"Oh, great," she said. "Brad O'Ballivan shows up at my school, in person, and nobody's around to see but the geek-wads in detention. Who'd believe a word they said?"
Brad laughed. "Did I ever tell you I was one of those 'geek-wads' once upon a time, always in detention?"
"Get out," Carly said, intrigued.
"Don't get the idea that being in detention is cool," Meg warned.
Carly rolled her eyes.
The three of them made the drive to Flagstaff in Brad's truck. Carly chattered nonstop for the first few miles, pointing out the place where she'd been "busted" for trying to hitch a ride, but as they drew nearer to their destination, she grew more and more subdued.
It didn't help that Ted was worse than he'd been the day before. He looked shrunken, lying there in his bed with tubes and monitors attached to every part of his body.
Looking at her father, it seemed to Meg that he'd used up the last of his personal resources to fling himself over an invisible finish line—getting Carly to her for safekeeping. For the first time it was actually real to Meg: he was dying.
Brad gave her a nudge toward the bed, an unspoken reminder of what he'd said about her having grieving to do, just as Carly did.
"How about a milk shake in the cafeteria?" Meg heard Brad say to Carly.
In the next moment, the two of them were gone, and Meg was alone with the man who had abandoned her so long ago that she didn't even remember him.
"That young man," Ted said, "is in love with you."
"He left me, too," Meg said without meaning to expose the , rawest nerve in her psyche. "It's a pattern. First you, then Brad."
"Do yourself a favor and don't superimpose your old man over him," Ted struggled to say. "And when Carly gets old enough, don't let her make that mistake, either. I don't have time to make it up to you, what I did and didn't do, but he does. You give him the chance."
Tears welled in Meg's eyes, thickened her throat. "I hate it that you're dying," she said.
Ted put out his left hand, an IV tube dangling from it. "Me, too," he ground out. "Come here, kid."
Meg let him pull her closer, lowered her forehead to res against his.
She felt moisture in the gray stubble on his cheeks and didn't know if the tears were hers or her father's. Or both.
"If I could stay around a little longer, I'd find a way to prove that you're still my little girl and I've always loved you Since I'm not going to get that chance, you'll have to take my word for it."
"It isn't fair," Meg protested, knowing the remark was childish.
"Not much is, in this life," Ted answered, as Meg raised her head so she could look into his face. "Know what I'd te you if I'd been around all this time like a regular father, an had the right to say what's on my mind?"
Meg couldn't answer.
"I'd tell you not to let Brad O'Ballivan get away. Don't let your damnable McKettrick pride get in the way of what he's offering, Meg."
"He told me he loves me," she said.
"Do you believe him?"
"I don't know."
"All right, then, do you love him?"
Meg bit her lower lip, nodded.
"Have you told him?"
"Sort of," Meg said.
"Take it from me, kid," Ted countered, trying to smile. '"Sort of ain't good enough." His faded eyes seemed to memorize Meg, take her in. "Get the nurse for me, will you? This pain medication isn't working."
Meg immediately rang for the nurse, and when help came, rushed to the elevators and punched the button for the cafeteria. By the time she got back with Carly and Brad, the room was full of people in scrubs.
Carly broke free and rushed to her dad's bedside, squirming through until she caught hold of his hand.
The medical team, in the midst of an emergency, would have pushed Carly aside if Brad hadn't spoken in a voice of calm but unmistakable authority.
"Let her stay," he said.
"Dad?" Carly whispered desperately. "Dad, don't go, okay? Don't go!"
A nurse eased Carly back from the bedside, and the work continued, but it was too late, and everyone knew it.
The heartbeat monitor blipped, then flatlined.
Carly turned, sobbing, not into Meg's arms, but into Brad's.
He held her and drew Meg close against his side at the same time.
After that, there were papers to sign. Meg would have to call her mother later, but at the moment, she simply couldn't say the words.
Carly seemed dazed, allowing herself to be led out of the hospital, back to Brad's truck. She'd been inconsolable in Ted's hospital room, but now she was dry-eyed and the only sound she made was the occasional hiccup.
Brad didn't take them back to the Triple M, but to his own ranch. There, he called Eve, then Jesse. Vaguely, as if from a great distance, Meg heard him ask her cousin to make sure her horses got fed.
There were other calls, too, but Meg wasn't tracking. She simply sat at the kitchen table, watching numbly while Carly knelt on the floor, both arms around a sympathetic Willie, her face buried in his fur.
Olivia arrived—Brad must have summoned her—and brought a stack of pizza boxes with her. She set the boxes on the counter, washed her hands at the sink and immediately started setting out plates and silverware.
"I'm not hungry," Carly said.
"Me, either," Meg echoed.
"Humor me," Olivia said.
