Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

      “Is that supposed to be like a closet?” Liam asked, indicating the huge pine armoire taking up most of one wall.

      Sierra nodded. “It’s called a wardrobe.”

      “Maybe it’s like the one in that story. Maybe the back of it opens into another world. There could be a lion and a witch in there.” From the smile on Liam’s face, the concept intrigued rather than troubled him.

      She ruffled his hair. “Maybe,” she agreed.

      His attention shifted back to the telescope. “I wish I could look through that and see Andromeda,” he said. “Did you know that the whole galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way? All hell’s going to break loose when it gets here, too.”

      Sierra shuddered at the thought. Most parents worried that their kids played too many video games. With Liam, the concern was the Discovery and Science Channels, not to mention programs like Nova. He thought about things like Earth losing its magnetic field and had nightmares about creatures swimming in dark oceans under the ice covering one of Jupiter’s moons. Or was it Saturn?

      “Don’t get excited, Mom,” he said, with an understanding smile. “It’s going to be something like five billion years before it happens.”

      “Before what happens?” Sierra asked, blinking.

      “The collision,” he said tolerantly.

      “Right,” Sierra said.

      Liam yawned. “Maybe I will take a nap.” He studied her. “Just don’t get the idea it’s going to be a regular thing.”

      She mussed his hair again, kissed the top of his head. “I’m clear on that,” she said, standing and reaching for the crocheted afghan lying neatly folded at the foot of the bed.

      Liam kicked off his shoes and stretched out on top of the blue chenille bedspread, yawning again. He set his glasses on the night stand with care.

      She covered him, resisted the temptation to kiss his forehead, and headed for the door. When she looked back from the threshold, Liam was already asleep.

      1919

      Hannah McKettrick heard her son’s laughter before she rode around the side of the house, toward the barn, a week’s worth of mail bulging in the saddlebags draped across the mule’s neck. The snow was deep, with a hard crust, and the January wind was brisk.

      Her jaw tightened when she saw her boy out in the cold, wearing a thin jacket and no hat. He and Doss, her brother-in-law, were building what appeared to be a snow fort, their breath making white plumes in the frigid air.

      Something in Hannah gave a painful wrench at the sight of Doss; his resemblance to Gabe, his brother and her late husband, invariably startled her, even though they lived under the same roof and she should have been used to him by then.

      She nudged the mule with the heels of her boots, but Seesaw-Two didn’t pick up his pace. He just plodded along.

      “What are you doing out here?” Hannah called.

      Both Tobias and Doss fell silent, turning to gaze guiltily in her direction.

      The breath plumes dissipated.

      Tobias set his feet and pushed back his narrow shoulders. He was only eight, but since Gabe’s coffin had arrived by train one warm day last summer, draped in an American flag and with Doss for an escort, her boy had taken on the mien of a man.

      “We’re just making a fort, Ma,” he said.

      Hannah blinked back sudden, stinging tears. A soldier, Gabe had died of influenza in an army infirmary, without ever seeing the battleground. Tobias thought in military terms, and Doss encouraged him, a fact Hannah did not appreciate.

      “It’s cold out here,” she said. “You’ll catch your death.”

      Doss shifted, pushed his battered hat to the back of his head. His face hardened, like the ice on the pond back of the orchard where the fruit trees stood, bare-limbed and stoic, waiting for spring.

      “Go inside,” Hannah told her son.

      Tobias hesitated, then obeyed.

      Doss remained, watching her.

      The kitchen door slammed eloquently.

      “You’ve got no business putting thoughts like that in his head,” Doss said, in a quiet voice. He took old Seesaw’s reins and held him while she dismounted, careful to keep her woolen skirts from riding up.

      “That’s a fine bit of hypocrisy, coming from you,” Hannah replied. “Tobias had pneumonia last fall. We nearly lost him. He’s fragile, and you know it, and as soon as I turn my back, you have him outside, building a snow fort!”

      Doss reached for the saddlebags, and so did Hannah. There was a brief tug-of-war before she let go. “He’s a kid,” Doss said. “If you had your way, he’d never do anything but look through that telescope and play checkers!”

      Hannah felt as warm as if she were standing close to a hot stove, instead of Doss McKettrick. Their breaths melded between them. “I fully intend to have my way,” she said. “Tobias is my son, and I will not have you telling me how to raise him!”

      Doss slapped the saddlebags over one shoulder and stepped back, his hazel eyes narrowed. “He’s my nephew—my brother’s boy—and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you turn him into a sickly little whelp hitched to your apron strings!”

      Hannah stiffened. “You’ve said quite enough,” she told him tersely.

      He leaned in, so his nose was almost touching hers. “I haven’t said the half of it, Mrs. McKettrick.”

      Hannah sidestepped him, marching for the house, but the snow came almost to her knees and made it hard to storm off in high dudgeon. Her breath trailed over her right shoulder, along with her words. “Supper’s in an hour,” she said, without turning around. “But maybe you’d rather eat in the bunkhouse.”

      Doss’s chuckle riled her, just as it was no doubt meant to do. “Old Charlie’s a sight easier to get along with than you are, but he can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to home cooking. Anyhow, he’s been gone for a month, in case you haven’t noticed.”

      She felt a flush rise up her neck, even though she was shivering inside Gabe’s old woolen work coat. His scent was fading from the fabric, and she wished she knew a way to hold on to it.

      “Suit yourself,” she retorted.

      Tobias shoved a chunk of wood into the cookstove as she entered the house, sending sparks snapping up the gleaming black chimney before he shut the door with a clang.

      “We were only building a fort,” he grumbled.

      Hannah was stilled by the sight of him, just as if somebody had thrown a lasso around her middle and pulled it tight. “I could make biscuits and sausage gravy,” she offered quietly.

      Tobias ignored the olive branch. “You rode down to the road to meet the mail wagon,” he said, without meeting her eyes. “Did I get any letters?” With his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers and his brownish-blond hair shining in the wintry sunlight flowing in through the windows, he looked the way Gabe must have, at his age.

      “One from your grandpa,” Hannah said. Methodically, she hung her hat on the usual peg, pulled off her knitted mittens and stuffed them into the pockets of Gabe’s coat. She took that off last, always hating to part with it.

      “Which grandpa?” Tobias lingered by the stove, warming his hands, still refusing to glance her way.

      Hannah’s family lived in Missoula, Montana, in a big house on a tree-lined residential street. She missed them sorely, and it hurt a little, knowing Tobias was hoping it was Holt who’d written to him, not her father.

      “The McKettrick one,” she said.