Sierra's Homecoming

by Linda Lael Miller

  Eve looked down into her cup.

  Liam burst into the room, making both women start.

  “Look, Mom!” he cried, clutching an expensive telescope in both arms, already attached to its tripod. “I’ll be able to see all the way back to the Big Bang with this thing!”

  “You’re getting too excited,” Sierra reiterated, sparing a glance for Eve before rising from her chair. “You’d better go and lie down for a while.”

  Liam balked, of course. He was seven, faced with unexpected largesse. “But I haven’t even opened half my presents!”

  “Later,” Sierra said. She got up, put a hand on her son’s shoulder and steered him toward the back stairs.

  He protested all the way, clutching Eve’s telescope in the same way he had Travis’s DVD player. The stuff she’d given him for Christmas, all bought on sale with her tips from the bar, paled by comparison to this bounty, and even though she was glad for him, she also felt a deep slash of resentment.

  “Look at it this way,” she said a few minutes later, tucking him into bed in a fresh pair of pajamas, the telescope positioned in front of the window, beside the antique one that had been there when they arrived. “You’ve still got a lot of loot downstairs. Rest awhile, and you can tear into it again.”

  “Do you promise?” Liam asked suspiciously. “You won’t make my grandma take it all back to the store or something?”

  “When have I ever lied to you?”

  “When you said there was a Santa Claus.”

  Sierra sighed. “Okay. Name one other time.”

  “You said we didn’t have any family. We’ve got Grandma and Aunt Meg.”

  “I give up,” Sierra said, spreading her hands. “I’m a shameless prevaricator.”

  Liam grinned. “If that boy comes back, I’m going to show him my telescope!”

  A tiny chill moved down Sierra’s spine. “Liam,” she insisted, “there is no boy.”

  “That’s what you think,” Liam replied, and he looked damnably smug as he settled back into his pillows. “This is his room. This is his bed, and that’s his old telescope.”

  Sierra took off the boy’s shoes, tucked him under the faded quilt and sat with him until he drifted off to sleep.

  And even then she didn’t move, because she didn’t want to go downstairs again and hear more well-rehearsed reasons why her mother had abandoned her when she was smaller than Liam.

  1919

  Hannah couldn’t help comparing her second wedding to her first, at least in the privacy of her mind. She and Gabe had been married in the summer, in the side yard at the main ranch house. Gabe’s grandfather, Angus, had been alive then and, as head of the McKettrick clan, he’d issued a decree to that effect. There had been a big cake and a band and long improvised tables burdened with food. There had been guests and gifts and dancing.

  After the celebration, Gabe had driven her to town in a surrey, and they’d stayed right here at the Arizona Hotel, caught the next day’s train out of Indian Rock. Traveled all the way to San Francisco for a honeymoon. Tobias had been conceived during that magical time, and the box of photographs commemorating the trip was one of Hannah’s most treasured possessions.

  Now she found herself standing in the cramped and cluttered office behind the reception desk, a widow about to become a bride. Only, this time there was no cake, no honeymoon trip to look forward to, and certainly no music and dancing.

  Those things wouldn’t have mattered, Hannah was certain, if she’d loved Doss and known he loved her. It wasn’t the modesty of the ceremony that troubled her, but the coldly practical reasons behind it.

  While the preacher droned the sacred words, with Mr. Crenshaw and one of the maids for witnesses, Hannah stole the occasional sidelong glance at her groom.

  Doss looked stalwart, determined and impossibly handsome.

  What will become of us? Hannah wondered, in silent and stoic despair. She’d pasted a wobbly smile on her face, because she wouldn’t have the preacher gossiping afterward, saying she’d looked like a deer with one foot stuck in a railroad track, and the train about to come clackety-clacking round the bend at full throttle.

  Oh, no. If she did what she really wanted to do, which was either run or break down and cry, that self-righteous old coot would spread the news from one end of the state to the other, and what a time folks would have with that.

  A weeping bride.

  A grimly resigned groom.

  The talk wouldn’t die down for years.

  So Hannah endured.