The pizza tasted like cardboard, but it filled a hole, if only a physical one, and Meg was grateful. Following her example, Carly ate, too.
"Are we staying here tonight?" Carly asked Brad, her eyes enormous and hollow.
Olivia answered for him. "Yes," she said.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Livie—Brad's sister."
"The veterinarian?"
Olivia nodded.
"My dad died today."
Olivia's expressive eyes filled with tears. "I know."
Meg swallowed, but didn't speak. Next to her, Brad took her hand briefly, gave it a squeeze.
"Do you like being an animal doctor?" Carly asked. She'd said hardly a word to Meg or even Brad since they'd left the hospital, but for some reason, she was reaching out to Olivia O'Ballivan.
"I love it," Olivia said. "It's hard sometimes, though. When I try really hard to help an animal, and they don't get better."
"I kept thinking my dad would get well, but he didn't."
"Our dad died, too," Olivia said after a glance in Brad's direction. "He was struck by lightning during a roundup. I kept thinking there must have been a mistake—that he was just down in Phoenix at a cattle auction, or looking for strays up on the mountain."
Meg felt a quick tension in Brad, a singular alertness, gone again as soon as it came. Her guess was he hadn't known his sister, a child when the accident happened, had secretly believed their father would come home.
"Does it ever stop hurting?" Carly asked, her voice small and fragile.
Meg squeezed her eyes shut. Does it ever stop hurting? she wondered.
"You'll never forget your dad, if that's what you mean," Olivia said. "But it gets easier. Brad and our sisters and I, we were lucky. We had our grandfather, Big John. Like you've got Meg."
Brad pushed his chair back, left the table. Stood with his back to them all, as if gazing out the darkened window over the sink.
"Big John passed away, too," Olivia explained quietky. "But we were all grown up by then. He was there when it counted, and now we're got each other."
Carly turned imploring eyes on Meg. "You won't die, too? You won't die and leave me all alone."
Meg got up, went to Carly, gathered her into her arms. "I'll be here," she promised. "I'll be here."
Carly clung to her for a long time, then, typically, pulled away. "Where am I going to sleep?" she asked.
"I thought maybe you'd like to stay in my romm," Olivia said. "It had twin beds. You can have the one by the window, if you'd like."
"You're going to stay, too?"
/> "For tonight," Olivia answered.
Carly looked relieved. Maybe, for a child, it was a matter of safety in numbers - herself, Meg, Brad, Olivia and Willie, all huddled in the same house, somehow keeping the uncertain darkness at bay. "I think I'd like to sleep now,"she said. "Can Willie come, too?"
"He'll need to go outside first, I think," Olivia said.
Brad took Willie out, without a word, returned and watched as the old dog climbed the stairs, Carly leading the way, Olivia bringing up the rear.
"Thanks," Meg said when she and Brad were alone. "You've been wonderful."
Brad began clearing the table, disposing of pizza boxes.
Meg caught his arm. "Brad, what-?"
"My grandfather," he said. "I've just got to missing him. Regretting a lot of things."
She nodded. Waited.
"I'm sorry, Meg," he told her. "That your dad's gone, and you didn't get a chance to know him. That you've got a rough time ahead with Carly. And most of all, I'm sorry there's nothing I can do to make this better."
"You could hold me," Meg said.
He pulled her into an easy, gentle embrace. Kissed her forehead. "I could hold you," he confirmed.
She wanted to ask if he'd meant it, when—was it only a few hours ago?—he'd said he loved her. The problem was, she knew if he took the words back, or qualified them somehow, she wouldn't be able to bear it. Not now, while she was mourning the father she'd lost years ago.
They stood like that for a while, then, by tacit agreement, finished tidying up the kitchen. Before they started up the backstairs, Brad switched out the lights, and Meg stood waiting for him, blinded, not knowing her way around the house, but unafraid. As long as Brad was there, no gloom would have been deep enough to swallow her.
In his room upstairs, they undressed, got into bed together, lay enfolded in each other's arms.
I love you, Meg thought with stark clarity.
They didn't make love.
They didn't talk.
But Meg felt a bittersweet gratification just the same, a deep shift somewhere inside herself, where spirit and body met.
On the edge of sleep, just before she tumbled helplessly over the precipice, Angus crossed her mind, along with a whisper-thin wondering.
Where had he gone?
Chapter Fourteen
The snows came early that year, to the annoyance of the movie people, and Brad was away from the ranch a lot, filming scenes in a studio in Flagstaff. He'd grudgingly admitted that Cynthia had been right—she was perfect for the part of Sarah Jane Stone—and while Meg visited the set once or twice, she stayed away when the love scenes were on the schedule.
