The McKettrick Legend (32 page)

“So you stole the money to protect Mom and me?” Meg asked, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

“Partly. I was young and I was scared.”

“You should have told Mom. She would have helped you.”

“I know. But by the time I realized that, it was too late.” He sighed. “Now it's too late for a lot of things.”

“It's not too late for Carly,” Meg said.

“Exactly my point. She's going to give you some trouble, Meg. She won't want to go to school, and she's used to
being a loner. I'm all the family she's had since her mother was killed. Like I said before, I've got no right to ask you for anything. I don't expect sympathy. I know you won't grieve when I'm gone. But Carly
will,
and I'm hoping you're McKettrick enough to stand by her till she finds her balance. My worst fear is that she'll go down the same road I did, drifting from place to place, living by her wits, always on the outside looking in.”

“I won't let that happen,” Meg promised. “Not because of you, but because Carly is my sister. And because she's a child.”

They'd been over this before, but Ted seemed to need a lot of reassurance. “I guess there is one other favor I could ask,” he said.

Meg raised an eyebrow. Waited.

“Will you forgive me, Meg?”

“I stopped hating you a long time ago.”

“That isn't the same as forgiving me,” Ted replied.

She opened her mouth, closed it again. A glib, “Okay, I forgive you” died on her tongue.

Ted smiled sadly. “While you're at it, forgive your mother, too. We were both wrong, Eve and I, not to tell you the whole truth from the beginning. But she was trying to protect you, Meg. And it says a lot about the other McKettricks, that none of them ever let it slip that I was a thief doing time in a Texas prison while you were growing up. A lot of people would have found that secret too juicy to keep to them selves.”

Meg wondered if Jesse, Rance and Keegan had known, and decided they hadn't. Their parents had, though, surely. All three of their fathers had been on the company board with Eve, back in those days. Meg thought of them as uncles—and they'd looked after her like a daughter, taken her under their powerful wings when she summered on the
Triple M, and so had her “aunts.” Stirred her right into the boisterous mix of loud cousins, remembered her birth days and bought gifts at Christmas. All the while, they'd been conspiring to keep her in the dark about Ted Ledger, of course, but she couldn't resent them for it. Their intentions, like Eve's, had been good.

“Who are you, really?” Meg asked, remembering Carly's remark about changing last names so many times she was no longer sure what the real one was. And underlying the surface question was another.

Who am I?

Ted smiled, patted her hand. “When I married your mother, I was Ted Sullivan. I was born in Chicago, to Alice and Carl Sullivan. Alice was a home maker, Carl was a finance manager at a used car dealership.”

“No brothers or sisters?”

“I had a sister, Sarah. She died of meningitis when she was fifteen. I was nineteen at the time. Mom never recovered from Sarah's death—she was the promising child. I was the problem.”

“How did you meet Mom?” She hadn't thought she needed, or even wanted, to know such things. But, suddenly, she did.

Ted grinned at the memory, and for just a moment, he looked young again, and well. “After I left home, I took college courses and worked nights as a hotel desk clerk. I moved around the country, and by the time I wound up in San Antonio, I was a manager. McKettrickCo owned the chain I worked for, and one of your uncles decided I was a bright young man with a future. Hired me to work in the home office. Where, of course, I saw Eve every day.”

Meg imagined how it must have been, both Ted and Eve still young, and relatively mistake-free. “And you fell in love.”

“Yes,” Ted said. “The family accepted me, which was decent of them, considering they were rich and I had an old car and a couple of thousand dollars squirreled away in a low-interest savings account. The McKettricks are a lot of things, but they're not snobs.”

Having money doesn't make us better than other people,
Eve had often said as Meg was growing up.
It just makes us luckier.

“No,” she agreed. “They're not snobs.” She tried to smile and failed. “So I would have been Meg Sullivan, not Meg McKettrick—if things hadn't gone the way they did?”

Ted chuckled. “Not in a million years. You know the McKettrick women don't change their names when they marry. According to Eve, the custom goes all the way back to old Angus's only daughter.”

“Katie,” Meg said. Her mind did a time-warp thing—for about fifteen seconds, she was nineteen and pregnant, having her last argument with Brad before he got into his old truck and drove away. Late that night, he would board a bus for Nashville.

We'll get married when I get back,
Brad had said.
I promise.

You're not
coming
back,
Meg had replied, in tears.

Yes, I am. You'll see—you'll be Meg O'Ballivan before you know it.

I'll never be Meg O'Ballivan. I'm not taking your name.

Have it your way, Ms.
McKettrick.
You always do.

