McKettrick's Pride

She thought of Echo—Miss Wells, Granny said to call her—with her sparkly smile and pretty hair. It would be a fine thing to have a mother like Miss Wells, driving a pink Barbie car, pulling up in front of the elementary school and waiting to see Rianna and Maeve come out the door. Taping their drawings and arithmetic papers to the front of the fridge.

Rianna’s throat ached, and her eyes burned so bad she couldn’t see for a moment.

“Rianna, honey?” It was Granny, standing at the bottom of the stairs with the newspaper in one hand, looking up at her. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

Rianna swallowed hard, summoned up a smile and went the rest of the way down the steps. “I’m seven,” she announced.

Granny smiled, leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Patted her lightly on one shoulder. “You surely are,” she agreed. “You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

“Maeve says I’m a dweeb,” Rianna confided solemnly.

Granny bent a little more and hugged her tight. She smelled of lilacs, just like always. “Don’t you pay too much attention to the things Maeve says,” Granny told her. “She’s growing up, just like you are, and sometimes that’s hard. It makes a person crabby.”

“Was my mommy ever crabby when she was growing up?” Rianna, unlike Maeve, had no memory of her mother. She wished she had, because then there might not have been a big hole opening up in the middle of her chest when she saw moms hugging their little girls, gathering them up like chicks, loading them into minivans.

Granny’s face softened. “Oh, yes,” she answered, and her voice sounded kind of funny, like she’d swallowed something and couldn’t quite get it to go all the way down. “Sometimes she was. Mostly, though, she was happy. She was smart and beautiful, too, just like you and Maeve.”

Rianna had heard those things before, many times, but she never got tired of listening. “How come Daddy isn’t happy?” she asked.

Granny’s face changed again, but it was different from before. It made Rianna wish she hadn’t asked. Maybe Maeve was right. Maybe she asked too many questions. But how else was she supposed to find things out? It wasn’t as if people told a kid anything much—beyond “Brush your teeth” and “Do your homework—” without a lot of prodding.

“He works too hard,” Granny said. “And he misses your mama something fierce.”

“I miss her, too,” Rianna said. Maeve might have mocked her, said she couldn’t miss Mommy because she’d been too young when she died, but Granny seemed to understand.

“She’d want you to have a real happy birthday,” Granny said.

Maeve appeared at the top of the stairs, still in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand. She yawned. “Is breakfast ready?”

“I’m seven,” Rianna burst out, unable to contain the stupendous news.

“Big deal,” Maeve said.

“Maeve McKettrick,” Granny scolded, “if you’re going to be snotty, go back to bed.” She turned to Rianna again and smiled. “Meanwhile,” she went on, “there just might be a pile of presents waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Rianna’s spirits rose. She liked presents.

Maeve came grudgingly down the stairs.

“You think you’re a teenager,” Rianna whispered, waiting until Granny went on into the kitchen, to pay Maeve back a little for thinking it wasn’t important to be seven. For one thing, Rianna reasoned, it was the only way to get from six to eight. “Just because you’re getting braces.”

“At least I’m not a baby,” Maeve sniffed. “Like you.”

Rianna clenched her fists at her sides. “I’m not a baby!”

Granny doubled back. She said she had eyes in the back of her head, and sometimes Rianna believed her. Imagined them peering out through the hard-sprayed fluff of hair.

“That will be quite enough,” Granny said. “This is a beautiful day, and we’re all going to be nice to one another.”

There was a big stack of presents by Rianna’s plate, all of them tied up with ribbon, and that took her mind off mean Maeve calling her a baby. She wondered out loud if any of them were from her daddy.

Granny’s mouth pulled in tight again, but only for a second. “He had something sent to the ranch,” she said. “Myrna Terp called me and told me so.”

Mrs. Terp worked at McKettrickCo, and always slipped Maeve and Rianna cookies and hard candy in little twisty wrappers when they visited, while their daddy pretended not to notice.

“I hope it’s a dog,” Rianna said.

“As if,” Maeve said.

“Maeve,” Granny finished.

Maeve rolled her eyes. She did that a lot. Rianna figured one of these days they’d pop right out of her head, like in a cartoon, and roll around on the floor.

“Maybe it’s a mommy,” Rianna said.