She had a lot of other things on her mind, as it happened. She and Carly were bonding, slowly but surely, but the process was rocky. With the help of a counselor, they felt their way toward each other—backed off—tried again.
When the day came for Carly's promised scene—she played a nameless character in calico and a bonnet who brought Brad a glass of punch at a party and solemnly offered it. She'd endlessly practiced her single line—a "you're welcome, mister" to his "thank you"—telling Meg very seriously that there were no small parts, only small actors.
The movie part gave Carly something to hold on to in the dark days after Ted's passing, and Meg was eternally grateful for that. Both she and Carly spent a lot of time at Brad's house, even when he wasn't around, looking after Willie and gradually becoming a part of the place itself.
Ransom and his mares occupied the main pasture at Stone Creek Ranch, and the job of driving hay out to them usually fell to Olivia and Meg, with Carly riding in the back of the truck, seated on the bales. During that time, Meg and Olivia became good friends.
In the spring, when there would be fresh grass in the high country, and no snow to impede their mobility, Ransom and the mares would be turned loose.
"You'll miss him," Meg said once, watching Olivia as she stood in the pickup bed, tossing bales of grass hay to the ground after Carly cut the twine that held them together.
Olivia swallowed visibly and nodded, admiring the stallion as he stood, head turned toward the mountain, sniffing the air for the scents of spring and freedom. On warmer days, he was especially restless, prancing back and forth along the farthest fence, tail high, mane flying in the breeze.
Meg knew there had been many opportunities to sell Ransom for staggering amounts of money, but neither Olivia nor Brad had even considered the idea. In their minds, Ransom wasn't theirs to sell—he belonged to himself, to the high country, to legend. With his wounds healed, he'd have been able to soar over any fence, but he seemed to know the time wasn't right. There in the O'Ballivans' pasture, he had plenty of feed and easily accessible water, hard to find in winter, especially up in the red peaks and canyons, and he'd be at a dis-advantage with the wolves. Still, there was a palpable, restless air of yearning about him that bruised Meg's heart.
It would be a sad and wonderful day when the far gate was opened.
Olivia cheered herself, along with Meg and Carly, with the fact that Brad had decided to make the ranch a haven for displaced mules, donkeys and horses, including unwanted Thoroughbreds who hadn't made the grade as racers, studs or broodmares. At the first sign of spring, the adoptees would begin arriving, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management and various animal-rescue groups.
In the meantime, the ranch, like the larger world, seemed to Meg to be hibernating, practically in suspended animation. Like Ransom, she longed for spring.
It was after one of their visits to Brad's, while they were attending to their own horses on the Triple M, that Carly brought up a subject Meg had been troubled by, but hadn't wanted to raise.
"Where do you suppose Angus is?" the child asked. "I haven't seen him around in a couple of months."
"Hard to know," Meg said carefully.
"Maybe he's busy on the other side," Carly suggested. "You know, showing my dad around and stuff."
"Could be," Meg allowed. Until his last visit—the night he'd been so anxious for a look at the McKettrick family Bible—Meg had seen and spoken to her illustrious ancestor almost every day of her life. She hadn't had so much as a glimpse of him since then, and while there had been countless times she'd wished Angus would stay where he belonged, so she could be a normal person, she missed him.
Surely he wouldn't have simply stopped visiting her without even saying goodbye. It appeared, though, that that was exactly what he'd done.
"I wish he'd come," Carly said somewhat wistfully. "I want to ask him if he's seen my dad."
Meg slipped an arm around her sister, held her close against her side for a second or two. "I'm sure your—our— dad is fine," she said softly.
Carly smiled, but sadness lingered in her eyes. "For a while, I hoped Dad would come back, the way Angus did. But 1 guess he's busy or something."
"Probably," Meg agreed. It went without saying that the Angus phenomenon was rare, but there were times when she wondered if that was really true. How many children, prattling about their imaginary playmates, were actually seeing someone real?
They started back toward the house, two sisters, walking close.
Inside, they both washed up—Meg at the kitchen sink, Carly in the downstairs powder room—and began preparing supper. After the meal, salad and a tamale pie from a recently acquired cookbook geared to the culinarily challenged, Meg cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher while Carly settled down to her homework.
Like most kids, she had a way of asking penetrating questions with no preamble. "Are you going to marry Brad O'Bal-livan?" she inquired now, looking up from her math text. "We spend a lot of time at his place, and I know you sleep over when I'm visiting Eve. Or he comes here."
Things were good between Brad and Meg, probably because he was so busy with the movie that they rarely saw each other. When they were together, they took every opportunity to make love.
"He hasn't asked," Meg said lightly. "And you're in some pretty personal
territory, here. Have I mentioned lately tha 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 drugstore in Flagstaff, 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, eveiything was temporary. "I ran out of toothpaste, 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.
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