“Meg?” Ted's voice brought her back to the kitchen on the Triple M. Her tea had grown cold, sitting on the tabletop in its heavy mug.

“You're not the first person who ever made a mistake,” she told her father. “I hereby confer upon you my complete forgiveness.”

He laughed, but his eyes were glossy with tears.

“You're tired,” Meg said. “Get some rest.”

“I want to hear your story, Meg. Eve sent me a few pictures, the occasional copy of a report card, when I was on the inside. But there are a lot of gaps.”

“Another time,” Meg answered. But even as Ted stood to make his way back upstairs, and she disposed of her cold tea and put the mug into the dish washer, she wondered if there would
be
another time.

 

Phil was back.

Brad, accompanied to the barn by an adoring Willie, tossed the last flake of hay into the last feeder when he heard the distinctive purr of a limo engine and swore under his breath.

“This is getting old,” he told Willie.

Willie whined in agreement and wagged his tail.

Phil was walking toward Brad, the stretch gleaming in the early morning light, when he and Willie stepped outside.

“Good news!” Phil cried, beaming. “I spoke to the Holly wood people, and they're willing to make the movie right here at Stone Creek!”

Brad stopped, facing off with Phil like a gun fighter on a winds wept Western street. “No,” he said.

Phil, being Phil, was undaunted. “Now, don't be too hasty,” he counseled. “It would really give this town a boost. Why, the jobs alone—”

“Phil—”

Just then, Livie's ancient Suburban topped the hill, started down, dust billowing behind. Brad took a certain satisfaction in the sight when the rig screeched to a halt along side Phil's limo, covering it in fine red dirt.

Livie sprang from the Suburban, smiling. “Good news,”
she called, unknowingly echoing Phil's opening line. “The Iversons' cattle aren't infected.”

Phil nudged Brad in the ribs and said in a stage whisper, “She could be an extra. Bet your sister would like to be in a movie.”

“In a what?” Livie asked, frowning. She crouched to examine Willie briefly, and accept a few face licks, before straightening and putting out a hand to Phil Meadowbrook. “Olivia O'Ballivan,” she said. “You must be my brother's manager.”

“
Former
manager,” Brad said.

“But still with his best interests at heart,” Phil added, placing splayed fingers over his avaricious little ticker and looking woebegone, long-suffering and misunderstood. “I'm offering him a chance to make a
feature film,
right here on the ranch. Just
look
at this place! It's perfect! John Ford would salivate—”

“Who's John Ford?” Livie asked.

“He made some John Wayne movies,” Brad explained, beginning to feel cornered.

Livie's dusty face lit up. She had hay dust in her hair—probably acquired during an early morning visit to the Iversons' dairy barn. “Wait till I tell the twins,” she burst out.

“Hold it,” Brad said, raising both hands, palms out. “There isn't going to
be
any movie.”

“Why not?” Livie asked, suddenly crestfallen.

“Because I'm retired,” Brad reminded her patiently.

Phil huffed out a disgusted sigh.

“I don't see the problem if they made the movie right here,” Livie said.

“At last,” Phil interjected. “Another voice of reason, besides my own.”

“Shut up, Phil,” Brad said.

“You always talked about making a movie,” Livie went on, watching Brad with a mischievous light dancing in her eyes. “You even started a production company once.”

“Cynthia got it in the divorce,” Phil confided, as though Brad wasn't standing there. “The production company, I mean. I think that soured him.”

“Will you stop acting as if I'm not here?” Brad snapped.

Willie whimpered, worried.

“See?” Phil was quick to say. “You're up set ting the dog.” Another patented Phil Meadowbrook grin flashed. “Hey! He could be in the movie, too. People eat that animal stuff up. We might even be able to get Disney in on the project—”

“No,”
Brad said, exasperated. “No Disney. No dog. No petite veterinarian with hay in her hair.
I don't want to make a movie.
”

“You could build a library or a youth center or something with the money,” Phil said, trailing after Brad as he broke from the group and strode toward the house, fully intending to slam the door on his way in.

“We could use an animal shelter,” Livie said, scrambling along at his other side.

“Fine,” Brad snapped, slowing down a little because he realized Willie was having trouble keeping up. “I'll have my accountant cut a check.”

The limo driver gave the horn a discreet honk, then got out and tapped at his watch.

“Plane to catch,” Phil said. “Big Hollywood meeting. I'll fax you the contract.”

“Don't bother,” Brad warned.

Livie caught at his arm, sounding a little breathless. “What is the
matter
with you?” she whispered. “That movie
would be the biggest thing to happen in Stone Creek since that pack of outlaws robbed the bank in 1907!”

