LITMIR.BIZ

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Liam, had shared the old house with a previous generation of McKettricks—Doss and Hannah and a little boy called Tobias. Sierra had offered journals and photograph albums as proof, and Meg had to admit, her half sister made a compelling case.

      Still, and for all that she’d been keeping company with a benevolent ghost since she was little, Meg was a left-brain type.

      When Angus didn’t comment on her insistence that she’d get along fine if he went on to the great roundup in the sky, or whatever, Meg tried again. “Look,” she said gently, “when I was little, and Sierra disappeared, and Mom was so frantic to find her that she couldn’t take care of me, I really needed you. But I’m a grown woman now, Angus. I’m independent. I have a life.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Angus’s jaw tighten. “That Hank Breslin,” he said, “was no good for Eve. No better than your father was. Every time the right man came along, she was so busy cozying up to the wrong one that she didn’t even notice what was right in front of her.”

      Hank Breslin was Sierra’s father. He’d kidnapped Sierra, only two years old at the time, when Eve served him with divorce papers, and raised her in Mexico. For a variety of reasons, Eve hadn’t reconnected with her lost daughter until recently. Meg’s own father, about whom she knew little, had died in an accident a month before she was born. Nobody liked to talk about him—even his name was a mystery.

      “And you think I’ll make the same mistakes my mother did?” Meg said.

      “Hell,” Angus said, sparing her a reluctant grin, “right now, even a mistake would be progress.”

      “With all due respect,” Meg replied, “having you around all the time is not exactly conducive to romance.”

      They started the long climb uphill, headed for the house that now belonged to her and Sierra. Meg had always loved that house—it had been a refuge for her, full of cousins. Looking back, she wondered why, given that Eve had rarely accompanied her on those summer visits, had instead left her daughter in the care of a succession of nannies and, later, aunts and uncles.

      Sierra’s kidnapping had been a traumatic event, for certain, but the problems Eve had subsequently developed because of it had left Meg relatively unmarked. She hadn’t been lonely as a child, mainly because of Angus.

      “I’ll stay clear tomorrow night, when you go to Stone Creek for that drink,” Angus said.

      “You like Brad.”

      “Always did. Liked Travis, too.’ Course, I knew he was meant for your sister, that they’d meet up in time.”

      Meg and Sierra’s husband, Travis, were old friends. They’d tried to get something going, convinced they were perfect for each other, but it hadn’t worked. Now that Travis and Sierra were together, and ecstatically happy, Meg was glad.

      “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “About Brad and me, I mean.”

      Angus didn’t reply. He appeared to be deep in thought. Or maybe as he looked out at the surrounding countryside, he was remembering his youth, when he’d staked a claim to this land and held it with blood and sweat and sheer McKettrick stubbornness.

      “You must have known the O’Ballivans,” Meg reflected, musing. Like her own family, Brad’s had been pioneers in this part of Arizona.

      “I was older than dirt by the time Sam O’Ballivan brought his bride, Maddie, up from Haven. Might have seen them once or twice. But I knew Major Blackstone, all right.” Angus smiled at some memory. “He and I used to arm wrestle sometimes, in the card room back of Jolene Bell’s Saloon, when we couldn’t best each other at poker.”

      “Who won?” Meg asked, smiling slightly at the image.

      “Same as the poker,” Angus answered with a sigh. “We’d always come out about even. He’d win half the time, me the other half.”

      The house came in sight, the barn towering nearby. Angus’s expression took on a wistful aspect.

      “When you’re here,” Meg ventured, “can you see Doss and Hannah and Tobias? Talk to them?”

      “No,” Angus said flatly.

      “Why not?” Meg persisted, even though she knew Angus didn’t want to pursue the subject.

      “Because they’re not dead,” he said. “They’re just on the other side, like my boys.”

      “Well, I’m not dead, either,” Meg said reasonably. She refrained from adding that she could have shown him their graves, up in the McKettrick cemetery. Shown him his own, for that matter. It would have been unkind, of course, but there was another reason for her reluctance, too. In some version of that cemetery, given what he’d told her about time, there was surely a headstone with her name on it.

      “You wouldn’t understand,” Angus told her. He always said that, when she tried to find out how it was for him, where he went when he wasn’t following her around.

      “Try me,” she said.

      He vanished.

      Resigned, Meg pulled up in front of the garage, added onto the original house sometime in the 1950s, and equipped with an automatic door opener, and pushed the button so she could drive in.

      She half expected to find Angus sitting at the kitchen table when she went into the house, but he wasn’t there.

      What she needed, she decided, was a cup of tea.

      She got Lorelei’s teapot out of the built-in china cabinet and set it firmly on the counter. The piece was legendary in the family; it had a way of moving back to the cupboard of its own volition, from the table or the counter, and vice versa.

      Meg filled the electric kettle at the sink and plugged it in to heat.

      Tea was not going to cure what ailed her.

      Brad O’Ballivan was back.

      Compared to that, ghosts, the mysteries of time and space, and teleporting teapots seemed downright mundane.

      And she’d agreed, like a fool, to meet him in Stone Creek for a drink. What had she been thinking?

      Standing there in her kitchen, Meg leaned against the counter and folded her arms, waiting for the tea water to boil. Brad had hurt her so badly, she’d thought she’d never recover. For years after he’d dumped her to go to Nashville, she’d barely been able to come back to Indian Rock, and when she had, she’d driven straight to the Dixie Dog, against her will, sat in some rental car, and cried like an idiot.

      There are some things I’d like to say to you, Brad had told her, that very day.

      “What things?” she asked now, aloud.

      The teakettle whistled.

      She unplugged it, measured loose orange pekoe into Lorelei’s pot and poured steaming water over it.

      It was just a drink, Meg reminded herself. An innocent drink.

      She should call Brad, cancel gracefully.

      Or, better yet, she could just stand him up. Not show up at all. Just as he’d done to her, way back when, when she’d loved him with all her heart and soul, when she’d believed he meant to make a place for her in his busy, exciting life.

      Musing, Meg laid a hand to her lower abdomen.

      She’d stopped believing in a lot of things when Brad O’Ballivan ditched her.

      Maybe he wanted to apologize.

      She gave a teary snort of laughter.

      And maybe he really had fans on other planets.

      A rap at the back door made her start. Angus? He never knocked—he just appeared. Usually at the most inconvenient possible time.

      Meg went to the door, peered through the old, thick panes of greenish

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