The McKettrick Legend (31 page)

Meg's throat went tight. How was she going to help this child face the loss of not one parent, but two? Sister or not, she was a stranger to Carly.

The phone rang.

Carly, being closest, picked up the receiver, peered at the caller ID panel, and went wide-eyed.
“Brad O'Ballivan?”
she whispered reverently, padding across the kitchen to give Meg the phone. “
The
Brad O'Ballivan?”

Meg choked out a laugh. Well, well, well. Carly was a fan. Just the opening Meg needed to establish some kind of bond, however tenuous, with her newly discovered kid sister. “
The
Brad O'Ballivan,” she said before thumbing the talk button. “Hello?”

Brad's answer was an expansive yawn. Evidently, he'd either just awakened or he'd gone to bed early. Either way, the images playing in Meg's mind were scintillating ones, and they soon rippled into other parts of her anatomy, like tiny tsunamis boiling under her skin.

“Willie's home,” he said finally.

Carly was staring at Meg. “I have all his CDs,” she said.

“That's good,” Meg answered.

“We ought to celebrate,” Brad went on. “I grill a mean steak. Six-thirty, my place?”

“Only if you have a couple of spares,” Meg said. “I have company.”

The smell of scorching sandwich billowed from the stove.

Carly didn't move.

“Company?” Brad asked sleepily, with another yawn.

Meg pictured him scantily clothed, if he was wearing anything at all, with an attractive case of bed head. And she blushed to catch herself thinking lascivious thoughts with a twelve-year-old in the same room. “It's a lot to explain over the phone,” she said diplomatically, gesturing to Carly to rescue the sandwich, which she finally did.

“The more the merrier,” Brad said. “Whoever they are, bring them.”

“We'll be there,” Meg said.

Carly pushed the skillet off the burner and waved in effectually at the smoke.

Meg said goodbye to Brad and hung up the phone.

“We're going to
Brad O'Ballivan's house?
” Carly blurted.
“For real?”

“For real,” Meg said. “If your dad feels up to it.”

“He's your dad, too,” Carly allowed. “And he likes Brad's music. We listen to it in the car all the time.”

Meg let the part about Ted Ledger being her dad pass. He'd been her sire, not her father. “Let's let him rest,” she said, taking over the grilled cheese operation and feeling glad when Carly didn't protest, or try to elbow her aside.

“How long have you known him?” Carly demanded, almost breathless.

It was a moment before Meg realized the girl was talking about Brad, not Ted, so muddled were her thoughts. “Since junior high,” she said.

“What's he like?”

“He's nice,” Meg said care fully, slicing cheese, reaching for the butter dish and then the bread bag.

“‘Nice'?” Carly looked not only skeptical, but a little disappointed. “He trashes hotel rooms. He pushed a famous actress into a swimming pool at a big Hollywood party—”

“I think that's mostly hype,” Meg said, hoping the kid hadn't heard the notches-in-the-bedpost stuff. She started the new sandwich in a fresh skillet and carried the first one to the sink. When she glanced Carly's way, she was surprised and touched to see she'd taken a seat on the bench next to the table.

“Do you think he'd au to graph my CDs?”

“I'd say there was a fairly good chance he will, yes.” She turned the sandwich, got out a china plate, poured a glass of milk.

Carly glowed with anticipation. “If I had any friends,” she said, “I'd call them all and tell them I get to meet Brad O'Ballivan
in the flesh.
”

And what flesh it was, Meg thought, and blushed again. “Once you start school,” she said, “you'll have all kinds of friends. Plus, there are some kids in the family around your age.”

“It's not my family,” Carly said, stiffening again.

“Of course it is,” Meg argued, but cautiously, scooping a letter-perfect grilled-cheese sandwich onto a plate and presenting it to Carly with a flourish, along with the milk. She wished Angus had been there, to see her cooking. “You
and I are sisters. I'm a McKettrick. So that means you're related to them, too, if only by association.”

“I hate milk,” Carly said.

