Sierra's Homecoming

by Linda Lael Miller

  They wore the name like a badge, all of them.

  After that came more pictures of Holt and Lorelei together and separately. In one, they were each holding the hand of a laughing, golden-haired toddler.

  Gabriel Angus McKettrick, stated a fading caption beneath.

  On the facing page, Lorelei sat proud and straight in a chair, holding an infant. Young Gabriel, older now, stood with a hand on her thigh, his ankles crossed, with the toe of one old-fashioned shoe touching the floor. Holt flanked them all, one hand resting on Lorelei’s shoulder. The baby, according to the inscription, was Doss Jacob McKettrick.

  Sierra continued to turn pages, and moved through the lives of Gabe and Doss along with them, or so it seemed, catching a glimpse of them on important dates. Birthdays. School. Mounted on ponies. Fishing in a pond.

  Sierra felt as though she were looking not at mere photographs, but through little sepia-stained windows into another time, a time as vivid and real as her own.

  She watched Gabe and Doss McKettrick grow into young men, both of them blond, both of them handsome and sturdy.

  At last she came to the wedding picture. Her gaze landed on Hannah, standing proudly beside Gabe. She was wearing a lovely white dress, holding a nosegay.

  Hannah.

  The woman with whom, in some inexplicable way, she shared this house. The woman she had seen in Liam’s bedroom the night before, caring for her own sick child even as Sierra was caring for hers.

  Sierra could go no further. Not then.

  She closed the album carefully.

  “Mom?”

  She turned, looked around to see Liam standing at the foot of the stairs, in his flannel pajamas. His hair was rumpled, his glasses were askew, and he looked desperately worried.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said.

  “Travis is putting stuff in his truck,” he told her. “Like he’s going away or something.”

  Sierra’s heart broke into two pieces. She got up, went to him. “I guess he was just here temporarily, to look after your aunt Meg’s horses.”

  Liam blinked. A tear slipped down his cheek. “He can’t go,” he said plaintively. “Who’ll make the furnace work? Who’ll get us to the clinic if I get sick?”

  “I can do those things, Liam,” Sierra said. She offered a weak smile, and Liam looked skeptical. “Okay, maybe not the furnace. But I know how to get a fire going in the wood stove. And I can handle the rest, too.”

  Liam’s lower lip wobbled. “I thought…maybe—”

  Sierra hugged him, hard. She wanted to cry herself, but not in front of Liam. Not when his heart was breaking, just like hers. One of them had to be strong, and she was elected.

  She was an adult.

  She was a McKettrick.

  Before she could think of anything to say, the back door opened and suddenly Travis was there. He looked at her briefly, but then his gaze went straight to Liam’s face.

  “If you came to say goodbye,” Liam blurted out, “then don’t! I don’t care if you’re leaving—I don’t care!” With that, he turned and fled up the stairs.

  “That went well,” Travis said, taking off his hat and hanging it on the peg. He didn’t take his coat off, though, which meant he really was going away. Sierra had known that—and, at the same time, she hadn’t known it. Not until she was faced with the reality.

  “He’s attached to you,” she said evenly. “But he’ll be all right.”

  Travis studied her so closely that for a moment she thought he was going to refute her words. “I know this all seems pretty sudden,” he began.

  Sierra kept her distance, glad she wasn’t standing too close to him. “It’s your life, Travis. You’ve done a lot to help us, and we’re grateful.”

  Upstairs, something crashed to the floor.

  Sierra closed her eyes.

  “I’d better go up and talk to him,” Travis said.

  “No,” Sierra replied. “Leave him alone. Please.”

  Another crash.

  She found Liam’s backpack, unzipped it and took out the inhaler. “I’ve got to get him calmed down,” she said quietly. “Thanks for…everything. And goodbye.”

  “Sierra…”

  “Goodbye, Travis.”

  With that, she turned and went up the stairs.

