Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

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      How could a man understand what it meant to bear and nurture a child?

      Hannah closed her eyes and stayed where she was.

      Doss stopped behind her, uncertain. She could feel that, along with the heat and sturdy substance of his body.

      “Leave the child to sleep, Hannah,” he said quietly.

      She nodded, closed Tobias’s door gently and turned to face Doss there in the darkened hallway. He carried a book under one arm and an unlit lantern in his other hand.

      “It’s because he’s lonesome,” she said.

      Doss clearly knew she was referring to Tobias’s hallucination. “Kids make up playmates,” he told her. “And being lonesome is a part of life. It’s a valley a person has to go through, not something to run away from.”

      No McKettrick ever ran from anything. Doss didn’t have to say it, and neither did she. But she wasn’t a McKettrick, not by blood. Oh, she still wrote the word, whenever she had to sign something, but she’d stopped owning the name the day they put Gabe in the ground.

      She wasn’t sure why. He’d been so proud of it, like all the rest of them were.

      “Do you ever wish you could live someplace else?” Hannah heard herself say.

      “No,” Doss said, so quickly and with such gravity that Hannah almost believed he’d been reading her mind. “I belong right here.”

      “But the others—your uncles and cousins—they didn’t stay….”

      “Ask any one of them where home is,” Doss answered, “and they’ll tell you it’s the Triple M.”

      Hannah started to speak, then held her tongue. Nodded. “Good night, Doss,” she said.

      He inclined his head and went on to his own room, shut himself away.

      Hannah stood alone in the dark for a long time.

      She’d been so happy on the Triple M when Gabe was alive, and even after he’d gone into the army, because she’d never once doubted that he’d return. Come walking up the path with a duffel bag over one shoulder, whistling. She’d rehearsed that day a thousand times in her mind—pictured herself running to meet him, throwing herself into his arms.

      It was never going to happen.

      Without him, she might as well have been alone on the barren landscape of the moon.

      Her eyes filled.

      She walked slowly to the end of the hall, into the room where Gabe had brought her on their wedding night. He’d been conceived and born in the big bed there, just as Tobias had. As so many other babes would have been, if only Gabe had lived.

      Hannah didn’t undress after she closed the door behind her. She didn’t let her hair down and brush it, like usual, or wash her face at the basin on the bureau.

      Instead, she sat down in Lorelei’s rocking chair and waited. Just waited.

      For what, she did not know.

      Present Day

      After Liam had gone to bed, Sierra went back downstairs to the computer and scanned her e-mail. When she spotted Allie Douglas-Fletcher’s return address, she wished she’d waited until morning. She was always stronger in the mornings.

      Allie was Adam’s twin sister. Liam’s aunt. After Adam was murdered, while on assignment in South America, Allie had been inconsolable, and she’d developed an unhealthy fixation for her brother’s child.

      After taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, Sierra opened the message. Typically, there was no preamble. Allie got right to the point.

      The guest house is ready for you and Liam. You know Adam would want his son to grow up right here in San Diego, Sierra. Tim and I can give Liam everything—a real home, a family, an education, the very best medical care. We’re willing to make a place for you, too, obviously. If you won’t come home, at least tell us you arrived safely in Arizona.

      Sierra sat, wooden, staring at the stark plea on the screen. Although Allie and Adam had been raised in relative poverty, both of them had done well in life. Adam had been a photojournalist for a major magazine; he and Sierra had met when he did a piece on San Miguel.

      Allie ran her own fund-raising firm, and her husband was a neurosurgeon. They had everything—except what they wanted most. Children.

      You can’t have Liam, Sierra cried, in the silence of her heart. He’s mine.

      She flexed her fingers, sighed, and hit Reply. Allie was a good person, just as Adam had been, for all that he’d told Sierra a lie that shook the foundations of the universe. Adam’s sister sincerely believed she and the doctor could do a better job of raising Liam than Sierra could, and maybe they were right. They had money. They had social status.

      Tears burned in Sierra’s eyes.

      Liam is well. We’re safe on the Triple M, and for the time being, we’re staying put.

      It was all she could bring herself to say.

      She hit Send and logged off the computer.

      The fire was still flourishing on the hearth. She got up, crossed the room, pushed the screen aside to jab at the burning wood with a poker. It only made the flames burn more vigorously.

      She kicked off her shoes, curled up in the big leather chair and pulled a knitted afghan around her to wait for the fire to die down.

      The old clock on the mantel tick-tocked, the sound loud and steady and almost hypnotic.

      Sierra yawned. Closed her eyes. Opened them again.

      She thought about turning the TV back on, just for the sound of human voices, but dismissed the idea. She was so tired, she was going to need all her energy just to go upstairs and tumble into bed. There was none to spare for fiddling with the television set.

      Again, she closed her eyes.

      Again, she opened them.

      She wondered if the lights were still on in Travis’s trailer.

      Closed her eyes.

      Was dragged down into a heavy, fitful sleep.

      She knew right away that she was dreaming, and yet it was so real.

      She heard the clock ticking.

      She felt the warmth of the fire.

      But she was standing in the ranch house kitchen, and it was different, in subtle ways, from the room she knew.

      She was different.

      Her eyes were shut, and yet she could see clearly.

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