“Brad drinks it,” Meg replied lightly.

Carly reached for the glass, took a sip. Pondered the taste, and then took another. “You see him, too,” the child observed. “The old man, I mean.”

Before Meg could come up with an answer, Angus reappeared.

“I'm not that old,” he protested.

“Yes, you are,” Carly argued, looking right at him. “You must be a hundred, and that's
old.
”

Meg's mouth fell open.

“I
told
you I could see him,” Carly said with a touch of smugness.

Angus laughed. “I'll be damned,” he marveled.

Carly's brow furrowed. “Are you a ghost?”

“Not really,” Angus said.

“What are you, then?”

“Just a person, like you. I'm from another time, that's all.”

No big deal. I just step from one century to another at will. Anybody could do it.

Meg watched the exchange in amazement, speechless. Ever since she'd started seeing Angus, way back in her nursery days, she'd wished for one other person—just one—who could see him, too. Being different from other people was a lonely thing.

“When my dad dies, will he still be around?”

Angus approached the table, drew back Holt's chair, and sat down. His manner was gruff and gentle, at the same time, and Meg's throat tightened again, recalling all the times he'd comforted her, in his grave, deep-voiced way. “That's a question I can't rightly answer,” he said solemnly.
“But I can tell you that folks don't really die, in the way you probably think of it. They're just in another place, that's all.”

Carly blinked, obviously trying hard not to cry. “I'm going to miss him something awful,” she said very softly.

Angus covered the child's small hand with one of his big, work-worn paws. There was such a rough tenderness in the gesture that Meg's throat closed up even more, and her eyes scalded.

“It's a fact of life, missing folks when they go away,” Angus said. “You've got Meg, here, though.” He nodded his head slightly, in her direction, but didn't look away from Carly's face. “She'll do right by you. It's the McKettrick way, taking care of your own.”

“But I'm not a McKettrick,” Carly said.

“You could be if you wanted to,” Angus reasoned. “You're not a Ledger, either, are you?”

“We've changed our name so many times,” the child admitted, her eyes round and sad and a little hungry as she studied Angus, “I don't remember who I am.”

“Then you might as well be a McKettrick as not,” Angus said.

Carly's gaze slid to Meg, swung away again. “I'm not going to forget my dad,” she said.

“Nobody expects you to do that,” Angus replied. “Thing is, you've got a long life ahead of you, and it'll be a lot easier with a family to take your part when the trail gets rugged.”

Upstairs, a door opened, then closed again.

“Your pa,” Angus told Carly, lowering his voice a little, “is real worried about you being all right, once he's gone. You could put his mind at ease a bit, if you'd give Meg a chance to act like a big sister.”

Carly bit her lower lip, then nodded. “I wish you
wouldn't go away,” she said. “But I know you're going to.” She paused, and Meg grappled with the sudden knowledge that it was true—one day soon, Angus would vanish, for good. “If you see my mom—her name is Rose—will you tell her I've got a tattoo just like hers?”

“I surely will,” Angus promised.

“And you'll look out for my dad, too?”

Angus nodded, his eyes misty. It was a phenomenon Meg had never seen before, even at family funerals. Then he ruffled Carly's hair and vanished just as Ted came down the stairs, moving slowly, holding tightly to the rail.

It was all Meg could do not to rush to his aid.

“Hungry?” she asked moderately.

“I could eat,” Ted volunteered, looking at Carly. His whole face softened as he gazed at his younger child.

It made Meg wonder if he'd ever missed
her,
during all those years away.

As if he'd heard her thoughts, her father turned to her. “You turned out real well,” he said after clearing his throat. “Your mom did a good job, raising you. But, then, Eve was always competent.”

“We're going to meet Brad O'Ballivan,” Carly said.

“Get out,” Ted teased, a faint twinkle shining in his eyes. “We're not, either.”

“Yes, we are,” Carly insisted. “Meg knows him. He just called here. Meg says he might au to graph my CDs.”