  Liam had destroyed his new telescope and his DVD player. He was standing in the middle of the wreckage, trembling with the helplessness of a child in a world run by adults, his face flushed and wet with tears.

  Sierra picked up his shoes, made her way to him. “Put these on, buddy,” she said gently, crouching to help. “You’ll cut your feet if you don’t.”

  “Is he—” Liam gulped down a sob “—gone?”

  “I think so,” Sierra said.

  “Why?” Liam wailed, putting a hand on her shoulder to keep from falling while he jammed one foot into a shoe, then the other. “Why does he have to go?”

  Sierra sighed. “I don’t know, honey,” she answered.

  “Make him stay!”

  “I can’t, Liam.”

  “Yes, you can! You just don’t want to! You don’t want me to have a dad!”

  “Liam, that is enough.” Sierra stood, handed him the inhaler. “Breathe,” she ordered.

  He obeyed, puffing on the inhaler between intermittent, heartbreaking sobs. “Make him stay,” he pleaded.

  She squired him to the bed, pulled his shoes off again, tucked him in. “Liam,” she said.

  Outside, the truck door slammed. The engine started up.

  And suddenly Sierra was moving.

  She ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, and wrenched open the back door. Coatless, shivering, she dashed across the yard toward Travis’s truck.

  He was backing out, but when he saw her, he stopped. Rolled down the window.

  She jumped on to the running board, her fingers curved around the glass. “Wait,” she said, and then she felt stupid because she didn’t know what to say after that.

  Travis eased the door open, and she was forced to step back down on to the ground. Unbuttoning his coat as he got out, he wrapped it around her. But he didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there, staring at her.

  She huddled inside his coat. It smelled like him, and she wished she could keep it forever. “I thought it meant something,” she finally murmured. “When we made love, I mean. I thought it meant something.”

  He cupped a gloved hand under her chin. “Believe me,” he said gruffly, “it did.”

  “Then why are you leaving?”

  “Because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. You were busy with Liam, and you’d made it pretty clear we had nothing to talk about.”

  “We have plenty to talk about, Travis Reid. I’m not some…some rodeo groupie you can just have sex with and forget!”

  “You can say that again,” Travis agreed, smiling a little. “Do you mind if we go inside to have this conversation? It’s colder than a well-digger’s ass out here, and I’m not wearing a coat.”

  Sierra turned on her heel and marched toward the house, and Travis followed.

  She tried not to think about all the things that might mean.

  Inside she gestured toward the table, took off Travis’s coat and started a pot of coffee brewing, so she’d have a chance to think up something to say.

  Travis stepped up behind her. Laid his hands on her shoulders.

  “Sierra,” he said. “Stop fiddling with the coffeemaker and talk to me.”

  She turned, looked up into his eyes. “It’s not like I was expecting marriage or anything,” she said, whispering. Liam was probably crouched at the top of the stairs by then, listening. “We’re adults. We had…we’re adults. But the least you could have done, after all that’s gone on, was give us a little notice—”

  “When Brody died,” Travis said, “I died, too. I walked away from everything—my house, my job, everything. Then I met you, and when—” He paused, with a little smile, and glanced toward the stairs, evi
dently suspecting that Liam was there, all ears, just as she did. “When we were adults, I knew the game was up. I had to get it together. Start living my life again.”

  Sierra blinked, speechless.

  He touched his mouth to hers. It wasn’t a kiss, and yet it affected Sierra that way. “It’s too soon to say this,” he said, “but I’m going to say it anyway. Something happened to me yesterday. Something I don’t understand. All I know is, I can’t live another day like a dead man walking. I called Eve and asked for my old job back, and I’ll be working in Indian Rock, at McKettrickCo, with Keegan. In the meantime I’ve got to put my house on the market and make arrangements to store my stuff. But it won’t be long before I’m at your door, with every intention of winning you over for good.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Liam came shooting down the stairs, wheeling his arms. “Get a clue, Mom! He’s in love with you!”

