The McKettrick Legend (36 page)

“According to her teachers,” Meg said, “Carly has a near-genius affinity for computers, or anything technical. Last week she actually got the clock on the DVD player to stop blinking twelves. This, I might add, is a skill that has eluded presidents.”

“Lots of things elude presidents,” Brad replied, finishing his coffee. “We're wrapping up the movie next week,” he added. “The indoor scenes, at least. We'll have to do the stage coach robbery and all the rest next spring. Think you could pencil a wedding into your schedule?”

Meg's cheeks colored attractively, causing Brad to wonder what
other
parts of her were turning pink. She
hesitated, then nodded, but as she looked at him, her gaze switched to something just beyond his left shoulder.

Brad turned to look, but there was nothing there.

“I hate leaving you,” he said, turning back, frowning a little. “But I've got an early call in the morning.” Neither of them were comfortable sleeping together with Carly around, but that would change after they were married.

“I understand,” Meg said.

“Do you, Meg?” he asked very quietly. “I love you. I want to marry you, and I would have, even if the test had been negative.”

She said them then, the words he'd been waiting for. Before that, she'd spoken them only in the throes of passion.

“I love you right back, Brad O'Ballivan.”

He stood, drew her to her feet and kissed her. It was a lingering kiss, gentle but thorough.

“But there's still one thing I haven't told you,” she choked out, when their mouths parted.

Brad braced himself. Waited, his mind scrambling over possibilities—there was another man out there some where after all, one with some emotional claim on her, or more she hadn't told him about the first pregnancy, or the miscarriage…

“Ever since I was a little girl,” she said, “I've been seeing Angus McKettrick. In fact, he's here right now.”

Brad recalled the glance she'd thrown over his shoulder a few minutes before, the odd expression in her eyes. First Livie, with her Dr. Doo little act—now Meg claimed she could see the family patriarch, who had been dead for over a century.

He thrust out a sigh.

She waited, gnawing at her lip, her eyes wide and hopeful.

“If you say so,” he said at last, “I believe you.”

Joy suffused her face. “Really?”

“Really,” he said, though the truth was more like:
I'm
trying
to believe you.
As with Livie, he would believe if it killed him, despite all the rational arguments crowding his mind.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I'd insist that you stay, since we're engaged,” she whispered, “but Angus is even more old-fashioned than you are.”

He laughed, said good-night and looked down at Willie.

The dog was standing, wagging his tail and grinning, looking up at someone who wasn't there.

There were indeed, Brad thought, as he and Willie made the lonely drive back to Stone Creek Ranch in his truck, more things in heaven and earth than this world dreams of.

 

“Where have you been?” Meg demanded, torn between relief at seeing Angus again, and complete exasperation.

“You always knew I wouldn't be around forever,” Angus said. He looked older than he had the last time she'd seen him, even careworn, but somehow serene, too. “Things are winding down, girl. I figured you needed to start getting used to my being gone.”

Meg blinked, surprised by the stab of pain she felt at the prospect of Angus's leaving for good. On the other hand, she
had
always known the last parting would come.

“I'm going to have a baby,” she said, struggling not to cry. “I'll need you. The baby and Carly will need you.”

Angus seldom touched her, but now he cupped one hand under her chin. His skin felt warm, not cold, and solid, not ethereal. “No,” he said gruffly. “You only need your selves
and each other. Things are going to be fine from here on out, Meg. You'll see.”

She swallowed, wanting to cling to him, knowing it wouldn't be right. He had a life to live, some where else, beyond some unseen border. There were others there, waiting for him.

“Why did you come?” she asked. “In first place, I mean?”

“You needed me,” he said simply.

“I did,” she confirmed. For all the nannies and “aunts and uncles,” she'd been a lost soul as a child, especially after Sierra was kidnapped and Eve fell apart in so many ways. She'd never blamed her mother, never harbored any resentment for the inevitable neglect she'd suffered, but she knew now that, without Angus, she would have been bereft.

He was carrying a hat in his left hand, and now he put it on, the gesture somehow final. “You say goodbye to Carly for me,” he said. “And tell her that her pa's just fine where he is.”