“You can’t buy a mother, stupid,” Maeve answered, but at another look from Granny, she bit her lower lip, pulled back a chair at the table and sank into it hard.

“Land sakes, Maeve,” Granny muttered, “I can hardly wait until you’re sixteen.” She didn’t sound like she meant it, though. That was another thing about grown-ups; they were always saying one thing when they meant something else entirely.

Rianna inspected the present on top of the pile. “Can I open it?”

“Eat your breakfast first,” Granny said. She dished up Rianna’s favorite, French toast, with blueberries and whipped cream on top. There was milk, too, and orange juice. Rianna was afraid she’d be eight before she got to open her presents.

After breakfast, she ripped in.

A coloring book.

A small plastic pony with a lavender mane and tail.

“That’s from me,” Maeve said.

There was some Barbie stuff from Granny and, finally, a gold locket in a red velvet box.

Rianna drew in her breath. Maeve had gotten one just like it when she turned ten. Rianna had thought she’d have to wait three more years to be grown up enough to wear anything but plastic pop beads.

Her fingers were shaky as she opened the tiny heart. Her mommy’s picture was inside, and there was one of her daddy, too. Both of them were smiling.

Rianna scrunched up her face, trying to remember the pretty woman in the photo, wishing she’d come to life, like pictures did in the Harry Potter movies, and say, “Happy birthday, Rianna.”

Or maybe, “I love you.”

“You’d better not lose that,” Maeve said.

Granny gave Maeve another look, helped Rianna get the necklace out of the box and fastened it around her neck, even though she was still wearing her pajamas.

The thin gold chain glittered magically as Rianna looked down at it.

Granny sniffled and turned away, standing at the sink for a long time.

“She misses Mom,” Maeve confided in a whisper.

So do I, Rianna wanted to say, but she knew she’d get shot down, so she didn’t.

Maeve patted her hand. Smiled like the old Maeve, the one who’d liked her. “Happy birthday, kid,” she said.

THE SHOP WAS COMING together nicely.

Echo and Avalon were outside, on the sidewalk, admiring the gold lettering on the display window—Echo’s Books and Gifts—when Cora pulled up in her old pickup truck. Rianna and Maeve tumbled out of the passenger-side door almost before their grandmother got the vehicle stopped.

“Look!” Rianna crowed, practically dancing in her delight. “I’ve got a locket, and my mommy’s picture is inside it!”

Echo smiled, attributing the slight sting she felt, just behind her heart, to missing her own mother, who had died, along with her father, when she was four. She’d been raised by an aunt and uncle who had three children of their own, didn’t need the irritation of an extra one, and frequently said so.

“Let’s see,” she said softly.

Proudly, Rianna opened the locket.

Echo bent to look.

Rance, a few years younger, heart-stoppingly handsome, and plainly happy. The woman in the adjoining photo had chin-length brown hair with a touch of red, a mischievous smile and large, expressive eyes.

“That’s my mommy,” Rianna explained reverently.

Echo nodded. “She’s very pretty. And you look just like her.” She raised her eyes, took in both Rianna and Maeve.

“I think we look more like Dad,” Maeve said.

“Well, you do resemble him, too,” Echo told her, exchanging glances with Cora.

“Did your furniture ever come?” Rianna asked.

Echo nodded. “Yesterday,” she said. “Avalon likes the air bed, so she slept on that.”

“You still don’t have any books,” Maeve remarked, approaching the display window. Avalon followed, licked the child’s hand tentatively.

“Next week,” Echo told her. “In the meantime, I’ve got a handyman coming to put up new shelves.”

“You girls come on inside now and don’t bother Miss Wells,” Cora said, sounding distracted. It was only eight-thirty, but the Curl and Twirl was already full.

Obediently, Rianna and Maeve went into their grandmother’s shop.

Cora lingered, looking a little flustered. “I didn’t mean to sound abrupt,” she said. “It’s just that, well, days like this, I miss Julie—that’s my daughter—even more than usual.”

Echo nodded. “Birthdays and holidays are harder,” she said quietly.

Cora brightened, making a visible effort. “It helps to keep busy,” she said. She gave an anxious little laugh. “Tell me I remembered to invite you to the party tonight,” she pleaded. “It’s on the ranch, at Travis and Sierra’s place.” Cora had already explained, during other sidewalk visits, that Sierra was Rance’s cousin and Travis was her husband. Travis had grown up with Rance, Jesse and Keegan, but Sierra was a relative newcomer to the family.