  She repeated her vows, when she was prompted, and kept her chin high, her backbone straight and her eyes bone dry. The ordeal was almost over when suddenly the office door banged open and Doss’s uncle Jeb strolled in. He was still handsome, though well into middle age, and he grinned as he took in the not-so-happy couple.

  “Thought I’d missed it,” he said.

  Doss laughed, evidently pleased to set eyes on another blood-McKettrick.

  The minister cleared his throat, not entirely approving of the interruption, it would seem.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” he said quickly.

  “Kiss your bride,” Jeb prompted, watching his nephew closely.

  Hannah blushed.

  Doss kissed her, and she wondered if he’d have remembered to do it at all, if his uncle hadn’t provided a verbal nudge.

  “No flowers?” Jeb asked, after Doss had paid the preacher and the man had gone. He looked around the office. “No guests?”

  “It was a hasty decision,” Doss explained.

  Hannah blushed again.

  “Oh,” Jeb said. He shook Doss’s hand, whacked him once on the shoulder and then turned to Hannah, gently kissing her cheek. “Be happy, Hannah,” he whispered, close to her ear. “Gabe would want that.”

  Tears brimmed in Hannah’s eyes, and this after she’d held up so well, made such an effort to play the happy bride. Did her true feelings show? Or was Jeb McKettrick just perceptive?

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “I thought you were down in Phoenix,” Doss said to his uncle. If he’d noticed Hannah’s tears, he was keeping the observation to himself.

  “I came up here to take care of some business at the Cattleman’s Bank,” Jeb explained. “Arrived on the afternoon train. It’s a long ride out to the ranch, and the meeting ran long, so I decided to spend the night here at the hotel and head back to Phoenix tomorrow. I was sitting in the dining room, taking my supper, when somebody mentioned that the two of you were shut up in here with a preacher.” He glanced at Hannah again, and she saw concern flash briefly in his eyes. “I decided to invite myself to the festivities. Of course when I tell Chloe about it, she’ll say I ought to learn a few manners. After all this time, my wife still hasn’t given up on grinding off my rough edges.”

  Doss slipped an arm around Hannah’s waist. “We’re glad you came,” he told Jeb. “Aren’t we, Hannah?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and he had the gall to pinch her lightly under her ribs, through the fabric of her sadly practical gray dress.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Where’s Tobias?” Jeb asked. “Chloe’ll skin me if I don’t bring back a detailed report. That woman likes to know everything about everybody. How much the boy’s grown, how he’s doing with his lessons, and all that.”

  “He’s down with a cold,” Doss said. “That’s why we brought him to town. So he could see the doctor.”

  “And you just decided to get married while you were here?”

  Doss colored up.

  Hannah was stricken to silence again.

  Jeb smiled. “The boy’s here in the hotel, then?”

  Hannah nodded, still mute.

  Jeb’s gaze shifted to Doss. “Why don’t you go up there and see if he’s agreeable to a visit from his old Uncle Jeb?” he said.

  Doss hesitated, then nodded and left the room.

  “I’m going to ask Doss the same thing I’m about to ask y
ou,” Jeb said, the moment they were alone with the door closed. “What’s going on here?”

  Hannah swallowed painfully. “Well, it just seemed sensible for us to get married.”

  “Sensible?”

  “Both of us living out there on the ranch, I mean. You know how folks…speculate about things like that.”

  “I know, all right,” Jeb answered. “Chloe and I stirred up plenty of talk in our day. I guess I just figured if there’d been a wedding in the offing, the family would have heard something about it before now.”

  “Doss wired his folks, and I was going to write to mine—”

  “You’re both adults and it’s your business what you do,” Jeb said. “Do you love Doss, Hannah?”

  She fell back on something she’d said to Tobias, out at the ranch, when he’d asked a similar question. “He’s family,” she replied.

  “He’s also a man. A young one, with his whole life ahead of him. He deserves a wife who’s glad to be his wife.”

  Hannah lifted her chin. “A few minutes ago you told me Gabe would want this. Doss and me married, I mean. And you’re probably right. So I did it as much for him as anybody.”