Brad stopped. Thrust his nose right up to Livie's. “I. Am.
Retired.
”

Livie set her hands on her skinny hips. She really needed to put some meat on those fragile little bones of hers. “I think you're chicken,” she said.

Willie gave a cheery little yip.

“You stay out of this, Stitches,” Brad told him.

“Chicken,” Livie repeated, as the now-dusty limo made a wide turn and started swallowing up dirt road.

“Not,” Brad argued.

“Then what?”

Brad shoved a hand through his hair as the answer to Livie's question settled over him, like the red dust that had showered the limo. He was making some headway with Meg, slowly but surely, but Meg and show business mixed about as well as oil and water. Deep down, she probably believed, as Livie had until this morning, that he'd go back to being that other Brad O'Ballivan, the one whose name was always written in capital letters, if the offer was good enough.

Too, if he agreed to do the movie, Phil would never get off his back. He'd be back, before the cameras stopped rolling, with another offer, another contract, another big idea.

“I used to be a performer,” Brad said finally. “Now I'm a rancher. I can't keep going back and forth between the two.”

“It's one movie, Brad, not a world concert tour. And you wanted to do a movie for so long. What happened?
Was
it losing the production company to Cynthia, like your manager said?”

“No,” Brad said. “This is a Pandora's box, Livie. It's
the proverbial can of worms. One thing will lead to another—”

“And you'll leave again? For good, this time?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then just think about it,” Livie reasoned. “Making the movie, I mean. Think about the money it would bring into Stone Creek, and how excited the local people would be.”

“And the animal shelter,” Brad said, sighing.

“Small as Stone Creek is, there are a lot of strays,” Livie said.

“Did you come out here for a reason?”

“Yes, to see my big brother and check up on Willie.”

“Well, here I am, and Willie's fine. Go or stay, but I don't want to talk about that damn movie anymore, understood?”

Livie smirked. “Understood,” she said sweetly.

At four-thirty that afternoon, the movie contract sputtered out of the fax machine in Brad's study.

He read it, signed it and faxed it back.

C
ARLY SAT HUNCHED IN
the front passenger seat of the Blazer, arms folded, glowering as kids converged on Indian Rock Middle School, colorful clothes and back packs still new, since class had only been in session for a little over a month. It was Monday morning and Ted was scheduled to enter the hospital in Flag staff for “treatment” the following day. Meg's solemn promise to take Carly to visit him every afternoon, admittedly small comfort, was nonetheless all she had to offer.

“I don't want to go in there,” Carly said. “They're going to give me some stupid test and put me with the little kids. I just know it.”

Ted had home schooled Carly, for the most part, and though she was obviously a very bright child, there was no telling what kind of curriculum he'd used, or if the process had involved books at all. Her scores would determine her placement, and she was understandably worried.

“Everything will be all right,” Meg said.

“You keep saying that,” Carly protested. “Every body says that.
My dad is going to die.
How is that ‘all right'?”

“It isn't. It totally bites.”

“You could home school me.”

Meg shook her head. “I'm not a teacher, Carly.”

“Neither is my dad, and he did fine!”

That,
Meg thought,
remains to be seen.
“More than
any thing in the world, your dad wants you to have a good life. And that means getting an education.”

Tears brimmed in Carly's eyes. “
My
dad? He's
your
dad, too.”

“Okay,” Meg said.

“You hate him. You don't care if he dies!”

“I
don't
hate him, and if there was any way to keep him alive, I'd do it.”

Carly's right hand went to the door handle; with her left, she gathered up the neon pink backpack Meg had bought for her over the weekend, along with some new clothes. “Well, not hating somebody isn't the same as
loving
them.”

With that, she shoved open the car door, unfastened her seat belt and got out to stand on the sidewalk, facing the long brick school house, her small shoulders squared under more burdens than any child ought to have to carry.

Meg waited, her eyes scalding, until Carly disappeared into the building. Then she drove to Sierra's house, where she found her other sister on the front porch, dead heading the flowers in a large clay pot.

The bright October sunshine gilded Sierra's chestnut hair; she looked like Mother Nature herself in her floral print maternity dress.

Meg parked the Blazer in the driveway and approached, slinging her bag over her shoulder as she walked.

Sierra beamed, delighted, and straightened, one hand resting protectively on her enormous belly, the other shading her eyes. “I just made a fresh pot of coffee,” she called. “Come in, and we'll catch up.”

Meg smiled. She'd lived her life as an only child; now she had two sisters. She and Sierra had had time to bond, but establishing a relationship with Carly was going to be a major challenge.

“I suppose Mom told you the latest,” Meg said, referring to Ted and Carly's arrival.

