Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

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.”

      “How can you be so sure Mom won’t be able to get through to her?”

      “It’s just a hunch,” Travis said.

      Meg was quiet. Travis was famous for his hunches. Too bad he hadn’t paid attention to the one that said his little brother was in big trouble, and that Travis ought to drop everything and look for Brody until he found him.

      “Look, maybe I’m wrong,” he added.

      “What’s your real impression of Sierra, Travis?”

      He took his time answering. “She’s independent to a fault. She’s built a wall around herself and the kid, and she’s not about to let anybody get too close. She’s jumpy, too. If it wasn’t for Liam, and the fact that she probably doesn’t have two nickels to rub together, she definitely wouldn’t be on the Triple M.”

      “Damn,” Meg said. “We knew she was poor, but—”

      “Her car gave out in the driveway as soon as she pulled in. I took a peek under the hood, and believe me, the best mechanic on the planet couldn’t resurrect that heap.”

      “She can drive my Blazer.”

      “That might take some convincing on your part. This is not a woman who wants to be obliged. It’s probably all she can do not to grab the kid and hop on the next bus to nowhere.”

      “This is depressing,” Meg said.

      Travis got up off the bed, peeled back the plastic covering his dinner, and poked warily at the faux meat with the tip of one finger. Talk about depressing.

      “Hey,” he said. “Look on the bright side. She’s here, isn’t she? She’s on the Triple M. It’s a start.”

      “Take care of her, Travis.”

      “As if she’d go along with that.”

      “Do it for me.”

      “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 livestock 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 everybody 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