Meg nodded, unable to speak.

Angus leaned in, planted a light, awkward kiss on Meg's forehead. “When you get to the end of the trail,” he said, “and that's a long ways off, I promise, I'll be there to say welcome.”

Still, no words would come. Not even ones of farewell. So Meg merely nodded again.

Angus turned his back and, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

She cried that night, for sorrow, for joy and for a thousand other reasons, but when the morning came, she knew Angus had been right.

She didn't need him anymore.

 

The wedding was small and simple, with only family and a few friends present. Meg still considered the marriage provisional, and went on calling herself Meg McKettrick, although she and Carly moved in at Stone Creek Ranch right away. All the horses came with them, but Meg still paid regular visits to the Triple M, always hoping, on some level, for just one more glimpse of Angus.

It didn't happen, of course.

So she sorted old photos and journals when she was there, and with some help from Sierra, catalogued them into something resembling archives. Eve, tired of hotel living, planned on moving back in. A grandmother, she maintained, with Eve-logic, ought to live in the country. She ought to bake pies and cookies and shelter the children of the family under broad, sturdy branches, like an old oak tree.

Meg smiled every time she pictured her rich, sophisticated, well-traveled mother in an apron and sensible shoes, but she had to admit Eve had pulled off a spectacular country-style Christmas. There had been a massive tree, covered in lights and heirloom ornaments, bulging stockings for Carly and Liam and little Brody, and a complete turkey dinner, only partly catered.

She'd already taken over the master bedroom, and she'd brought her two champion jumpers from the stables in San Antonio, and in stalled them in the barn. She rode every chance she got, often with Brad and Carly and some times with Jesse, Rance and Keegan.

Meg, being pregnant and out of practice when it came to horse back riding, usually watched from a perch on the pasture fence. She didn't believe in being overly cautious—it wasn't the McKettrick way—but this baby was precious to her, and to Brad. She wasn't taking any chances.

Dusting off an old photograph of Holt and Lorelei, Meg
stepped back to admire the way it looked on the study mantle. She heard her mother at the back of the house.

“Meg? Are you here?”

“In the study,” Meg called back.

Eve tracked her down. “Feeling nostalgic?” she asked, eyeing the picture.

Meg sighed, sat down in a high-backed leather chair, facing the fire place. “Maybe it's part of the pregnancy. Hormones, or something.”

Eve, always practical, threw off her coat, draping it over the back of the sofa, marched to the fire place and started a crack ling, cheerful blaze. She let Meg's words hang, all that time, finally turning to study her daughter.

“Are you happy, Meg? With Brad, I mean?”

When it came to happiness, she and Brad were constantly charting fresh territory. Learning new things about each other, stumbling over surprises both profound and prosaic. For all of that, there was a sense of fragility to the relationship.

“I'm happy,” she said.

“But?” Eve prompted. She stood with her back to the fire place, looking very ungrandmotherly in her tailored slacks and silk sweater.

“It feels—well—too good to be true,” Meg admitted.

Eve crossed to drag a chair closer to Meg's and sit beside her. “You're holding back a part of yourself, aren't you? From Brad, from the marriage?”

“I suppose I am,” Meg said. “It's sort of like the first day we were allowed to swim in the pond, late in the spring, when Jesse and Rance and Keegan and I were kids. The water was always freezing. I'd stick a toe in and stand shivering on the bank while the boys can non balled into the water, howling and whooping and trying to splash me. Finally, more out of shame than courage, I'd jump in.”
She shuddered. “I still remember that icy shock—it always knocked the wind out of me for a few minutes.”

Eve smiled, probably remembering similar swimming fests from her own child hood, with another set of McKettrick cousins. “But then you got used to the temperature and had as much fun as the boys did.”

Meg nodded.

“It's not smart to hold yourself apart from the shocks of life, Meg—the good ones or the bad. They're all part of the mix, and paradoxically, shying away from them only makes things harder.”

Meg was quiet for a long time. Then she said quietly, “Angus is gone.”

Eve waited.

“I miss him,” Meg confessed. “When I was a teenager, especially, I used to wish he'd leave me alone. Now that he's gone—well—every day, the memories seem less and less real.”

