Sierra's Homecoming

He thought about Sierra and the boy, in there in the big house, eating the chicken and fixings he’d picked up in the deli at the one and only supermarket in Indian Rock. He’d never intended to join them, since they’d just arrived and were settling in, but he could picture himself sitting down at that long table in the kitchen, just the same.

He rooted through his refrigerator, something he had to crouch to do, and chose between Salisbury steak, Salisbury steak and Salisbury steak.

While the sectioned plastic plate was whirling round and round in the lilliputian microwave that came with the trailer, he made coffee and remembered his last visit from Rance McKettrick. Widowed, Rance lived alone in the house his legendary ancestor, Rafe, had built for his wife, Emmeline, and their children, back in the 1880s. He had two daughters, whom he largely ignored.

“This place is just a fancy coffin,” Rance had observed, in his blunt way, when he’d stepped into the trailer. “Brody’s the one that’s dead, Trav, not you.”

Travis rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Brody was dead, all right. No getting around that. Seventeen, with everything to live for, and he’d blown himself up in the back room of a slum house in Phoenix, making meth.

He looked into the window over the sink, saw his own reflection.

Turned away.

His cell phone rang, and he considered letting voice mail pick up, but couldn’t make himself do it. If he’d answered the night Brody called…

He fished the thing out, snapped it open and said, “Reid.”

“Whatever happened to ‘hello’?” Meg asked.

The bell on the microwave rang, and Travis reached in to retrieve his supper, burned his hand and cursed.

She laughed. “Better and better.”

“I’m not in the mood for banter, Meg,” he replied, turning on the water with his free hand and then switching to shove his scorched fingers into the flow.

“You never are,” she said.

“The horses are fine.”

“I know. You would have called me if they weren’t.”

“Then what do you want?”

“My, my, we are testy tonight. I called, you big grouch, to ask about my sister and my nephew. Are they okay? How do they look? Sierra is so private, she’s almost standoffish.”

“You can say that again.”

“Thank you, but in the interest of brevity, I won’t.”

“Since when do you give a damn about brevity?” Travis inquired, but he was grinning by then.

Once again Meg laughed. Once again Travis wished he’d been able to fall in love with her. They’d tried, the two of them, to get something going, on more than one occasion. Meg wanted a baby, and he wanted not to be alone, so it made sense. The trouble was, it hadn’t worked.

There was no chemistry.

There was no passion.

They were never going to be anything more than what they were—the best of friends. He was mostly resigned to that, but in lonely moments, he ached for things to be different.

“Tell me about my sister,” Meg insisted.

“She’s pretty,” Travis said. Real pretty, added a voice in his mind. “She’s proud, and overprotective as hell of the kid.”

“Liam has asthma,” Meg said quietly. “According to Sierra, he nearly died of it a couple of times.”

Travis forgot his burned fingers, his Salisbury steak and his private sorrow. “What?”

Meg let out a long breath. “That’s the only reason Sierra’s willing to have anything to do with Mom and me. Mom put her on the company health plan and arranged for Liam to see a specialist in Flagstaff on a regular basis. In return, Sierra had to agree to spend a year on the ranch.”

Travis stood still, absorbing it all. “Why here?” he asked. “Why not with you and Eve in San Antonio?”

“Mom and I would love that,” Meg said, “but Sierra needs…distance. Time to get used to us.”

“Time to get used to two McKettrick women. So we’re talking, say, the year 2050, give or take a decade?”

“Very funny. Sierra is a McKettrick woman, remember? She’s up to the challenge.”

“She is definitely a McKettrick,” Travis agreed ruefully. And very definitely a woman. “How did you find her?”

“Mom tracked her and Hank down when Sierra was little,” Meg answered.

Travis dropped on to the edge of his bed, which was unmade. The sheets were getting musty, and every night, the pizza crumbs rubbed his hide raw. One of these days he was going to haul off and change them.

“‘Tracked her down’?”

“Yes,” Meg said, with a sigh. “I guess I didn’t tell you about that part.”

“I guess you didn’t.” Travis had known about the kidnapping, how Sierra’s father had taken off with her the day the divorce papers were served, and that the two of them had ended up in Mexico. “Eve knew, and she still didn’t lift a finger to get her own daughter back?”

“Mom had her reasons,” Meg answered, withdrawing a little.

“Oh, well, then,” Travis retorted, “that clears everything up. What reason could she possibly have?”

“It’s not my place to say, Trav,” Meg told him sadly. “Mom and Sierra have to work it all through first, and it might be a while before Sierra’s ready to listen.”

Travis sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. “You’re right,” he conceded.

Meg brightened again, but there was a brittleness about her that revealed more than she probably wanted Travis to know, close as they were. “So,” she said, “what would you say Mom’s chances are? Of reconnecting with Sierra, I mean?”

“The truth?”

“The truth,” Meg said, without enthusiasm.

“Zero to zip. Sierra’s been pleasant enough to me, but she’s as stubborn as any McKettrick that ever drew breath, and that’s saying something.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You said you wanted the truth.”