  “There’s only one person you ought to please in a situation like this, Hannah, and that’s yourself.”

  “Tobias needs Doss.”

  “I don’t doubt that’s true. Losing Gabe was hard on everybody in this family, but it was worse for you and Tobias. The question on my mind right now is, do you need Doss, Hannah?”

  Hannah needed her new husband, all right, but not in a way she was going to discuss with his uncle—or anyone else on the face of the earth, for that matter. “I’ll see that he’s happy, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said, and felt her cheeks burn again, fearing she’d revealed exactly what she’d been so determined to keep secret.

  “He’ll be happy,” Jeb said, with such remarkable certainty that Hannah wondered if he knew something she didn’t. “Will you?”

  “I’ll learn to be,” she answered.

  Jeb placed his hands on her shoulders, squeezed lightly and kissed her forehead. Then, without another word, he went out, leaving Hannah standing there alone, full of confusion and sorrow.

  She was waiting in the lobby when Doss came downstairs, some minutes later, looking shy as a schoolboy. Evidently, Jeb had already spoken to him and was with Tobias now.

  Doss tried to smile but fell a little short. Now that they were actually married, he apparently didn’t know what to say, and neither did Hannah. They were making the best of things, both of them, and it shouldn’t have been that way.

  “I guess we ought to have some supper,” Doss said. “Tobias has already eaten. The maid went down to the kitchen and brought him up a meal while we were—”

  Hannah looked down at her feet. “You deserve somebody who loves you,” she said softly, miserable with shame.

  Doss put a finger under her chin and raised her head, so he could look into her eyes. “I don’t know if your mind and heart love me, Hannah McKettrick,” he said solemnly, with no trace of arrogance, “but your body does. And maybe it will teach the rest of you to feel the same way.”

  She took a gentle hold on the lapels of his new suit, bought just for the wedding. “Gabe would want this,” she said. “Our being married, I mean.”

  Doss swallowed. “I loved my brother,” he told her gravely, “but I don’t want to talk about him. Not tonight.”

  Hannah wept inside, even though her eyes were dry. “All right,” she agreed.

  He led her into the dining room, and they both ordered fried chicken dinners. It was an occasion, to eat a restaurant meal, almost as unusual, in Hannah’s life, as getting married. She was starved, after a long and hectic day, and yet the food tasted like sawdust from the first bite.

  Jeb appeared, just as they were trying to choke down dessert. Chocolate cake, normally Hannah’s favorite, with powdered sugar icing.

  “Tobias,” Jeb announced, “is spending the night in the room next to mine. I’ve already made arrangements for the maid to stay with him.”

  Hannah laid down her fork, relieved not to have to pretend to eat any longer. It was almost as hard as pretending to be happy, and she didn’t think she could manage both.

  “I guess that’s all right,” she allowed.

  Doss looked down at his plate. He hadn’t eaten much more than Hannah had, though, like her, he’d made a good show of it. Making illicit love on the ranch was one thing, she realized, and being married was quite another. Was he as nervous about the night to come as she was?

  Jeb congratulated them both and left.

  Their plates were cleared away.

  Doss paid the bill.

  And then there was nothing to do but go upstairs and get on with their wedding night.

  Chapter Ten

  Tobias’s bed was empty, and his things had been removed. Hannah glanced nervously at Doss, now her husband, and put a hand to her throat.

  He sighed and loosened his string tie, then unbuttoned his collar. If there had been whisky in that hotel room, Hannah was sure he would have poured himself a double and downed it in a gulp. She felt moved to touch his arm, soothe him somehow, but the urge died aborning. Instead she stood rigid upon the soles of her practical high-button shoes, and wished she’d put her foot down while there was still time, called the whole idea of getting married for the damn fool notion that it was, stopped the wedding and let the gossips say what they would.

  She was miserable.

  Doss was miserable.

  What in the world had possessed them?

  “We could get an annulment,” she said shakily.

