Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

Liam translated. “Guess you’d better check it out. Just make it quick, because I’ve still got a pile of mail to answer.”

      Smiling again, Sierra took the chair Liam so reluctantly surrendered and read the message from Meg.

      Travis tells me your car died. Use my Blazer. The keys are in the sugar bowl beside the teapot.

      Sierra’s pride kicked in. Thanks, she replied, at a fraction of Liam’s typing speed, but I probably won’t need it. My car is just…She paused. Her car was just what? Old? tired, she finished, inspired.

      The Blazer won’t run when I come back if somebody doesn’t charge up the battery. It’s been sitting too long, Meg responded quickly. She must have been as fast with a keyboard as Liam.

      Is Travis going to report on everything I do? Sierra wrote. She made so many mistakes, she had to retype the message before hitting Send, and that galled her.

      Yes, Meg wrote. Because I plan to nag every last detail out of him.

      Sierra sighed. It won’t be that interesting, she answered, taking her time so she wouldn’t have to revise. She was out of practice, and if she hoped to land anything better than a waitressing job in Indian Rock, she’d better polish her computer skills.

      Meg sent a smiley face, followed by, Good night, Sis. (I’ve always wanted to say that.)

      Sierra bit her lower lip. Good night, she tapped out, and rose from the chair with a glance at the clock on the mantel above the now-snapping fire.

      Why had she lit it? She was exhausted, and now she would either have to throw water on the flames or wait until they died down. The first method, of course, would make a terrible mess, so that was out.

      “Hurry up and finish what you’re doing,” she told Liam, who had plopped in the chair again the moment Sierra got out of it. “Half an hour till bedtime.”

      “I had a nap,” Liam reminded her, typing simultaneously.

      “Finish,” Sierra repeated. With that, she left the study, climbed the stairs and went into Liam’s room to get his favorite pajamas from one of the suitcases. She meant to put them in the clothes dryer for a few minutes, warm them up.

      Something drew her to the window, though. She looked down, saw that the lights were on in Travis’s trailer and his truck was parked nearby. Evidently, he hadn’t stayed long in town, or wherever he’d gone.

      Why did it please her so much, knowing that?

      1919

      Hannah stood in the doorway of Tobias’s room, watching her boy sleep. He looked so peaceful, lying there, but she knew he had bad dreams sometimes. Just the night before, in the wee small hours, he’d crawled into bed beside her, snuggled as close as his little-boy pride would allow, and whispered earnestly that she oughtn’t die anytime soon.

      She’d been so choked up, she could barely speak.

      Now she wanted to wake him, hold him tight in her arms, protect him from whatever it was in his mind that made him see little boys that weren’t there.

      He was lonely, that was all. He needed to be around other children. Way out here, he went to a one-room school, when it wasn’t closed on account of snow, with only seven other pupils, all of whom were older than he was.

      Maybe she should take him home to Montana. He had cousins there. They’d live in town, too, where there were shops and a library and even a moving-picture theater. He could ride his bicycle, come spring, and play baseball with other boys.

      Hannah’s throat ached. Gabe had wanted his son raised here, on the Triple M. Wanted him to grow up the way he had, rough-and-tumble, riding horses, rounding up stray cattle, part of the land. Of course, Gabe hadn’t expected to die young—he’d meant to come home, so he and Hannah could fill that big house with children. Tobias would have had plenty of company then.

      A tear slipped down Hannah’s cheek, and she swatted it away. Straightened her spine.

      Gabe was gone, and there weren’t going to be any more children.

      She heard Doss climbing the stairs, and wanted to move out of the doorway. He thought she was too fussy, always hovering over Tobias. Always trying to protect him.

      How could a man understand what it meant to bear and nurture a child?

      Hannah closed her eyes and stayed where she was.

      Doss stopped behind her, uncertain. She could feel that, along with the heat and sturdy substance of his body.

      “Leave the child to sleep, Hannah,” he said quietly.

      She nodded, closed Tobias’s door gently and turned to face Doss there in the darkened hallway. He carried a book under one arm and an unlit lantern in his other hand.

      “It’s because he’s lonesome,” she said.

      Doss clearly knew she was referring to Tobias’s hallucination. “Kids make up playmates,” he told her. “And being lonesome is a part of life. It’s a valley a person has to go through, not something to run away from.”

      No McKettrick ever ran from anything. Doss didn’t have to say it, and neither did she. But she wasn’t a McKettrick, not by blood. Oh, she still wrote the word, whenever she had to sign something, but she’d stopped owning the name the day they put Gabe in the ground.

      She wasn’t sure why. He’d been so proud of it, like all the rest of them were.

      “Do you ever wish you could live someplace else?” Hannah heard herself say.

      “No,” Doss said, so quickly and with such gravity that Hannah almost believed he’d been reading her mind. “I belong right here.”

      “But the others—your uncles and cousins—they didn’t stay….”

      “Ask any one of them where home is,” Doss answered, “and they’ll tell you it’s the Triple M.”

      Hannah started to speak, then held her tongue. Nodded. “Good night, Doss,” she said.

      He inclined his head and went on to his own room, shut himself away.

      Hannah stood alone in the dark for a long time.

      She’d been so happy on the Triple M when Gabe was alive, and even after he’d gone into the army, because she’d never once doubted that he’d return. Come walking up the path with a duffel bag over one shoulder, whistling. She’d rehearsed that day a thousand times in her mind—pictured herself running to meet him, throwing herself into his arms.

      It was never going to happen.

      Without him, she might as well have been alone on the barren landscape of the moon.

      Her eyes filled.

      She walked slowly to the end of the hall, into the room where Gabe had brought her on their wedding night. He’d been conceived and born in the big bed there, just as Tobias had. As so many other babes would have been, if only Gabe had lived.

      Hannah didn’t undress after she closed the door behind her. She didn’t let her hair down and brush it, like usual, or wash her face at the basin on the bureau.

      Instead, she sat down in Lorelei’s rocking chair and waited. Just waited.

      For what, she did not know.

      Present Day

      After Liam had gone to bed, Sierra went back downstairs to the computer and scanned her e-mail. When she spotted Allie Douglas-Fletcher’s return address, she wished she’d waited until morning. She was always stronger in the mornings.

      Allie was Adam’s twin sister. Liam’s aunt. After Adam was murdered, while on assignment in South America, Allie had been inconsolable, and she’d developed an unhealthy fixation for her brother’s child.

      After taking a deep breath and releasing