Linda Miller - McKettrick's Pride

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.