a cup for her, messing up the counter all over again. “Twelve years old, something of an attitude,” he confirmed, giving her the cup and then sitting astride the bench. “And coming to live with you. Is that going to screw up your love life?”
“I don’t have a love life,” Meg said. Sure, she’d spent the night tangling sheets with Brad O’Ballivan but, one, primal sex didn’t constitute a relationship and, two, it was none of Rance’s business anyway.
“Whatever,” Rance said. “The point is, you’ve got a kid to raise, and she’s a handful, by all accounts. I’m no authority on bringing up kids, but I do have two daughters. I’ll do what I can to help, Meg, and so will Emma.”
Rance’s girls, Maeve and Rianna, were like nieces to Meg, and so was Keegan’s Devon. While they were all younger than Carly, they would be eager to include her in the family, and it was comforting to know that.
“Thanks,” Meg said as her eyes misted over.
“You can do this,” Rance told her.
“I don’t seem to have a choice. Carly is my half sister, there’s no one else, and blood is blood.”
“If there’s one concept a hard headed McKettrick can comprehend right away, it’s that.”
“I don’t know as we’re all that hard headed,” Angus put in, after materializing behind Rance in the middle of the kitchen.
Meg didn’t glance up, nor did she answer. She was close to Rance, Jesse and Keegan—always had been—but she’d never told them she saw Angus, dead since the early twentieth century, on a regular basis. Her mother knew, having over heard Meg talking to him, long after the age of entertaining imaginary playmates had passed, and for all the problems Eve had suffered after Sierra’s kidnapping, she’d given her remaining daughter one in estimable gift. She’d believed her.
You’re not the type to see things, Eve had said after Meg reluctantly explained. If you say Angus McKettrick is here, then he is.
Remembering, Meg felt a swell of love for her mother, despite an equal measure of annoyance.
“I’d better get back to punching cattle,” Rance said, finishing his coffee and swinging a leg over the bench to stand. With winter coming on, he and his hired men were rounding up strays in the hills and driving the whole bunch down to the lower pastures. “If you need a hand over here, with the girl or anything else, you let me know.”
Meg grinned up at him. He’d taken time out of a busy day to come over and check on her in person, and she appreciated that. “Once Carly’s had a little time to settle in, we’ll introduce her to Maeve and Rianna and Devon. I don’t think she’s got a clue what it’s like to be part of a family like ours.”
Rance laid a work-cal loused hand on Meg’s shoulder as he passed, carrying his empty coffee mug to the sink, then crossing to take his hat down from the peg. “Probably not,” he agreed. “But she’ll find out soon enough.”
With that, Rance left.
Meg turned to acknowledge Angus. “We are hard-headed,” she told him. “Every last one of us.”
“I’d rather call it ‘persistent,’” Angus imparted.
“Your decision,” Meg responded, getting up to dispose of her own coffee cup then heading for the backstairs. She didn’t know when Carly would be arriving, but it was time to get a room ready for her. That meant changing sheets, opening windows to air the place out and equipping the guest bath room with necessities like clean towels, a toothbrush and paste, shampoo and the like.
She’d barely finished, and returned to the kitchen to
slap together a hasty lunch, when an old car rattled up alongside the house, back fired and shut down. As Meg watched from the window, Ted Ledger got out, keeping one hand to the car for balance as he rounded it, and leaned in on the opposite side, no doubt trying to persuade a reluctant Carly to alight.
Meg hurried outside.
By the time she reached the car, Carly was standing with a beat-up backpack dangling from one hand, staring at the barn.
“Do you have horses?” she asked.
Hallelujah, Meg thought. Common ground.
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“I hate horses,” Carly said. “They smell and step on people.”
Ted passed Meg a beleaguered look over the top of the old station wagon, his eyes pleading for patience.
“You do not,” he said to Carly. Then, to Meg, “She’s just being difficult.”
Duh, Meg thought, but in spite of all her absent-father issues, she felt a pang of sympathy for the man. He was terminally ill, probably broke, and trying to find a place for his younger daughter to make the softest possible landing.