“You did,” Echo said. “And I told you I thought I’d be intruding.”

“Nonsense,” Cora said. “How else are you going to get to know people if you don’t come to parties? You can bring the dog, too, if you don’t mind letting her ride in the back of my truck. You could squeeze in up front with the girls and me.”

“I guess I could follow in my car,” Echo said. Cora was right. She was opening a business in Indian Rock, and she would have to get over her shyness and be a part of the community if she wanted this new chapter of her life to be a successful one.

Cora gave an approving nod. “We’ll leave here around six o’clock,” she said. Then she opened the door of the Curl and Twirl and vanished inside.

Echo ran damp palms down the thighs of her jeans. Rance wouldn’t be at the party, she reminded herself, and there was no reason to believe the rest of the McKettrick tribe wasn’t nice. Rianna and Maeve were sweet, and Cora was proving to be a good friend.

“We can do this,” she said.

Avalon cocked her head to one side, perked up her ears and let her tongue loll, looking just like the digital picture Echo had taken the day before and posted to every lost-pet Web site she could find.

All of a sudden, Echo wanted to break down and cry, right there on the sidewalk. Because little girls lost their mothers. Because their fathers were too busy to attend birthday parties. Because maybe no one cared enough about this dog to search the Internet and then come to take her home, and because someone might do just exactly that.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN AVALON STAUNCHLY refused to get into the Volkswagen that evening at six sharp, Echo led the way back into the shop and up the stairs to her apartment on the second floor. Cora and the girls, about to drive off in Cora’s pickup truck, trailed after them.

With a sigh, Avalon settled onto the air mattress she’d appropriated after the furniture arrived, scorning Echo’s brass bed, an estate-sale find she prized very highly.

“Do you think she’s sick?” Echo asked worriedly, turning to Cora.

Cora smiled, approached the dog and crouched, gently patting the dog’s belly. “No,” she answered. “I think she’s pregnant.”

“You mean she’s going to have puppies?” Rianna cried exuberantly, before Echo could present the same question—not so exuberantly.

“What else would she have, dingbat?” Maeve asked her sister.

“Puppies?” Echo repeated.

Cora straightened, smiling. She looked festive in her red jeans, matching boots and silk shirt, causing Echo to wonder, even in the midst of rising panic, if her soft blue broomstick skirt-sweater combo and open-toed sandals were the proper attire for a party on a ranch.

“I’m no veterinarian,” Cora replied, “but I’ll stand by my diagnosis just the same.”

“Yikes,” Echo said.

Cora bent and gave Avalon a long, affectionate stroke with one hand. “You just rest, girl,” she told the animal. “I promise we won’t keep your mistress out late.”

“Shouldn’t I take her to an emergency clinic or something?” Echo fretted.

Cora chuckled. “No,” she said. “She’s not in any apparent distress. Just a case of the oogies, I figure.” She smiled fondly down at Avalon. “Right, girl?”

Avalon sighed, rested her muzzle on her forepaws and closed her eyes.

Meanwhile, Cora linked arms with Echo. “Come along, now,” she urged. “You’re all dressed up and you’ve got someplace to go. Avalon will be just fine.”

“Puppies,” Echo reiterated, but she let herself be pulled out of the apartment and down the stairs, casting anxious glances backward every few steps.

“That’s life for you,” Cora said, out on the sidewalk again, watching as Echo fumbled to lock up the shop. “Do you want to ride with us?”

“I’ll take my own car,” Echo decided. Cora’s truck would be crowded with her stuffed in there. Besides, she’d probably want to leave early. “I’ll follow you.”

Cora nodded, ushered the girls into the pickup and climbed aboard herself.

Echo, offering a silent prayer that Avalon would be okay in her absence, pulled out behind Cora and followed her the length of Main Street, then onto a series of country roads. After about fifteen minutes of travel, they passed beneath a huge, old-fashioned sign marking the entrance to the Triple M Ranch.

Echo knew little about the spread, just the basic facts she’d been able to scrounge up on the Internet, but passing under that arched wooden sign felt like slipping through a wrinkle in time.

