The McKettrick Legend (20 page)

“When Brody died,” Travis said, “I died, too. I walked away from everything—my house, my job, everything. Then I met you, and when—” He paused, with a little smile, and glanced toward the stairs, evidently suspecting that
Liam was there, all ears, just as she did. “When we
were adults,
I knew the game was up. I had to get it together. Start living my life again.”

Sierra blinked, speechless.

He touched his mouth to hers. It wasn't a kiss, and yet it affected Sierra that way. “It's too soon to say this,” he said, “but I'm going to say it any way. Some thing happened to me yesterday. Some thing I don't understand. All I know is, I can't live another day like a dead man walking. I called Eve and asked for my old job back, and I'll be working in Indian Rock, at McKettrickCo, with Keegan. In the mean time I've got to put my house on the market and make arrangements to store my stuff. But it won't be long before I'm at your door, with every intention of winning you over for good.”

“What are you saying?”

Liam came shooting down the stairs, wheeling his arms. “Get a clue, Mom! He's in love with you!”

“That's right,” Travis said. He gave Liam a look of mock sternness. “I
was
planning to break it to her gradually, though.”

“You're in…?” Sierra sputtered.

“Love,” Travis finished for her. “Just tell me this one thing. Do I have a chance with you?”

“Give him a
chance,
Mom!” Liam cried jubilantly. “That's not too much to ask, is it? All the man wants is a chance!”

Sierra laughed, even as tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. “Liam, hush!” she said.

“What do you say, McKettrick?” Travis asked, taking hold of her shoulders again. “Do I get a chance?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

“If you're going to work in town,” Liam enthused, tugging at Travis's shirt sleeve by then, “you might as well just move in with us!”

Travis chuckled, released Sierra to lean down and scoop Liam up in one arm. “Whoa,” he said. “I'm all for
that
plan, but I think your mother needs a little more time.”

“You're not leaving?” Liam asked, so hope fully that Sierra's heart beat quickened.

“I'm not leaving,” Travis confirmed. “I've got somethings to do in Flag staff, then I'll be back.”

“Will you live right here, on the ranch?” Liam demanded.

“Not right away, cowpoke,” Travis answered. “This whole thing is real important. I don't want to get it wrong. Understand?”

Liam nodded solemnly.

“Good,” Travis said. “Now, get on back upstairs, so I can kiss your mother without you ogling us.”

“I broke my DVD player,” Liam confessed, suddenly crestfallen. “On purpose, too.” He paused, swallowed audibly. “Are you mad?”

“You're the one who'll have to do without a DVD player,” Travis said reasonably. “Why would
I
be mad?”

“I'm sorry, Travis,” Liam told him.

Travis set the boy back on his feet. “Apology accepted. While we're at it,
I'm
sorry, too. I should have talked to you—your mother, too—before I packed up my stuff. I guess I was just in too much of a hurry to get things rolling.”

“I forgive you,” Liam said.

Travis ruffled his hair. “Beat it,” he replied.

Liam scampered toward the stairs and hopped up them as though he were on a pogo stick.

“Are you sure he's sick?” Travis asked.

Sierra laughed. “Kiss me, cowpoke,” she said.

1919

Doc Willaby was with them for three full days, waiting for his bumps and bruises to heal and the weather to clear. He played endless games of checkers with Tobias, next to the kitchen stove, and Hannah and Doss tried hard to pretend they were sensible people. The truth was, they could barely keep their hands off each other.

“How come I have to move to the other end of the hall?” Tobias asked Doss, on the morning of the third endless day.

“You just do,” Doss answered.

Early that afternoon, the sleigh came pulling into the yard, drawn by Cain and Abel and driven by Kody Jackson, from the livery stable. Two outriders completed the procession.

“Glory be,” Doc said, peering out the window, along with Hannah. “They've come to fetch me back to Indian Rock.” He looked down at Hannah and smiled wisely.

“Now you and Doss can stop acting like a couple of old married folks and do what comes naturally.”

Hannah blushed, but she couldn't help smiling in the process. “It's been good having you here, Doc,” she said, and she meant it, too. “You saved Doss's life the other night, coming all that way to fetch me, in the shape you were in. I'll be grateful all my days.”

He took her hand. Squeezed it. “He loves you, Hannah.”

“I know,” she said softly. “And I love him, too.”

“That's all that counts, in the long run. Or the short one, for that matter. We each of us get a certain number of days to spend on this earth. Only the good Lord knows
how many. Spend them loving that man of yours and that fine boy, and you'll have done the right thing.”

Hannah stood on tiptoe. Kissed the doctor on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

Doss came out of the barn to greet Kody and the other men.

They all went down the hill together to set the other wagon upright, leading the team along behind them. Doss put Cain and Abel away, while Kody drove the rig up along side the house.

Doc was outside by then, ready to go, with his medical bag clutched in one hand and his cane in the other. He turned and waved at Hannah through the window, and she waved back, watching fondly as Doss and another man helped him up into the wagon box.

When Doss didn't come back in right away, Hannah busied her self making the kitchen presentable. Tobias was upstairs, resting in his new bed room at the front of the house. Now that he'd adjusted to the change, he liked being able to see so clear across the valley from the gabled window, but what had really swayed him was the reminder that Doss and Gabe had shared that room when they were boys.

She swept the floor and put fresh coffee on to brew and even switched on the light bulb instead of lighting lamps, as wintry afternoon shadows darkened the room.

Still, there was no sign of Doss, so she built up the fire in the stove, opened the drawer of the china cabinet, lifted the cover of the album and took out her remembrance book.