Meg figured it would be a fiery crash instead, complete with explosions, but she also knew she was up to the challenge. Mostly, that is. And with a lot of help from Rance, Keegan, Jesse and Sierra.
Oh, yeah. She’d be calling in her markers, all right.
Code-blue, calling all McKettricks.
“I’m not staying unless my dad can stay, too,” Carly announced, standing her ground, there in the gravel of the upper driveway, knuckles white where she gripped the backpack.
Meg hadn’t considered this development, though she supposed she should have. She forced herself to meet Ted’s gaze, saw both resignation and hope in his eyes when she did.
“It’s a big house,” she heard herself say. “Plenty of room.”
Rance’s earlier question echoed in her mind. Is that going to screw up your love life?
There’d be no more over night visits from Brad, at least not in the immediate future. To Meg, that was both a relief—things were moving too fast on that front—and a problem. Her body was still reverberating with the pleasure Brad had awakened in her, and already craving more.
“Okay,” Carly said, moving a little closer to Ted. The two of them bumped shoulders in unspoken communication, and Meg felt a brief and unexpected stab of envy.
Meg tried to carry Ted’s suitcase inside, but he wouldn’t allow that. Manly pride, she supposed.
Angus watched from the back steps as the three of them trailed toward the house, Meg in the lead, Ted following and Carly straggling at the rear.
“She’s a good kid,” Angus said.
Meg gave him a look but said nothing.
Just walking into the house seemed to wear Ted out, and as soon as Carly had been in stalled in her room, he expressed a need to lie down. Meg showed him to the space generations of McKettrick women—she being an exception—had done their sewing.
There was only a daybed, and Meg hadn’t changed the sheets, but Ted waved away her offer to spruce up the room a little. She went out, closing the door behind her, and heard the bed-springs groan as if he’d collapsed onto them.
Carly’s door was shut. Meg paused outside it, on her way to the rear stairway, considered knocking and decided to leave the poor kid alone, let her adjust to new and strange surroundings.
Down stairs, Meg went back to what she’d been doing when Ted and Carly arrived. She made a couple of extra sandwiches, just in case, wolfed one down with a glass of milk and eye balled the phone.
Was Brad going to call, or was last night just another slam-bam to him? And if he did call, what exactly was she going to say?
Willie was surprisingly ambulatory, considering what he’d been through. When Brad came out of the upstairs bathroom, having showered and pulled on a pair of boxer-briefs and nothing else, the dog was waiting in the hall. Climbing the stairs must have been an ordeal, but he’d done it.
“You need to go outside, boy?” Brad asked. When Big John’s health had started to decline, Brad had wanted to install an elevator, so the old man wouldn’t have to manage a lot of steps, but he’d met with the usual response.
An elevator? Big John had scoffed. Boy, all that fine Nashville livin’ is goin’ to your head.
Now, with an injured dog on his hands, Brad wished he’d over rid den his grandfather’s protests.
He moved to lift Willie, intending to carry him downstairs and out the kitchen door to the grassy side yard, but a whimper from the dog foiled that idea. Care fully, the two of them made the descent, Willie stopping every few steps to rest, panting.
The whole process was painful to watch.
Reaching the kitchen at last, Brad opened the back door and waited as Willie labored outside, found a place in the grass after copious sniffing and did his business.
Once he was back inside, Brad decided another trip up the stairway was out of the question. He moved Willie’s new dog bed into a small down stairs guest room, threw back the comforter on one of the twin-sized beds and fell onto it, face-first.
“Who’s the old man?” Carly asked, startling Meg, who had been running more searches on Josiah McKettrick on the computer in the study, for more reasons than one.
“What old man?” Meg retorted pleasantly, turning in the chair to see her half sister standing in the big double doorway, looking much younger than twelve in a faded and somewhat frayed sleep shirt with a cartoon bear on the front.
“This house,” Carly said implacably, “is haunted.”
“It’s been around a long time,” Meg hedged, still smiling. “Lots of history here. Are you hungry?”