The Triple M was the fourth largest ranch in the United States, and it had been founded by one Angus McKettrick, in the nineteenth century. Once primarily a cattle operation, the place was now dedicated to historical preservation. The family fortune, apparently considerable, was generated by McKettrickCo, an international corporation. Four houses remained from Wild West days, including the main ranch house, which Angus had built with his own hands, along with the original barns and other outbuildings.

Barreling along in a cloud of dust from Cora’s pickup, Echo simultaneously worried about her dog and wondered what it would be like to be part of something as vast as the Triple M. According to her brief research, McKettricks had been living on this land for well in excess of a century. Echo, who had never lived in one place for more than a few years, could barely imagine having roots in a piece of ground that had seen so many generations come and go.

Presently, after many twists and turns, one of the ranch houses came into sight, a huge, sturdy wooden structure as at home on the land as a venerable oak or ancient ponderosa pine.

Children and dogs chased one another noisily across an expansive front yard, and colored lanterns hung from virtually every tree limb in sight, glowing red and yellow and blue, even though it was still daylight.

There were cars and trucks slant-parked at every possible angle.

Feeling self-conscious amid such practical, well-used vehicles, Echo found a place to tuck her pink bug, gathered her forces and got out. She reached behind the seat for the large stuffed pony she’d bought at the drugstore in town, as a birthday gift for Rianna.

While the girls ran ahead to join the festivities, Cora wended her way from her own distant parking spot to walk with Echo. From the other woman’s expression, Echo gathered she’d half expected Indian Rock’s newest arrival to bolt for town without saying howdy to anybody.

Since she’d been tempted to do exactly that, Echo blushed slightly and bit her lower lip.

“They’re all good people,” Cora assured her. Evidently, mind reading numbered among her other skills, like fixing hair and teaching little girls to twirl batons. “If that pony’s for Rianna, you picked a real winner. She’ll love it.”

Echo straightened the big red bow tied around the toy’s middle. She’d done that herself, in lieu of wrapping paper. “I’m never going to remember everyone’s name,” she confided. Despite the public nature of her job at the museum in Chicago, and the similar ones that had preceded it, she was naturally something of a loner.

“Not to worry,” Cora assured her. “It takes time to get to know folks. Showing up, that’s the important thing.”

“Half the town must be here,” Echo observed as she and Cora walked toward the house.

“Everybody except Rance McKettrick,” Cora said ruefully.

Sadness whispered against Echo’s heart, made it quiver slightly. She didn’t speak, because she had no right to offer an opinion, though she certainly had one.

“My Julie would give that man what-for if she could,” Cora added, before putting on a party smile and marching into the happy fray.

Echo had little choice but to go along, since Cora had once again hooked an arm through hers.

A tall woman with short, shining brown hair and thoughtful blue eyes approached, smiling. Cora introduced her as Sierra McKettrick, Rance’s cousin.

“She’s descended from Holt and Lorelei,” Cora informed Echo.

Seeing that Echo was at a loss, Sierra smiled warmly. “We McKettricks are big on family trees,” she explained. “Holt was the firstborn son of Angus, the patriarch. Lorelei was Holt’s wife. The house was theirs.”

Echo nodded, struck, once again, by a poignant sense of history.

“Echo owns the new bookstore next to my place,” Cora told Sierra.

“The whole town’s waiting for your shop to open,” Sierra said, eyes twinkling. “I’ll certainly be a regular customer.”

Echo thanked her, and Sierra moved away, graciously greeting other guests. After placing the beribboned pony with a mountain of gaily wrapped gifts, she did her best to mingle. Cora came and went, making occasional introductions, bringing her a glass of punch, tacitly encouraging her to work the crowd.

Echo smiled a lot, scrambling to link names with faces, and soon lost track. Sitting on the porch steps, taking a social breather, she watched as Travis Reid, Sierra’s husband, strung an enormous piñata from a tree branch. Rianna and Maeve and a bevy of young friends and cousins waited eagerly below, while the adults looked on, enjoying the scene.

Cora plopped down beside Echo with a little sigh.

“Lordy,” she said, “I’m getting old.”

“Never,” Echo replied.

Rianna, being the birthday girl, was to have the first whack at the piñata, now suspended by a rope. Travis tossed the other end to a handsome young man in a wheelchair, who caught it ably.