Eve took her hand, squeezed. “Some times,” she said very softly, “just at twilight, I think I see them—Angus and his four sturdy, handsome sons—riding single-file along the creek bank. Just a glimpse, a heart beat really, and then they're gone. It's odd, because they don't look like ghosts. Just men on horse back, going about their ordinary business. I could almost convince myself that, for a fraction of a moment, a curtain had opened between their time and ours.”

“Rance told me the same thing once,” Meg said. “He used different words, but he saw the riders, traveling one behind the other beside the creek, and he knew who they were.”

The two women sat in thoughtful silence for a while.

“It's a strange thing, being a McKettrick,” Meg finally said.

“You're an O'Ballivan now,” Eve surprised her by saying. “And your baby will be an O'Ballivan, too.”

Meg looked hard at her mother, startled. Eve had been miffed when Sierra took Travis's last name, and made a few remarks about tradition not being what it once was.

“What about the McKettrick way?” she asked.

“The McKettrick way,” Eve said, giving Meg's hand another squeeze, “is living at full throttle, holding nothing back. It's taking life—and change—as they come. Anyway, lots of women keep their last names these days—taking their husbands' is the novelty now.” She paused, studying Meg with loving, intelligent eyes. “It's what's standing in your way,” she said decisively. “You're afraid that if you're not Meg McKettrick anymore, you'll lose some part of your identity, and have to get to know yourself as a new person.”

Meg realized that she
was
a new person—though of course still herself in the most fundamental ways. She was a wife now, a mother-figure as well as a sister to Carly. When the baby came, there would be yet another new level to who she was.

“I've been hiding behind the McKettrick name,” she mused, more to herself than Eve.

“It's a fine name,” Eve said. “We take a lot of pride in it—maybe too much, some times.”

“Would
you
take your husband's name, if you remarried?” Meg ventured.

Eve thought about her answer before shaking her head from side to side. “No,” she said. “I don't think so. I've been a McKettrick for so long, I wouldn't know how to be anything else.”

Meg smiled. “And you don't want me to follow in your foot steps?”

“I want you to be
happy.
Don't stand on the bank shivering, Meg.
Jump in. Get wet.
”

“Were
you
happy, Mom?” The reply to that question seemed terribly important; Meg held her breath to hear it.

“Most of the time, yes,” Eve said. “When Hank took Sierra and vanished, I was shattered. I don't think I could have gone on if it hadn't been for you. Though I realize it probably didn't seem that way to you, that you were my main reason for living, you and the hope of getting Sierra back. I'm so sorry, Meg, for coming apart at the seams the way I did. For not being there for you.”

“I've never resented that, Mom. As young as I was, I knew you loved me, and that the things that were happening didn't change that for a moment. Besides, I had Angus.”

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked ponderously, marking off the hours, the minutes, the seconds, as it had been doing for over a hundred years. It had ticked and tocked through the lives of Holt and Lorelei and their children, and the generations to follow.

The sound reminded Meg of something she'd always known, at least unconsciously. Life seemed long, but it was finite, too. One day, some future McKettrick would sit listening to that same clock, and Meg herself would be a memory. An ancestor in a photo.

“Gotta go pick Carly up at school,” she said, standing up.

Time to find Brad,
she added silently,
and introduce him to his wife.

“Hello,” I'll say, as if we're meeting for the first time. “My name is Meg O'Ballivan.”

T
HAT LATE
M
ARCH DAY WAS
blustery and cold, but there was a fresh, piney tinge to the air. Brad, Meg and Carly stood watching from a short distance as Olivia squared her shoulders, walked to the far gate, sprung the latch and opened the way for Ransom to go.

A part of Meg hoped he'd choose to stay, but it wasn't to be.

Ransom approached the path to freedom cautiously at first, the mares straggling behind him, still shaggy with their winter coats.

When the great stallion drew abreast of Olivia, he paused, nickered and tossed his magnificent head once, as if to bid her goodbye. Tears slipped down Olivia's cheeks, and she made no attempt to wipe them away. She'd arrived during break fast that morning and said Ransom had told her it was time.