“Only if you’ve got the stuff to make grilled-cheese sandwiches,” Carly said. She was in the gawky stage, but one day, she’d be gorgeous. Meg didn’t see the resemblance Eve had commented on earlier, but if there was one, it was cause to feel flattered.
“I’ve got the stuff,” Meg assured her, rising from her chair.
“I can do it myself,” Carly said.
“Maybe we could talk a little,” Meg replied.
“Or not,” Carly answered, with a note of dismissal that sounded false.
Meg followed the woman-child to the kitchen, earning herself a few scathing backward glances in the process.
Efficiently, Carly opened the fridge, helped herself to a package of cheese and proceeded to the counter. Meg supplied bread and a butter dish and a skillet, but that was all the assistance Carly was willing to accept.
“Can you cook?” Meg asked, hoping to get some kind of dialogue going.
Carly shrugged one thin shoulder. Her feet were bare and a tiny tattoo of some kind of flower blossomed just above one ankle bone. “Dad’s hopeless at it, so I learned.”
“I see,” Meg said, wondering what could have possessed her father to let a child get a tattoo, and if it had hurt much, getting poked with all those needles.
“You don’t see,” Carly said, skill fully preparing her sandwich, everything in her bearing warning Meg to keep her distance.
“What makes you say that?”
Another shrug.
“Carly?”
The girl’s back, turned to Meg as she laid the sandwich in the skillet and adjusted the gas stove burner beneath, stiffened. “Don’t ask me a bunch of questions, okay? Don’t ask how it was, living on the road, or if I miss my mother, or what it’s like knowing my dad is going to die. Just leave me be, and we’ll get along all right.”
“There’s one question I have to ask,” Meg said.
Carly tossed her another short, over-the-shoulder glower. “What?”
“Did it hurt a lot, getting that tattoo?”
Suddenly, a smile broke over Carly’s face, and it changed everything about her. “Yes.”
“Why did you do it?”
“That’s two questions,” Carly pointed out. “You said one.”
“Was it because your friends got tattoos?”
Carly’s smile faded, and she
averted her attention again, spatula in hand, ready to turn her grilled-cheese sandwich when it was just right. “I don’t have any friends,” she said. “We moved around too much. And I didn’t need them anyhow. Me and Dad—that was enough.”
Meg’s eyes burned.
“I got the tattoo,” Carly said, catching Meg off-guard, “because my mom had one just like it, in the same place. It’s a yellow rose—because Dad always called her his yellow rose of Texas.”
Meg’s throat went tight. How was she going to help this child face the loss of not one parent, but two? Sister or not, she was a stranger to Carly.
The phone rang.
Carly, being closest, picked up the receiver, peered at the caller ID panel, and went wide-eyed. “Brad O’Ballivan?” she whispered reverently, padding across the kitchen to give Meg the phone. “The Brad O’Ballivan?”
Meg choked out a laugh. Well, well, well. Carly was a fan. Just the opening Meg needed to establish some kind of bond, however tenuous, with her newly discovered kid sister. “The Brad O’Ballivan,” she said before thumbing the talk button. “Hello?”
Brad’s answer was an expansive yawn. Evidently, he’d either just awakened or he’d gone to bed early. Either way, the images playing in Meg’s mind were scintillating ones, and they soon rippled into other parts of her anatomy, like tiny tsunamis boiling under her skin.
“Willie’s home,” he said finally.
Carly was staring at Meg. “I have all his CDs,” she said.
“That’s good,” Meg answered.
“We ought to celebrate,” Brad went on. “I grill a mean steak. Six-thirty, my place?”
“Only if you have a couple of spares,” Meg said. “I have company.”
The smell of scorching sandwich billowed from the stove.
Carly didn’t move.
“Company?” Brad asked sleepily, with another yawn.
Meg pictured him scantily clothed, if he was wearing anything at all, with an attractive case of bed head. And she blushed to catch herself thinking lascivious thoughts with a twelve-year-old in the same room. “It’s a lot to explain over the phone,” she said diplomatically, gesturing to Carly to rescue the sandwich, which she finally did.
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