The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming

“Oh, please.”

Meg paused, took aim and scored a bull’s-eye. “Then do it for Liam.”

CHAPTER FOUR

1919

DOSS LEFT THE HOUSE AFTER supper, ostensibly to look in on the live stock one last time before heading upstairs to bed, leaving the dishwashing to Tobias and Hannah. He stood still in the dooryard, raising the collar of his coat against the wicked cold. Stars speckled the dark, wintry sky.

In those moments he missed Gabe with a piercing intensity that might have bent him double, if he wasn’t McKettrick proud. That was what his mother called the quality, anyhow. In the privacy of his own mind, Doss named it stubbornness.

Thinking of his ma made his pa come to mind, too. He missed them almost as sorely as he did Gabe. His uncles, Rafe and Kade and Jeb, along with their wives, were all down south, around Phoenix, where the weather was more hospitable to their aging bones. Their sons, to a man, were still in the army, even though the war was over, waiting to be mustered out. Their daughters had all married, every one of them keeping the McKettrick name, and lived in places as far-flung as Boston, New York and San Francisco.

There was hardly a McKettrick left on the place, save himself and Hannah and Tobias. It deepened Doss’s loneliness, knowing that. He wished every body would just come back home, where they belonged, but it would have been easier to herd wild barn cats than that bunch.

Doss looked back toward the house. Saw the lantern glowing at the kitchen window. Smiled.

The moment he’d gone outside, Hannah must have switched off the bulb. She worried about running short of things, he’d noticed, even though she’d come from a prosperous family, and certainly married into one.

His throat tightened. He knew she’d been different before he brought Gabe home in a pine box, but then, they all had. Gabe’s going left a hole in the fabric of what it meant to be a McKettrick, and not a tidy one, stitched at the edges. Rather, it was a jagged tear, and judging by the raw newness of his own grief, Doss had little hope of it ever mending.

Time heals, his mother had told him after they’d laid Gabe in the ground up there on the hill, with his Grandpa Angus and those that had passed after him, but she’d had tears in her eyes as she said it. As for his pa, well, he’d stood a long time by the grave. Stood there until Rafe and Kade and Jeb brought him away.

Doss thrust out a sigh, remembering. “Gabe,” he said, under his breath, “Hannah says it’s wrong of me, but I still wish it had been me instead of you.”

He’d have given anything for an answer, but wherever Gabe was, he was busy doing other things. Maybe they had fishing holes up there in the sky, or cattle to round up and drive to market.

“Take care of Hannah and my boy,” Gabe had told him, in that army infirmary, when they both knew there would be no turning the illness around. “Promise me, Doss.”

Doss had swallowed hard and made that promise, but it was a hard one to keep. Hannah didn’t seem to want taking care of, and every morning when Doss woke up, he was afraid this would be the day she’d decide to go back to her own people, up in Montana, and stay gone for good.

The back door opened, startling Doss out of his musings. He hesitated for a moment, then tramped in the direction of the barn, trying to look like a man bent on a purpose.

Hannah caught up, bundled into a shawl and carrying a lighted lantern in one hand.

“I think I’m going mad,” she blurted out.

Doss stopped, looked down at her in puzzled concern. “It’s the grief, Hannah,” he told her gruffly. “It will pass.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” Hannah challenged, catching up with herself. The snow was deep and getting deeper, and the wind bit straight through to the marrow.

Doss moved to the windward side, to be a buffer for her. “I’ve got to believe it,” he said. “Feeling this bad forever doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“I put the teapot away,” Hannah said, her breath coming in puffs of white, “I know I put it away. But I must have gotten it out again, without knowing or remembering, and that scares me, Doss. That really scares me.”

They reached the barn. Doss took the lantern from her and hauled open one of the big doors one-handed. It wasn’t easy, since the snow had drifted, even in the short time since he’d left off feeding and watering the horses and the milk cow and that cussed mule Seesaw. The critter was a son of Doss’s mother’s mule, who’d borne the same name, and he was a son of something else, too.

“Maybe you’re a mite forgetful these days,” Doss said, once he’d gotten her inside, out of the cold. The familiar smells and sounds of the darkened barn were a solace to him—he came there often, even when he didn’t have work to do, which was seldom. On a ranch, there was always work to do—wood to chop, harnesses to mend, animals to look after. “That doesn’t mean you’re not sane, Hannah.”

Don’t say it, he pleaded silently. Don’t say you might as well take Tobias and head for Montana.

It was a selfish thought, Doss knew. In Montana, Hannah could live a city life again. No riding a mule five miles to fetch the mail. No breaking the ice on the water troughs on winter mornings, so the cattle and horses could drink. No feeding chickens and dressing like a man.

If Hannah left the Triple M, Doss didn’t know what he’d do. First and foremost, he’d have to break his promise to Gabe, by default if not directly, but there was more to it than that. A lot more.

“There’s something else, too,” Hannah confided.

To keep himself busy, Doss went from stall to stall, looking in on sleepy horses, each one confounded and blinking in the light of his lantern. He was giving Hannah space, enough distance to get out whatever it was she wanted to say.

“What?” he asked, when she didn’t speak again right away.

“Tobias. He just told me—he told me—”

Doss looked back, saw Hannah standing in the moonlit doorway, rimmed in silver, with one hand pressed to her mouth.

He went back to her. Set the lantern aside and took her by the shoulders. “What did he tell you, Hannah?”

“Doss, he’s seeing things.”

He tensed on the inside. Would have shoved a hand through his hair in agitation if he hadn’t been wearing a hat and his ears weren’t bound to freeze if he took it off. “What kind of things?”

“A boy.” She took hold of his arm, and her grip was strong for such a small woman. It did curious things to him, feeling her fingers on him, even through the combined thickness of his coat and shirt. “Doss, Tobias says he saw a boy in his room.”

Doss looked around. There was nothing but bleak, frozen land for miles around. “That’s impossible,” he said.

“You’ve got to talk to him.”

“Oh, I’ll talk to him, all right.” Doss started for the house, so fixed on getting to Tobias that he forgot all about keeping Hannah sheltered from the wind. She had to lift her skirts to keep pace with him.

Present Day

“Tell me about the boy you saw in your room,” Sierra said, when they’d eaten their fill of fried chicken, macaroni salad, mashed potatoes with gravy, and corn on the cob.

Liam’s gaze was clear as he regarded her from his side of the long table. “He’s a ghost,” he replied, and waited, visibly expecting the statement to be refuted.

“Maybe an imaginary playmate?” Sierra ventured. Liam was a lonely little boy; their life style had seen to that. After her father had died, drunk himself to death in a back-street cantina in San Miguel, the two of them had wandered like gypsies. San Diego. North Carolina, Georgia, and finally Florida.

“There’s nothing imaginary about him,” Liam said staunchly. “He wears funny clothes, like those kids on those old-time shows on TV. He’s a ghost, Mom. Face it.”

“Liam—”

“You never believe anything I tell you!”

“I believe everything you tell me,” Sierra insisted evenly. “But you’ve got to admit, this is a stretch.” Again she thought of the teapot. Again she pushed the recollection aside.

“I never lie, Mom.”

She moved to pat his hand, but he pulled back. The set of his jaw was stubborn, and his gaze drilled into her, full of challenge. She tried again. “I know you don’t lie, Liam. But you’re in a strange new place and you miss your friends and—”