Ted grinned, made his way to the table and sank into the chair Angus had occupied until moments before. Spent a few moments recovering from the exertion of descending the stairs and crossing the room.

Meg served up the extra sandwiches she'd made earlier, struggling all the while with a lot of tangled emotions. Carly could see Angus. Ted Ledger might be a total stranger, but he was Meg's father, and he was dying.

Last but certainly not least, Brad was back in her life, and there were bound to be complications.

A strange combination of grief, joy and anticipation pushed at the inside walls of Meg's heart.

 

They arrived right on time, Meg and a young girl and a man who put Brad in mind of a faster-aging Paul Newman. Willie, who'd been resting on the soft grass bordering the flag stone patio off the kitchen, keeping an eye on his new master while he prepared the barbecue grill for action, gave a soft little woof.

Brad watched as Meg approached, thinking how delicious she looked in her jeans and light weight, close-fitting sweater. She hadn't explained who her company was, but looking at them, Brad saw the girl's resemblance to Meg, and guessed the man to be the father she hadn't seen since she was a toddler.

He smiled.

The girl blushed and stared at him.

“Hey,” he said, putting out a hand. “My name's Brad O'Ballivan.”

“I know,” the girl said.

“My sister, Carly,” Meg told him. “And this is my—this is Ted Ledger.”

Shyly, Carly slipped off her backpack, reached inside, took out a couple of beat-up CDs. “Meg said I could maybe get your au to graph.”

“No maybe about it,” Brad answered. “I don't happen to have a pen on me at the moment, though.”

Carly swallowed visibly. “That's okay,” she said, her gaze straying to Willie, who was thumping his tail against the ground and grinning a goofy dog grin at her, hoping for friend ship. “What happened to him?”

“He had a run-in with a pack of coyotes,” Brad said.
“He'll be all right, though. Just needs a little time to mend.”

The girl crouched next to the dog, stroked him gently. “Hi,” she said.

Mean while, Meg's father took a seat at the patio table. He looked bushed.

“I had to have stitches once,” Carly told Willie. “Not as many as you've got, though.”

“Brad's sister is a veterinarian,” Meg said, finally finding her voice. “She fixed him right up.”

“I'd like to be a veterinarian,” Carly said.

“No reason you can't,” Brad replied, turning his attention to Ted Ledger. “Can I get you a drink, Mr. Ledger?”

Ledger shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said quietly. His gaze moved fondly between Meg and Carly, resting on one, then the other. “Good of you to have us over. I appreciate it. And I'd rather you called me Ted.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Meg asked.

“I've got it under control,” Brad told her. “Just relax.”

Great advice, O'Ballivan,
he thought.
Maybe you ought to take it.

Meg went to greet Willie, who gave a whine of greeting and tried to lick her face. She laughed, and Brad felt something open up inside him, at the sound. When he'd conceived the supper idea, he'd intended to ply her with good wine and a thick steak, then take her to bed. The extra guests precluded that plan, of course, but he didn't regret it. When it finally registered that his and Meg's child might have looked a lot like Carly, though, he felt bruised all over again.

“Any news about Ransom?” Meg asked, stepping up beside him when he turned his back to lay steaks on the grill, along with foil-wrapped baked potatoes that had been cooking for a while.

Brad shook his head, suddenly unable to look at her. If he did, she'd see all the things he felt, and he wasn't ready for that.

“According to the radio,” Meg persisted, “the blizzard's passed, and the snow's melted.”

Brad sighed. “I guess that means I'd better ride up and look for that stallion before Livie decides to do it by herself.”

“I'd like to go with you,” Meg said, sounding almost shy.

Brad thought about the baby who'd never had a chance to grow up. The baby Meg hadn't seen fit to tell him about. “We'll see,” he answered noncommittally. “How do you like your steak?”

