Gone Country (Rough Riders #14)(118)

“Huh. Did it say anything in Dinah McKay’s journal about it?”


“Not that I’ve come across, but she detailed just about everything else, so I’ll look closer. Although, she didn’t start chronicling her life as a ranch wife until she married Jonas McKay in 1901.”


“Wait. Who is Silas McKay?”


“Jonas’s twin brother. And you’re not the only one who hasn’t heard of him.” Sierra slumped back into the couch, her eyes aching from trying to read old, faded text.


“Something wrong?” Boone asked, concern on his face. “Where does it hurt?”


“Just a twinge. I’m fine.” Boone constantly fussed over her, but she liked it so sometimes she let him soothe her pains—phantom or not. After her car accident and all the hours he’d helped her with homework and her research project, they’d become even better friends. She liked him, liked spending time with him. They both had an offbeat way of looking at things and they shared the same strange sense of humor. If friends were all they ever were, she was good with that. But she’d be lying if she didn’t admit part of her would always hope for more.


“Earth to Sierra.”


“Sorry. What was I saying?”


“Something about Jonas and Silas McKay.”


“Right. How can the McKays be so proud of their family name and lineage and not know their basic history? I talked to my Aunt Kimi—”


“Our Aunt Kimi,” he corrected with a quick smile.


She stuck her tongue out at him as she always did when he reminded her of their shared family connection. “Our Aunt Kimi told me in the years she knew Jed McKay, he refused to speak of his father’s twin brother. He said they’d paid good money to ensure the past was left buried in the past.”


“Cryptic. Did Kimi ever ask her father about it?”


“I guess he expressed his displeasure that two of his daughters married into a family of thieves and murderers.” Sierra absentmindedly tapped her pen. “Kimi said not even the gossip about her and Carolyn marrying into the McKay family revived the old scandal, whatever it might’ve been. How can it be such a big secret?”


He wore a reflective look. “The Wests and the McKays have been settled in Crook and Weston counties longer than any other existing families. With coal mining, railroads, oil production and agriculture, people constantly moving in and out of the area, not only in the last fifty years, but the last hundred years…things that happened, even scandalous things, would get lost in the shuffle, Sierra.”


“I get that. Our families have forgotten the actual event that caused the feud in the first place, but they’ve kept the hatred for generations? I don’t buy that. There’s a cover up on one side or both sides.”


“I agree.” Boone pushed his hair out of his face. “I can’t believe that neither Aunt Kimi nor Aunt Caro knows the West family history besides that all the Wests have always hated all the McKays and always will. Caro and Kimi are the most gossipy, in-the-know women in the area.”


“Exactly what I said! So I’ll admit I was a little…pushy with Kimi, especially since Jed McKay lived with her and Uncle Cal and I think she was dodging my questions. But I’m interested in the real story, dammit.”


“Maybe you oughta be a reporter. Or a private eye.” Boone nudged her. “So how did Aunt Kimi react to a pushy non-McKay acting like a pushy McKay?”


She nudged him back. “She asked me when I was officially changing my last name to McKay so it accurately reflected my overbearing genes.”


“Is that a possibility? Your dad changing your last name to McKay?”


“He’s never mentioned it. But that’s how everyone introduces him—Gavin Daniels, Charlie and Vi McKay’s oldest boy.” Sierra shuffled the papers in front of her. “I wouldn’t have an issue if he did want the change. Some people—” she knocked her knee into his, “—already call me McKay, so it wouldn’t be such a big shift for me. But it would be a big deal for my dad. Anyway, I’m just frustrated with the lack of information.”


Boone covered her restless hand with his. “You’ve done your report. Why are you still combing through these old papers?”


His touch—even casual—caused a hot jolt of awareness. She stared at his rough-skinned knuckles and the smattering of dark hair across the back of his hand. She wanted to run her fingertips across the rugged texture and memorize every inch.


“Sierra?”


“What?”


“Why does this matter?”


“Maybe to show my dad that I am invested in my family. I know it probably sounds weird, but I’ve never had this type of connection. I don’t know anything about my mom’s side of my family, except that she cut off all contact with her dad after he left her mother for another woman. Then her mom died when she was in college. I’ve never had cousins, or aunts and uncles and now I’ve got so many I can’t keep them all straight.


“I’m also interested because Dinah went to all the trouble to keep records for future generations of McKays. These archives haven’t been touched in years and someone needs to care, to bring it to life, so it might as well be me.” She sighed. “My Grandpa Charlie said after his mom died his father boxed up all her things, shoved them in the attic and warned his sons if he ever caught them messing up there, he’d tan their hides.”