Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

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      Travis started up his truck, just in case Sierra was listening for the engine, drove it around behind the barn and parked. After stopping to check on Baldy and the three other horses in his care, he shrugged down into the collar of his coat and slogged to his trailer.

      The quarters were close, smaller than the closet off his master bedroom at home in Flagstaff, but he didn’t need much space. He had a bed, kitchen facilities, a bathroom and a place for his laptop. It was enough.

      More than Brody was ever going to have.

      He took off his hat and coat and tossed them on to the built-in, padded bench that passed for a couch. He tried not to think about Brody, and in the daytime, he stayed busy enough to succeed. At night, it was another matter. There just wasn’t enough to do after dark, especially out here in the boonies, once he’d nuked a frozen dinner and watched the news.

      He thought about Sierra and the boy, in there in the big house, eating the chicken and fixings he’d picked up in the deli at the one and only supermarket in Indian Rock. He’d never intended to join them, since they’d just arrived and were settling in, but he could picture himself sitting down at that long table in the kitchen, just the same.

      He rooted through his refrigerator, something he had to crouch to do, and chose between Salisbury steak, Salisbury steak and Salisbury steak.

      While the sectioned plastic plate was whirling round and round in the lilliputian microwave that came with the trailer, he made coffee and remembered his last visit from Rance McKettrick. Widowed, Rance lived alone in the house his legendary ancestor, Rafe, had built for his wife, Emmeline, and their children, back in the 1880s. He had two daughters, whom he largely ignored.

      “This place is just a fancy coffin,” Rance had observed, in his blunt way, when he’d stepped into the trailer. “Brody’s the one that’s dead, Trav, not you.”

      Travis rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Brody was dead, all right. No getting around that. Seventeen, with everything to live for, and he’d blown himself up in the back room of a slum house in Phoenix, making meth.

      He looked into the window over the sink, saw his own reflection.

      Turned away.

      His cell phone rang, and he considered letting voice mail pick up, but couldn’t make himself do it. If he’d answered the night Brody called…

      He fished the thing out, snapped it open and said, “Reid.”

      “Whatever happened to ‘hello’?” Meg asked.

      The bell on the microwave rang, and Travis reached in to retrieve his supper, burned his hand and cursed.

      She laughed. “Better and better.”

      “I’m not in the mood for banter, Meg,” he replied, turning on the water with his free hand and then switching to shove his scorched fingers into the flow.

      “You never are,” she said.

      “The horses are fine.”

      “I know. You would have called me if they weren’t.”

      “Then what do you want?”

      “My, my, we are testy tonight. I called, you big grouch, to ask about my sister and my nephew. Are they okay? How do they look? Sierra is so private, she’s almost standoffish.”

      “You can say that again.”

      “Thank you, but in the interest of brevity, I won’t.”

      “Since when do you give a damn about brevity?” Travis inquired, but he was grinning by then.

      Once again Meg laughed. Once again Travis wished he’d been able to fall in love with her. They’d tried, the two of them, to get something going, on more than one occasion. Meg wanted a baby, and he wanted not to be alone, so it made sense. The trouble was, it hadn’t worked.

      There was no chemistry.

      There was no passion.

      They were never going to be anything more than what they were—the best of friends. He was mostly resigned to that, but in lonely moments, he ached for things to be different.

      “Tell me about my sister,” Meg insisted.

      “She’s СКАЧАТЬ