In the three busy days since she'd seen the other woman and her boy, up there in Tobias's bedroom, she'd
thought often of the journal, and kept a close eye on the teapot, too.

Nothing extraordinary happened, but inside, in a quiet part of herself, Hannah was waiting. She carried the remembrance book over to the rocking chair drawn up close to the stove and sat down. Perhaps she'd begin making regular entries in that journal.

She'd write about her and Doss, and make notes as Tobias grew toward manhood. She'd record the dates the peonies bloomed, and tuck a photograph inside, now and then. Doss had promised her they'd build a house in Indian Rock, and pass the hard high-country winters there. She would capture the dimensions of the new place in these pages, and perhaps even make sketches. One day she'd take up a pen and write that the baby had come, safe and strong and well.

She was so caught up in the prospect of all the years ahead, just waiting to be lived and then set down on paper, that a few moments passed before she realized that another hand had written beneath her own short paragraphs.

Hannah stared at the words in disbelief.

Read them again, and then again.

It couldn't be.

But it was.

The woman she'd seen was a McKettrick, too, living far in the future. She had the proof right here—not that she meant to show it to just every body. Some folks would say she'd written those words herself, of course, but Hannah knew she hadn't.

She touched the clear blue ink in wonder. It looked different, somehow, from the kind that came in a bottle.

The door opened, and Doss came in. He took off his coat and hat, hung them up neatly, like he always did.

Hannah held the remembrance book close against her chest. Should she let Doss see? Would he believe, as she did, that two different centuries had somehow managed to touch and blend, right here in this house?

Her heart fluttered in her breast.

“Hannah?” He sounded a little worried.

“Come and look at this, Doss,” she said.

He came, crouched beside her chair, read the two entries in the journal, hers and Sierra's.

She watched his face, hopeful and afraid.

Doss raised his eyes to meet hers. “That,” he said, “is the strangest thing I've ever run across.”

“There's more,” Hannah said. “I saw her, Doss. I saw this woman, and her little boy, the night of your accident.”

He closed a hand over hers. “If you say so, Hannah,” he told her quietly, “then I believe you.”

“You do?”

He grinned. “Does that surprise you?”

“A little,” she admitted. “When Tobias mentioned seeing the boy, you said it must be his imagination.”

Doss handed back the book. “Life is strange,” he said. “There's a mystery just about every where you look, when
you think about it. Babies being born. Grass poking up through hard ground after a long winter. The way it makes me feel in side when you smile at me.”

Hannah leaned, kissed his forehead. “Flatterer,” she said.

“Is Tobias asleep?” he asked.

She blushed. “Yes.”

He pulled her to her feet, set the remembrance book aside on the counter and kissed her.

“I think we've waited long enough, don't you?” he asked.

Hours later, hair askew, bundled in a wrapper, well and thoroughly loved, Hannah sneaked back down stairs.

She gathered ink and a pen from the study and lit a lantern in the kitchen.

Then, smiling, she sat down to write.

Present Day

Travis lay sprawled on his stomach in Sierra's bed, sound asleep. She sat up beside him, stroked his bare back once with a gentle pass of her hand. In the three days since he'd moved out of the trailer, he'd been back several times, on one pretext or another. Finally Meg had packed some of her things and some of Liam's, and the two of them had gone to stay in town with friends of hers.

“You two really need some time alone,” she'd said, with a wicked grin lighting her eyes.

Sierra smiled down at Travis. So far they'd made good use of that time alone. They'd talked a lot, in between bouts of lovemaking, and they still had plenty to say to each other—maybe enough to last a lifetime.

She switched on the lamp, took Hannah's remembrance
book from the bedside table, and opened it. Her eyes widened, and she drew in a breath.

Beneath her own entry, in the same stately, faded writing as before, Hannah had written:

There was more, but Sierra couldn't read it, because her eyes were blurred with tears of amazement. She bounded out of bed, not caring if she awakened Travis, and hurried down stairs, switching on lights as she went. She had the album out and was flipping through the pages at the middle when he joined her, blinking and shirtless, with his jeans misbuttoned.

“What's going on?” he asked, yawning.

Sierra's heart thumped at the base of her throat.

She forced herself to slow down, turn the pages gently. And then she found what she was looking for—an old, old photograph of two children, smiling for the camera lens. The little boy she'd seen in Liam's room, with Hannah, holding a baby wearing a long, lacy gown.

Beneath the picture, Hannah had written Tobias's name and the baby's.

Sierra Elizabeth McKettrick.

Sierra put a hand to her mouth and gasped.

Travis drew closer. “Sierra—”

“Look at this,” Sierra said, stabbing at the image with one finger. “What do you see?”

Travis frowned. “An old picture of two kids.”

“Look at the baby's name.”

“Sierra. You must have been named for her.”

“I think
she
was named for
me,
” Sierra said.

“How could
she
be named for
you
?”

“Sit down,” Sierra told him. She reached for Hannah's remembrance book, offered it when he was seated. “Read this.”

He read. Looked up at her with wide eyes. “You don't really think—”

“That I've been communicating with a woman who lived in this house in 1919, and probably for years after that? Yes, Travis, that is
exactly
what I think!”

“But,
how?
”

“You said it yourself, when I first got here. Strange things happen in this house.”

“This is beyond strange. Are you going to tell anybody else about this?”

“Mother and Meg,” Sierra said. “Liam, too, when he's a little older.”

He reached for her hand, wove his fingers through hers, squeezed. “And me. You told
me,
Sierra.”

“Well,
yeah.
”

“You must trust me.”