The McKettrick Legend (3 page)

The telephone rang.

Sierra got up to fetch the cordless receiver and pressed Talk with her thumb. “Hello?”

“You're there!” Meg trilled.

Sierra noticed that she'd left the china cabinet doors open and went in that direction, intending to close them. “Yes,” she said. Meg had been kind to her, in a long-distance sort of way, but Sierra had only been two when she'd last seen her half sister, and that made them strangers.

“How do you like it? The ranch house, I mean?”

“I haven't seen much of it,” Sierra answered. “Liam and I just got here, and then we had lunch….” Her hand went, of its own accord, to the teapot, and she imagined she felt just the faintest charge when she touched it. “Lots of antiques around here,” she said, thinking aloud.

“Don't be afraid to use them,” Meg replied. “Family tradition.”

Sierra withdrew her hand from the teapot, shut the doors. “Family tradition?”

“McKettrick rules,” Meg said, with a smile in her voice. “Things are meant to be used, no matter how old they are.”

Sierra frowned, uneasy. “But if they get broken—”

“They get broken,” Meg finished for her. “Have you met Travis yet?”

“Yes,” Sierra said. “And he's not at all what I expected.”

Meg laughed. “What did you expect?”

“Some gimpy old guy, I guess,” Sierra admitted, warming to the friendliness in her sister's voice. “You said he took care of the place and lived in a trailer by the barn, so I thought—” She broke off, feeling foolish.

“He's cute and he's single,” Meg said.

“Even the teapot?” Sierra mused.

“Huh?”

Sierra put a hand to her forehead. Sighed. “Sorry. I guess I missed a segue there. There's a teapot in the china cabinet in the kitchen—I was just wondering if I could—”

“I know the one,” Meg answered, with a soft fondness in her voice. “It was Lorelei's. She got it for a wedding present.”

Lorelei. The matriarch of the family. Sierra took a step backward.

“
Use
it,” Meg said, as if she'd seen Sierra's reflexive retreat.

Sierra shook her head. “I couldn't. I had no idea it was that old. If I dropped it—”

“Sierra,” Meg said, “it's not china. It's cast iron, with an enamel overlay.”

“Oh.”

“Kind of like the McKettrick women, Mom always says.” Meg went on. “Smooth on the outside, tough as iron on the inside.”
Mom.
Sierra closed her eyes against all the conflicting emotions the word brought up in her, but it didn't help.

“We'll give you time to settle in,” Meg said gently, when Sierra was too choked up to speak. “Then Mom and I will probably pop in for a visit. If that's okay with you, of course.”

Both Meg and Eve lived in San Antonio, Texas, where they helped run McKettrickCo, a multinational corporation with interests in everything from software to communication satellites, so they wouldn't be “popping in” without a little notice.

Sierra swallowed hard. “It's your house,” she said.

“And yours,” Meg pointed out, very quietly.

After that, Meg made Sierra promise to call if she needed any thing. They said goodbye, and the call ended.

Sierra went back to the china cabinet for the teapot.

Liam clattered down the back stairs. “I
told
you this place was haunted!” he crowed, his small face shining with delight.

The teapot was heavy—definitely cast iron—but Sierra was careful as she set it on the counter, just the same. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I just saw a kid,” Liam announced. “Upstairs, in my room!”

“You're imagining things.”

Liam shook his head. “I
saw
him!”

Sierra approached her son, laid her hand to his forehead. “No fever,” she mused, worried.

“Mom,” Liam protested, pulling back. “I'm not sick—and I'm not delusional, either.”

Delusional.
How many seven-year-olds used that word? Sierra sighed and cupped Liam's eager face in both hands. “Listen. It's fine to have imaginary friends, but—”

“He's
not
imaginary.”

“Okay,” Sierra responded, with another sigh. It was possible, she supposed, that a neighbor child had wandered in before they arrived, but that seemed unlikely, given that the only other houses on the ranch were miles away. “Let's investigate.”

Together they climbed the back stairs, and Sierra got her first look at the upper story. The corridor was wide, with the same serviceable board floors. The light fixtures, though old-fashioned, were electric, but most of the light came from the large arched window at the far end of the hallway. Six doors stood open, an indication that Liam had visited each room in turn after leaving the kitchen the first time.

He led her into the middle one, on the left side.

No one was there.

Sierra let out her breath, admiring the room. It was spacious, perfect quarters for a boy. Two bay windows over looked the barn area, where Baldy, the singularly unattractive horse, stood stalwartly in the middle of the corral, looking as though he in tended to break loose at any second and do some serious bucking. Travis was beside Baldy, stroking the animal's neck as he eased the halter off over its head.

A quivery sensation tickled the pit of Sierra's stomach.

“Mom,”
Liam said. “He was here. He had on short pants and funny shoes and suspenders.”

Sierra turned to look at her son, feeling fretful again. Liam stood near the other window, examining an antique telescope, balanced atop a shining brass tripod. “I believe you,” she said.

“You don't,” Liam argued, jutting out his chin. “You're
humoring
me.”

Sierra sat down on the side of the bed positioned between the windows. Like the dressers, it was scarred with age, but made of sturdy wood. The head board was simply but intricately carved, and a faded quilt provided color. “Maybe I am, a little,” she admitted, because there was no fooling Liam. He had an uncanny knack for seeing through anything but the stark truth. “I don't know what to think, that's all.”

“Don't you believe in ghosts?”

I don't believe in much of anything, Sierra thought sadly. “I believe in you,” she said, patting the mattress beside her. “Come and sit down.”

Reluctantly, he sat. Stiffened when she slipped an arm around his shoulders. “If you think I'm going to take a nap,” he said, “you're dead wrong.”

The word
dead
tiptoed up Sierra's spine to dance lightly at her nape. “Everything's going to be all right, you know,” she said gently.

“I like this room,” Liam confided, and the hopeful uncertainty in his manner made Sierra's heart ache. They'd always lived in apartments or cheap motel rooms. Had Liam been secretly yearning to call a house like this one home? To settle down some where and live like a normal kid?

“Me, too,” Sierra said. “It has friendly vibes.”

“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 night mares 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 bed spread, 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 saddle bags 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.

Some thing in Hannah gave a painful wrench at the sight of Doss; his resemblance to Gabe, his brother and her late husband, in variably 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 saddle bags, 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 saddle bags 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 side stepped 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 bunk house.”

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.