A
FTER THE MEAL HAD BEEN
served and enjoyed, with Willie getting the occasional scrap, Brad signed the astounding succession of CDs Carly fished out of her backpack. Ted, who had eaten little, seemed content to watch the scene from a patio chair, and Meg insisted on cleaning up; since she'd had no part in the preparations, it only seemed fair.

As she carried in plates and glasses and silver ware, rinsed them and put them into the over size dish washer, she reflected on Brad's mood change. He'd been warm to Ted, and chatted and joked with Carly, but when she'd mentioned that she'd like to ac company him when he went looking for Ransom again, it was as if a wall had slammed down between them.

She was just shutting the dish washer and looking for the appropriate button to push when the screen door creaked open behind her. She turned, saw Brad hesitating on the thresh old. It was past dusk—outside, the patio lights were burning brightly—but Meg hadn't bothered to flip a switch when she came in, so the kitchen was almost dark.

“Kid wants a T-shirt,” he said, his face in shadow so she couldn't read his expression. “I think I have a few around here some place.”

Meg nodded, oddly stricken.

Brad didn't move right away, but simply stood there for
a few long moments; she knew by the tilt of his head that he was watching her.

“You've gone out of your way to be kind to Carly,” Meg managed, because the silence was unbearable. “Thank you.”

He still didn't speak, or move.

Meg swallowed hard. “Well, it's getting late,” she said awkwardly. “I guess we'd better be heading for home soon.”

Brad reached out for a switch, and the overhead lights came on, seeming harsh after the previous cozy twilight in the room. His face looked bleak to Meg, his broad shoulders seemed to stoop a little.

“Seeing her—Carly, I mean—”

“I know,” Meg said very softly. Of course Brad saw what she had, when he looked at Carly—the child who might have been.

“She's her own person,” Brad said with an almost inaudible sigh. “It wouldn't be right to think of her in any other way. But it gave me a start, seeing her. She looks so much like you. So much like—”

“Yes.”

“What's going on, Meg? You said you couldn't explain over the phone, and I figured out that Ledger had to be your dad. But there's more to this, isn't there?”

Meg bit her lower lip. “Ted is dying,” she said. “And it turns out that Carly has no one else in the world except me.”

Brad processed that, nodded. “Be careful,” he told her quietly. “Carly is Carly. It would be all too easy—and completely unfair—to super impose—”

“I wouldn't do that, Brad,” Meg broke in, bristling. “I'm not pretending she's—she's our daughter.”

“Guess I'll go rustle up that T-shirt,” Brad said.

Meg didn't respond. For the time being, the conversation—at least as far as their lost child was concerned—was over.

Carly wore the T-shirt home—Brad's guitar-wielding profile was silhouetted on the front, along with the year of a recent tour and an impressive list of cities—practically bouncing in the car seat as she examined the showy signature on the face of each of her CDs.

“I bet he never trashed a single hotel room,” she enthused, from the backseat of Meg's Blazer. “He's way too nice to do that.”

Meg and Ted exchanged a look of weary amusement up front.

“It was quite an evening,” Ted said. “Thanks, Meg.”

“Brad did all the work,” she replied.

“I like his dog, too,” Carly bubbled. She seemed to have forgotten her situation, for the time being, and Meg could see that was a relief to Ted. “Brad said he'd change his name to Stitches, if he didn't already answer to Willie.”

Meg smiled.

All the way home, it was Brad said this, Brad said that.

Once they'd reached the ranch house, Ted went inside, exhausted, while Carly and Meg headed for the barn to feed the horses. Despite her earlier condemnation of the entire equine species, Carly proved a fair hand with hay and grain.

“Is he your boy friend?” Carly asked, keeping pace with Meg as they returned to the house.

“Is who my boy friend?” Meg parried.

“You
know
I mean Brad,” Carly said. “Is he?”

“He's a
friend
,” Meg said. But a voice in her mind chided,
Right. And last night, you were rolling around on a mattress with him.

“I may be twelve, but I'm not stupid,” Carly remarked, as they reached the back door. “I saw the way he looked at you. Like he wanted to put his hands on you all the time.”