“Some of it. The gossip lasted about twenty minutes, though—you got beat out by the news that Brad O'Ballivan is making a movie over at Stone Creek. Every body in the county wants to be an extra.”

Meg stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Brad hadn't called since the barbecue, and she hadn't heard about the movie. That hurt, and though she regained her composure quickly, Sierra was quicker.

“You didn't know?” she asked, holding the front door open and urging Meg through it.

Meg sighed, shook her head.

Sierra patted her shoulder. “Let's have that coffee,” she said softly.

For the next hour, she and Meg sat in the sunny kitchen, catching up. Meg told her sister what she knew about Ted's condition, Carly, and
most
of what had happened between her and Brad.

Sierra chuckled at the account of Jesse and Keegan's helicopter rescue the day of the blizzard. Got tears in her eyes when Meg related Willie's story.

Although Sierra was one of the most grounded people Meg knew, her emotions had been mercurial since the beginning of her last trimester.

“So when is this baby going to show up, anyhow?” Meg inquired cheer fully when she was through with the briefing. It was definitely time to change the subject.

“I was due a week ago,” Sierra answered. “The nursery is all ready, and so am I. Apparently, the baby isn't.”

Meg touched her sister's hand. “Are you scared?”

Sierra shook her head. “I'm past that. Mostly, I feel like a bowling-ball smuggler.”

“You know,” Meg teased, “if you'd spilled the beans
about whether this kid is a boy or a girl, you wouldn't have gotten so many yellow layettes at your baby shower.”

Sierra laughed, crying a little at the same time. “The sonogram was in conclusive,” she said. “The little dickens drew one leg up and hid the evidence.”

Meg sobered, looked away briefly. “Would you hate me if I admitted I'm a little envious? Because the baby's coming, I mean, and because you already have Liam, and Travis loves you so much?”

“You know I couldn't hate you,” Sierra answered gently, but there was a worried expression in her blue eyes. Long ago, Meg and Travis had dated briefly, and they were still very good friends. While Sierra surely knew neither of them would deceive her, ever, she might think she'd stolen Travis's affections and broken Meg's heart in the process. “Truth time. Do you still have feelings for Travis?”

“The same kind of feelings I have for Jesse and Keegan and Rance,” Meg replied honestly. She drew a deep breath and puffed it out. “Truth time? Here's the whole enchilada. I fell hard for Brad O'Ballivan when I was in high school, and I don't think I'm over it.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Meg remembered the way Brad had looked as they stood in his kitchen, after the steak dinner on the patio. She'd seen sorrow, disappointment and a sense of betrayal in his eyes, and the set of his face and shoulders. “I'm not sure,” she said. Then she stood, carried her empty cup and Sierra's to the sink. “I'd better get home. Ted's there alone, and he wasn't feeling well when I left to take Carly to school.”

Sierra nodded, remaining in her chair, squirming a little and looking anxious.

“You're okay, right?” Meg asked, alarmed.

“Just a few twinges,” Sierra said. “It's probably nothing.”

Meg was glad she'd already set the cups down, because she'd have dropped them to the floor if she hadn't.
“Just a few twinges?”

“Would you mind calling Travis?” Sierra asked. “And Mom?”

“Oh, my God,” Meg said, grabbing her bag, scrabbling through it for her cell phone. “You've been sitting there listening to my tales of woe and all the time you've been
in labor?
”

“Not the whole time,” Sierra said lamely. “I thought it was indigestion.”

Meg speed-dialed Travis. “Come home,” she said before he'd finished his hello. “Sierra's having the baby!”

“On my way,” he replied, and hung up in her ear.

Next, she called Eve. “It's happening!” she blurted. “The baby—”

“For heaven's sake,” Sierra protested good-naturedly, “you make it sound as though I'm giving birth on the kitchen floor.”

“Margaret McKettrick,” Eve instructed sternly, “calm yourself. We have a plan. Travis will take Sierra to the hospital, and I will pick Liam up after school. I assume you're with Sierra right now?”

“I'm with her,” Meg said, wondering if she'd have to deliver her niece or nephew before help arrived. She'd watched calves, puppies and colts coming into the world, but
this
was definitely in another league.

“Did you call Travis?” Eve wanted to know.

“Yes,” Meg watched Sierra anxiously as she spoke.

“My water just broke,” Sierra said.

“Oh, my God,” Meg ranted. “Her water just broke!”

“Margaret,” Eve said, “get a grip—and a towel. I'll be there in five minutes.”

Travis showed up in four flat. He paused to bend and
kiss Sierra soundly on the mouth, then dashed off, returning momentarily with a suitcase, presumably packed with things his wife would need at the hospital.