Sticks were handed out to all the children, who waited, anxiously polite, while Rianna swung, giggling, at the bobbing piñata.

A free-for-all followed, and the plaster bird, covered in colorful crepe-paper feathers, finally burst. Candy and small toys rained down, and the kids scrambled for their share of the booty.

It was a golden, glimmering keepsake of a moment, one Echo tucked away in a quiet corner of her heart.

A distant flapping sound distracted her, though, and everyone else at the party. As it drew nearer, they all looked up, shading their eyes against the last of the daylight.

“I’ll be darned,” Cora breathed, a smile breaking over her face, as a helicopter hovered above the field sloping away from the barn, setting the deep grass rippling in waves of green.

“They invited the president?” Echo asked, only half joking.

“Better than that,” Cora said, getting to her feet and dusting off the back of her jeans. “That’s Rance, unless I miss my guess, come to do right by his little girl!”

Echo caught her breath.

Adults restrained children wanting to dash across the field to the helicopter as it landed.

The blades blurred, then slowed.

The door of the copter swung open and, sure enough, out spilled Rance McKettrick like a conquering hero. Stooping until he was clear of the updraft, he grinned as Rianna climbed between two rails of the fence and ran toward him.

He wore jeans, a white shirt open at the throat, and a brown leather jacket that had seen better days, and the vision of him scooping up his young daughter and spinning her around and around in his arms imprinted itself on Echo’s memory like a living photograph.

“Just when I’m ready to wring his fool neck,” Cora marveled, with a hint of tears in her voice, “he comes through.”

Two other men got out of the helicopter, grinning. Another child broke free of the crowd and dashed to meet one of them.

“The blond one’s Jesse,” Cora explained, “and the other is Keegan. That’s Keegan’s daughter, Devon, hugging his neck.” She paused, smiling and shaking her head. “These McKettricks sure do know how to make an entrance.”

While Echo was glad, for Rianna’s sake, that Rance had arrived in time for the party, she was also strangely unsettled by his presence.

It wasn’t just that they’d had words the day she’d arrived—that had been a silly misunderstanding, the kind of thing reasonable adults quickly forget. No, it was the way he made her feel—suddenly and wildly disoriented, as though he’d breached her innermost boundaries, blithely unaware that he was trespassing.

“I think I’ll go back to town and check on Avalon,” she said to Cora, but she was staring at Rance as he hoisted Rianna over the fence, then climbed nimbly over after her.

Cora clasped her hand. “You stay right here,” she said.

It wasn’t as if she could move, anyway. Echo stayed put.

Rance swung Rianna up onto his shoulders, while Maeve walked alongside, beaming up at her dad. He reached out, put an arm around Maeve’s shoulders and pulled her close.

Jesse and Keegan followed, Devon leaping fawnlike at Keegan’s side.

A beautiful dark-haired woman threw her arms around Jesse’s neck as soon as he’d cleared the fence.

“That’s Cheyenne Bridges,” Cora said, ever helpful. “She and Jesse are getting married next month, up on the ridge.”

Echo watched as Jesse and Cheyenne kissed, feeling peculiarly alone, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck riding in a rapidly sinking lifeboat.

She was so caught up in the romantic exchange that she didn’t register Rance’s approach until he was standing directly in front of her. Lifting Rianna down from his shoulders, he grinned.

Out of all the people at that party, he had to walk right up to her?

“Hello, Echo Wells,” he said.

She swallowed. “That was quite an entrance,” she remarked, stealing Cora’s line because nothing else came to mind.

The grin widened.

Echo wondered helplessly if it was registered somewhere, that smile, as a lethal weapon and an unfair advantage of cosmic significance.

“The jet could only bring us as far as Flagstaff,” he told her. “We chartered the helicopter there.”

Echo, still recovering from the grin, floundered in choppy conversational seas. “Impressive,” she said, because it was impressive, watching a copter land in a field during a little girl’s birthday party.

Rance’s face changed almost imperceptibly.

Rianna tugged at his hand. “It’s time for birthday cake, Daddy!” she chimed. “It’s time to blow out my candles and open my presents!”

Rance nodded, but the expression in his eyes was still serious, and a little perplexed. “You go ahead,” he told the child. “I’ll catch up.”

Rianna hurried away, toward the cake and the presents, skipping as she went.