Yeah,
Meg thought wearily.
Specifically, around my throat.

“You're imagining things.”

“I'm very sophisticated for twelve,” Carly argued. “Maybe
too
sophisticated.”

“If you think I'm going to act like some
kid,
just because I'm twelve, think again.”

“That's exactly what I think. A twelve-year-old
is
a kid.” Meg pushed open the kitchen door; Ted had turned on the lights as he entered, and the place glowed with homey warmth. “Go to bed.”

“There's no TV in my room,” Carly protested. “And I'm not sleepy.”

“Tough it out,” Meg replied. Crossing to the china cabinet on the far side of the room, she opened a drawer, found a notebook and a pen, and handed them to her little sister. “Here,” she said. “Keep a journal. It's a tradition in the McKettrick family.”

Carly hesitated, then accepted the offering. “I guess I could write about Brad O'Ballivan,” she said. She held the notebook to her chest for a moment. “Are you going to read it?”

“No,” Meg said, softening a little. “You can write anything you want to. Some times it helps to get feelings out of your head and onto paper. Then you can get some perspective.”

Carly considered. “Okay,” she said and started for the stairs, taking the notebook with her.

Meg, knowing she wouldn't sleep, tired as she was, headed for the study as soon as Carly disappeared, logged on to the internet and resumed her research.

“You won't find him on that contraption,” Angus told her.

She looked up to see him sitting in the big leather wingback chair by the fire place. Like many other things in the house, the chair was a holdover from the Holt and Lorelei days.

“Josiah, I mean,” Angus added, jawline hard again as he remembered the brother who had so disappointed him. “I told you he didn't use the McKettrick name.” He gave a snort. “Sounded too Irish for him.”

“Help me out, here,” Meg said.

Angus remained silent.

Meg sighed and turned back to the screen. She'd been scrolling through names, intermittently, for days. And now, suddenly, she had a hit, more an instinct than anything specific. “Creed, Josiah
McKettrick,
” she said excitedly, clicking on the link. “I must have passed right over him dozens of times.”

Angus materialized at her elbow, stooping and staring at the screen, his heavy eyebrows pulled together in consternation and curiosity.

“Captain in the United States Army,” Meg read aloud, and with a note of triumph in her voice. “Founder of ‘the legendary Stillwater Springs Ranch,' in western Montana. Owner of the Stillwater Springs
Courier,
the first newspaper in that part of the territory. On the town council, two terms as mayor. Wife, four sons, active member of the Methodist Church.” She stopped, looked up at Angus. “Doesn't sound like an anti-Irish pirate to me.” She tapped at Josiah's solemn photograph on the home page. Bewhiskered, with a thick head of white hair, he looked dour and prosperous in his dark suit, the coat fastened with one button at his breastbone, in that curious nineteenth-century way. “There
he is, Angus,” she said. “Your brother, Josiah McKettrick Creed.”

“I'll be hornswoggled,” Angus said.

“Whatever that is,” Meg replied, busily copying information onto a notepad. The website was obviously the work of a skillful amateur, probably a family member with a genealogical bent, and there was no “contact us” link, but the name of the town, and the ranch if it still existed, was information enough.

“Looks like you missed something,” Angus said.

Meg peered at the screen, trying to see past Angus's big index finger, scattering a ring of pixels around its end.

She pushed his hand gently aside.

And saw a tiny link at the bottom of the page, printed in blue letters.

A press of a mouse button and she and Angus were looking at the masthead of Josiah's newspaper, the
Courier
.

The headline was printed in heavy type.
MURDER AND SCANDAL BESET STILLWATER SPRINGS RANCH.

Some thing quivered in the pit of Meg's stomach, a peculiar combination of dread and fascination. The byline was Josiah's own, and the brief obituary beneath it still pulsed with the staunch grief of an old man, bitterly determined to tell the unflinching truth.

“Creed,” Angus repeated, musing. “That was my mother's name, before she and my pa hitched up.”