  Doss’s gaze sliced to her, sharp enough to leave the thick air quivering in its wake. “Oh, I’d say we were past that,” he retorted coldly. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Hannah’s cheeks burned as smartly as if they’d been chapped by the bitter wind even then rattling at the windows and seeping in as a draft. “I only meant that we haven’t…well…consummated the marriage, and—”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I remember it a little differently,” he said.

  Damn him, Hannah thought fiercely. He’d been so all-fired set on going through with the ceremony—it had been his idea to exchange vows, not hers—and now he was acting as though he’d been wooed, enticed, trapped.

  “I will thank you to remember this, Doss McKettrick—I didn’t seduce you. You seduced me!”

  He hooked a finger in his tie and jerked at it. Took an angry step toward her and glared down into her face. “You could have said no at any time, Hannah,” he reminded her, making a deliberate effort to keep his voice down. “My recollection is that you didn’t. In fact, you—”

  “Stop,” Hannah blurted. “If you’re any kind of gentleman, you won’t throw that in my face! I was—we were both—lonely, Doss. We lost our heads, that’s all. We could find the preacher, tell him it was a mistake, ask him to tear up the license—”

  “You might as well stand in the middle of Main Street, ring a cowbell to draw a crowd, and tell the whole damn town what we did as do that!” Doss seethed. “And what’s going to happen in six months or so, when your belly is out to here with my baby?”

  Hannah’s back teeth clamped together so hard that she had to will them apart. “What makes you so sure there is a baby?” she demanded. “Gabe and I wanted more children after Tobias, but nothing happened.”

  Doss opened his mouth, closed it again forcefully. Whatever he’d been about to say, he’d clearly thought better of it. All of a sudden Hannah wanted to reach down his throat and haul the words out of him like a bucket from a deep well, even though she knew she’d be just as furious to hear them spoken as she was right then, left to wonder.

  For what seemed to Hannah like a very long time, the two of them just stood there, practically nose to nose, glowering at each other.

  Hannah broke first, shattered against that McKettrick stubbornness the way a storm-tossed ship might shatter on
a rocky shore. With a cry of sheer frustration, she turned on one heel, strode into the next room and slammed the door hard behind her.

  There was no key to turn the lock, and nothing to brace under the knob to keep Doss from coming after her. So Hannah paced, arms folded, until some of her fury was spent.

  Her gaze fell on her nightgown, spread by some thoughtful soul—probably the maid who had looked after Tobias while she and Doss were downstairs ruining their lives—across the foot of the bed.

  Resignation settled over Hannah, heavy and cold as a wagonload of wet burlap sacks.

  I might as well get this over with, she thought, trying to ignore the unbecoming shiver of excitement she felt at the prospect of being alone with Doss, bared to him, surrendering and, at the same time, conquering.

  Resolutely she took off her clothes, donned the nightgown and unpinned her hair.

  And waited.

  Where was Doss?

  She sat down on the edge of the mattress, twiddling her thumbs.

  He didn’t arrive.

  She got up and paced.

  Still no Doss.

  She was damned if she’d open the door and invite him in after the way he’d acted, but the waiting was almost unbearable.

  Finally Hannah sneaked across the room, bent and peered through the keyhole. Her view was limited, and while she couldn’t actually see Doss, that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. If he’d left, she would have heard him—wouldn’t she?

  She paced again, briskly this time, muttering under her breath.

  The room was growing cold, and not just because there was no fire to light. She marched over to the radiator, under the window, and cranked on the handle until she heard a comforting hiss. Something caught her eye, through the night-darkened glass, as she straightened, and she wiped a peephole in the steam with the sleeve of her nightgown. Squinted.

  Was that Doss, standing in the spill of light flowing over the swinging doors of the Blue Garter Saloon down at the corner? His shape and stance were certainly familiar, but the clothes were wrong—or were they? Doss had worn a suit to the wedding, and this man was dressed for the open range.

  Hannah stared harder, and barely noticed when the tip of her nose touched the icy glass. Then the man struck a match against the saloon wall, and lit a cheroot, and she saw his face clearly in the flare of orange light.