Sierra's Homecoming by Linda Lael Miller Page A

my ma?”
    It was a hard question to answer, at least aloud. He’d loved Hannah from the day Gabe had brought her home as his bride. Loved her fiercely, hopelessly and honorably, from a proper distance. Gabe had guessed it right away, though. Waited until the two of them were alone in the barn, slapped Doss on the shoulder and said, Don’t you be ashamed, little brother. It’s easy to love my Hannah.
    â€œOf course I do,” Doss said. “She’s family.”
    Tobias made a face. “I don’t mean like that.”
    Doss’s belly tightened. The boy was only eight, and he couldn’t possibly know what had gone on last night in the spare room.
    Could he?
    â€œHow do you mean, then?”
    â€œPa used to kiss Ma all the time. He used to swat her on the bustle, too, when he thought nobody was looking. It always made her laugh, and stand real close to him, with her arms around his neck.”
    Doss might have gripped the saddle horn with both hands, because of the pain, if he’d been riding alone. It wasn’t the reminder of how much Hannah and Gabe had loved each other that seared him, though. It was the loss of his brother, the way of things then, and it all being over for good.
    â€œI’ll treat your mother right, Tobias,” he said, after more hat-brim pulling and more looking away.
    â€œYou sound pretty sure she’ll say yes,” the boy commented.
    â€œShe already has,” Doss replied.
    Present Day
    More snow began to fall at mid-morning and, worried that the power would go off again, and stay off this time, Sierra gathered her and Liam’s dirty laundry and threw a load into the washing machine. She’d telephoned Liam’s doctor in Flagstaff, from the study, while he and Travis were filling the dishwasher, but she hadn’t mentioned the hallucinations. She’d heard the piano music herself, after all, and then Eve had made such experiences seem almost normal.
    Sierra didn’t know precisely what was happening, and she was still unsettled by Liam’s claims of seeing a boy in old-time clothes, but she wasn’t ready to bring up the subject with an outsider, whether that outsider had a medical degree or not.
    Dr. O’Meara had reviewed Liam’s records, since they’d been expressed to her from the clinic in Florida, and she wanted to make sure he had an inhaler on hand. She’d promised to call in a prescription to the pharmacy in Indian Rock, and they’d made an appointment for the following Monday afternoon.
    Now Liam was in the study, watching TV, and Travis was outside splitting wood for the stove and the fireplaces. If the power went off again, she’d need firewood for cooking. The generator kept the furnace running, along with a few of the lights, but it burned a lot of gas and there was always the possibility that it would break down or freeze up.
    Travis came in with an armload just as she was starting to prepare lunch.
    Watching him, Sierra thought about what Eve had said on the phone earlier. Travis’s younger brother had died horribly, and very recently. He’d left his job, Travis had, and come to the ranch to live in a trailer and look after horses.
    He didn’t look like a man carrying a burden, but appearances were deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Sierra did.
    â€œWhat kind of work did you do, before you came here?” she asked, and then wished she hadn’t brought the subject up at all. Travis’s face closed instantly, and his eyes went blank.
    â€œNothing special,” he said.
    She nodded. “I was a cocktail waitress,” she told him, because she felt she ought to offer him something after asking what was evidently an intrusive question.
    Standing there, beside the antique cookstove and the wood box, in his leather coat and cowboy hat, Travis looked as though he’d stepped through a time warp, out of an earlier century.
    â€œI know,” he said.