“So maybe Josiah
wasn't
a McKettrick,” Meg ventured. “Maybe your mother was married before, or—”

Angus stiffened. “Or nothing,” he said pointedly. “Back in those days, women didn't go around having babies out of wedlock. Pa must have been her second husband.”

Meg, feeling a little stung, didn't comment. Nor did she argue the point, which would have been easy to back up, that premarital pregnancies weren't as uncommon in “his day” as Angus liked to think.

“Where's that old Bible Georgia set such store by?” he asked now.

Georgia, his second wife, mother of Rafe, Kade and Jeb, had evidently been her generation's record-keeper and family historian. “I suppose Keegan has it,” she answered, “since he lives in the main ranch house.”

“Ma wrote all the begats in that book,” Angus recalled. “I never thought to look at it.”

“She never mentioned being married before?”

“No,” Angus admitted. “But folks didn't talk about things like that much. It was a private matter and besides, they had their hands full just surviving from day to day. No time to sit around jawing about the past.”

“I'll drop in on Keegan and Molly in the morning,” Meg said. “Ask if I can borrow the Bible.”

“I want to look at it
now.
”

“Angus, it's late—”

He vanished.

Meg sighed. There were no more articles on the website—just that short, sad obituary notice—so she logged off the computer. She was brewing a cup of herbal tea in the microwave, hoping it would help her sleep, when Ted
came down the backstairs, wearing an old plaid flannel bathrobe and scruffy slippers.

Lord, he wanted to talk.

Now, from the look on his face.

She wasn't ready, and that didn't matter.

The time had come.

Dragging back a chair at the table, Ted crumpled into it.

“Tea?” Meg asked, and immediately felt stupid.

“Sit down, Meg,” Ted said gently.

She took the mug from the microwave, grateful for its citrusy steamy scent, and joined him, perching on the end of one of the benches.

“There's no money,” Ted said.

“I gathered that,” Meg replied, though not flippantly. And the dizzying thought came to her that maybe this was all some kind of con—a
Paper Moon
kind of thing, Ted playing the Ryan O'Neal part, while Carly handled Tatum's role. But the idea fizzled almost as quickly as it had flared up in her mind—a scam would have been so much easier to take than the grim reality.

Ted ran a tremulous hand through his thinning hair. “I wish things had happened differently, Meg,” he said. “I wanted to come back a hundred times, say I was sorry for everything that happened. I convinced myself I was being noble—you were a McKettrick, and you didn't need an ex-yardbird complicating your life. The truth gets harder to deny when you're toeing up to the pearly gates, though. I was a coward, that's all. I tried to make up for it by being the best father I could to Carly.” He paused, chuckled ruefully. “I won't take any prizes for that, either. After Rose died, it was as if somebody had greased the bottom of my feet. I just couldn't stay put, and it was mostly downhill, a slippery slope, all the way. The worst part is, I dragged
Carly right along with me. Last job I had, I stocked shelves in a discount store.”

“You don't have to do this,” Meg said, blinking back tears she didn't want him to see.

“Yes,” Ted said, “I do. I loved your mother and she loved me. You need to know how happy we were when you were born—that you were welcome in this big old crazy world.”

“Okay,” Meg allowed. “You were happy.” She swallowed. “Then you embezzled a lot of money and went to prison.”

“Like most embezzlers,” Ted answered, “I thought I could put it back before it was missed. It didn't happen that way. Your mother tried to cover for me at first, but there were other McKettricks on the board, and they weren't going to tolerate a thief.”

“Why did you do it?” The question, more breathed than spoken, hovered in the otherwise silent room.

“Before I met Eve, I gambled. A lot. I still owed some people. I was ashamed to tell Eve—and I knew she'd divorce me—so I ‘borrowed' what I needed and left as few tracks as possible. That got my creditors off my back—they were knee-breakers, Meg, and they wouldn't have stopped at hurting me. They'd have gone after you and Eve, too.”