Meg, who had after all seen a ghost from child hood, didn't question her sister-in-law's ability to communicate with animals. Even Brad, quietly skeptical about such things, couldn't write it all off to coincidence.

Carly, her own face wet, leaned into Brad a little. Meg sniffled, trying to be brave and philosophical.

He put one arm around her shoulders and one around Carly's. Glancing up at him, Meg didn't see the sorrow she and Carly and Olivia were feeling, but an expression of almost trans ported wonder and awe.

Ransom walked through the gate, turned a little way beyond and reared onto his hind legs, a startlingly beautiful sight against the early-spring sky, summoning his mares with a loud whinny.

“I guess being in a couple of movie scenes went to his head,” Brad joked, a rasp in his voice. “He thinks he's Flicka.” The filming was over now, and things were settling down on the ranch, and around town. Local attention had turned to the new animal shelter, now under construction just off Main Street.

Meg's throat was so clogged with emotion, she couldn't speak. She rested her head against Brad's shoulder and watched, riveted, as Ransom shot off across the meadow, headed back up the mountain.

The mares followed, tails high.

Olivia watched them out of sight. Then, with a visible sigh and another squaring of her shoulders, she slowly closed the gate.

Meg started toward her, but Brad caught hold of her hand and held her back.

Olivia passed them by as if they were in visible, climbed agilely over the inside fence, and moved toward her perennially dusty Suburban.

“She'll be all right,” Brad assured Meg quietly, watching his sister go.

Together, Brad, Carly and Meg returned to the house, saying little.

Life went on. Willie needed to go out. The phone was ringing. The fax machine in Brad's study was spewing paper.

Business as usual, Meg thought, quietly happy, despite her sadness over the departure of Ransom and the mares. She knew, as Brad did, and certainly Olivia, that they might never see those horses again.

“I don't suppose I could stay home from school, just for today?” Carly ventured, as Brad answered the phone and Meg started a fresh pot of coffee.

Outside, the toot of a horn announced the arrival of the school bus, and Brad cocked a thumb in that direction and gave Carly a mock stern look.

She sighed dramatically, still angling for an Oscar, as Brad had once observed, but grabbed up her backpack and left the house.

“No, Phil,” Brad said into the telephone receiver, “I'm
still
not doing that gig in Vegas. I don't
care
how good the buzz is about the movie—”

Meg smiled.

Brad rolled his eyes, listening. “I am so not over the way you stuck me with Cynthia for a leading lady,” he went on. “You owe me for that one, big-time.”

When the call was over, though, Brad found his guitar and settled into a chair in the living room, looking out over the land, playing soft thoughtful chords.

Meg knew, without being told, that he was writing a new song. She loved listening to him, loved being his wife. While he was still adamant about not doing concert tours, they'd been drawing up plans for weeks for a recording studio to be constructed out behind the house. Brad O'Ballivan was filled with music, and he had to have some outlet for it.

He didn't seem to long for the old life, though. First and foremost, he was a family man. He and Meg had legally adopted Carly, though he was still Brad to her, and Ted would always be Dad. He looked forward to the baby's birth as much as Meg did, and had even gone so far as to have the first sonogram framed.

Their son, McKettrick “Mac” O'Ballivan, was strong
and sturdy within Meg's womb. He was due on the Fourth of July.

Meg paused by Brad's chair, bent to kiss the top of his head.

He looked up at her, grinned and went on strumming and murmuring lyrics.

When a knock came at the front door, Willie growled half heartedly but didn't get up from his favorite lounging place, the thick rug in front of the fire.

Meg went to answer, and felt a strange shock of recognition as she gazed into the face of a stranger, some where in his midthirties.

His hair was dark, and so were his eyes, and yet he bore a striking resemblance to Jesse. Dressed casually in clean, good-quality Western clothes, he took off his hat and smiled, and only then did Meg remember Angus's prediction.

One of them's about to land on your doorstep,
he'd said.

“Meg McKettrick?” the man asked, showing white teeth as he smiled.

“Meg O'Ballivan,” she clarified. Brad was standing behind her now, clearly curious.

“My name is Logan Creed,” said the cowboy. “And I believe you and I are kissin' cousins.”