Meg sat at the table, with her head between her knees, feeling woozy.

“I think she's hyperventilating,” Sierra told Travis. “Do we have any paper bags?”

Just then, Eve breezed in through the back door. She tsk-tsked Meg, but naturally, Sierra was her main concern. As her younger daughter stood, with some help from Travis, Eve cupped Sierra's face between her hands and kissed her on the forehead.

“Don't worry about a thing,” she ordered. “I'll see to Liam.”

Sierra nodded, gave Meg one last worried glance and allowed Travis to steer her out the back door.

“Shouldn't we have called an ambulance or something?” Meg fretted.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Eve replied. “You don't need an ambulance!”

“Not for
me,
Mother. For Sierra.”

Eve soaked a cloth at the sink, wrung it out and slapped it onto the back of Meg's neck. “Breathe,” she said.

 

Brad watched from a front window as Livie parked the Suburban, got out and headed for the barn. “Here we go,” he told Willie, resigned. “She's on the hunt for Ransom again, and that means I'll have to go. You're going to have to stay behind, buddy.”

Willie, curled up on a hooked rug in front of the living room fire place, simply sighed and closed his eyes for a snooze, clearly unconcerned. Some of the advance people from the movie studio had already arrived in an RV, to scout the location, and the kid with the backward baseball
cap was a dog-lover. If necessary, Brad would press him into service.

Brad had been up half the night going over the script, faxed by Phil, penning in the occasional dialogue change. For all his reluctance to get involved in the project, he liked the story, tentatively titled
The Showdown,
and he was looking forward to trying his hand at a little acting.

The truth was, though, he'd had to read and reread because his mind kept straying to Meg. He'd been so sure, right along, that they could make things work. But seeing Carly—a younger version of Meg, and most likely of the daughter they might have had—brought up a lot of conflicting feelings, ones he wasn't sure how to deal with.

It wasn't rational; he knew that. Meg's explanation was believable, even if it stung, and her reasons for keeping the secret from him made sense. Still, a part of him was deeply resentful, even enraged.

Livie was saddling Cinnamon when he reached the barn.

“Where do you think you're going?” he asked.

She gave him a look. “Three guesses, genius,” she said pleasantly. “And the first two don't count.”

“I guess you didn't hear about the blizzard that blew up in about five minutes when Meg and I were up in the hills trying to find that damn horse?”

“I heard about it,” Livie said. She put her shoulder to Cinnamon's belly and pulled hard to tighten the cinch. “I just want to check on him, that's all. Just take a look.”

Brad leaned one shoulder against the door frame, arms folded, letting his body language say he wasn't above blocking the door.

Livie's expression said
she
wasn't above riding right over him.

“I'll see if I can talk one of Meg's cousins into taking you up in the helicopter,” Brad said.

“Oh, right,” Livie mocked. “And scare Ransom to death with the noise.”

“Livie, will you listen to reason? That horse has survived all this time without a lick of help from you. What's different now?”

“Will you stop calling him ‘that horse'? His name is Ransom and he's a
legend,
thank you very much.”

“Being a legend,” Brad drawled, “isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

Livie led Cinnamon toward him; he moved into the center of the doorway and stood his ground.

“What's different, Livie?” he repeated.

She sighed, seemed even smaller and more fragile than usual. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“Give it a shot,” Brad said.

“Dreams,” Livie said. “I have these dreams—”

“Dreams.”

“I knew you wouldn't—”

“Hold it,” Brad interrupted. “I'm listening.”

“Just get out of my way, please.”

Brad shook his head, shifted so his feet were a little farther apart, kept his arms folded. “Not gonna happen.”

“He talks to me,” Livie said, her voice small and exasperated and full of the O'Ballivan grit that was so much a part of her nature.

“A horse talks to you.” He tried not to sound skeptical, but didn't quite succeed.

“In dreams,” Livie said, flushing.

“Like Mr. Ed, in that old TV show?”

Livie's temper flared in her eyes, then her cheek bones. “No,” she said. “Not ‘like Mr. Ed in that old TV show'!”

“How, then?”

“I just hear him, that's all. He doesn't move his lips, for pity's sake!”

“Okay.”

“You believe me?”

“I believe that you believe it, Liv. You have a lot of deep feelings where animals are concerned—some times I wish you liked people half as much—and you've been worried about that—about Ransom for a long time. It makes sense that he'd show up in your dreams.”

Livie let Cinnamon's reins dangle and set her hands on her hips. “What did you do, take an online shrink course or something? Jungian analysis in ten easy lessons? Next, you'll be saying Ransom is a symbol with unconscious sexual connotations!”