  “That’s right,” Travis said. He gave Liam a look of mock sternness. “I was planning to break it to her gradually, though.”

  “You’re in…?” Sierra sputtered.

  “Love,” Travis finished for her. “Just tell me this one thing. Do I have a chance with you?”

  “Give him a chance, Mom!” Liam cried jubilantly. “That’s not too much to ask, is it? All the man wants is a chance!”

  Sierra laughed, even as tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. “Liam, hush!” she said.

  “What do you say, McKettrick?” Travis asked, taking hold of her shoulders again. “Do I get a chance?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  “If you’re going to work in town,” Liam enthused, tugging at Travis’s shirtsleeve by then, “you might as well just move in with us!”

  Travis chuckled, released Sierra to lean down and scoop Liam up in one arm. “Whoa,” he said. “I’m all for that plan, but I think your mother needs a little more time.”

  “You’re not leaving?” Liam asked, so hopefully that Sierra’s heartbeat quickened.

  “I’m not leaving,” Travis confirmed. “I’ve got some things to do in Flagstaff, then I’ll be back.”

  “Will you live right here, on the ranch?” Liam demanded.

  “Not right away, cowpoke,” Travis answered. “This whole thing is real important. I don’t want to get it wrong. Understand?”

  Liam nodded solemnly.

  “Good,” Travis said. “Now, get on back upstairs, so I can kiss your mother without you ogling us.”

  “I broke my DVD player,” Liam confessed, suddenly crestfallen. “On purpose, too.” He paused, swallowed audibly. “Are you mad?”

  “You’re the one who’ll have to do without a DVD player,” Travis said reasonably. “Why would I be mad?”

  “I’m sorry, Travis,” Liam told him.

  Travis set the boy back on his feet. “Apology accepted. While we’re at it, I’m sorry, too. I should have talked to you—your mother, too—before I packed up my stuff. I guess I was just in too much of a hurry to get things rolling.”

  “I forgive you,” Liam said.

  Travis ruffled his hair. “Beat it,” he replied.

  Liam scampered toward the stairs and hopped up them as though he were on a pogo stick.

  “Are you sure he’s sick?” Travis asked.

  Sierra laughed. “Kiss me, cowpoke,” she said.

  1919

  Doc Willaby was with them for three full days, waiting for his bumps and bruises to heal and the weather to clear. He played endless games of checkers with Tobias, next to the kitchen stove, and Hannah and Doss tried hard to pretend they were sensible people. The truth was, they could barely keep their hands off each other.

  “How come I have to move to the other end of the hall?” Tobias asked Doss, on the morning of the third endless day.

  “You just do,” Doss answered.

  Early that afternoon, the sleigh came pulling into the yard, drawn by Cain and Abel and driven by Kody Jackson, from the livery stable. Two outriders completed the procession.

  “Glory be,” Doc said, peering out the window, along with Hannah. “They’ve come to fetch me back to Indian Rock.” He looked down at Hannah and smiled wisely. “Now you and Doss can stop acting like a couple of old married folks and do what comes naturally.”

  Hannah blushed, but she couldn’t help smiling in the process. “It’s been good having you here, Doc,” she said, and she meant it, too. “You saved Doss’s life the other night, coming all that way to fetch me, in the shape you were in. I’ll be grateful all my days.”

  He took her hand. Squeezed it. “He loves you, Hannah.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “And I love him, too.”

  “That’s all that counts, in the long run. Or the short one, for that matter. We each of us get a certain number of days to spend on this earth. Only the good Lord knows how many. Spend them loving that man of yours and that fine boy, and you’ll have done the right thing.”

  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 alongside 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 herself making the kitchen presentable. Tobias was upstairs, resting in his new bedroom 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 lightbulb 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 everybody. 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 everywhere 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 inside 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 downstairs. She gathered ink and a pen from the study and lit a lantern in the kitchen.