Chapter 2

Harmony had to find a way to break the terrible silence that followed. “Listen, Mrs.….I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

“Celia. Celia Kerr.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Kerr, I just don’t understand….”

“Call me Celia. If you’re going to investigate us, you better find out all our names.”

“Thank you, Celia. It just seems to me this kind of barrier between you and the residents of Iron Bark can only cause strife between you and your neighbors. If they knew you didn’t want your children mixing with the townsfolk that would only make them more suspicious that you have something to hide.”

Before Celia could answer, the two young men Harmony saw outside the shed marched through the front door. Celia pointed at the smaller one. “Take your muddy boots off at the door, Barton. How many times do I have to tell you not to track your dirt into my clean house?”

“I'm sorry, Mama." The shorter man kicked his boots off by the door, and his friend copied him. The two resembled each other enough to be brothers.

At the same moment, an old man tromped down the stairs into the living room. He cast a casual glance at Celia and Harmony in the kitchen and took a leather chair by the window. He wore his white hair pulled back in a ponytail behind his head and a bolo tie threaded through the collar of his white button-down shirt. White whisker stubble dotted his cheeks and chin. He wore faded blue jeans and scuffed cowboy boots, but in spite of his age, he still stood solid and imposing when he entered the room.

As if in answer to his presence, April, Jonas, and three other children barged into the house from outside. Jonas talked non-stop about his chicken wire car frame, and April babbled about her broomstick. All five children arrayed themselves around the living room coffee table.

They spread paper, color markers, crayons, scraps of fabric and scissors all over the table and talked in a continuous roar about everything they were doing. They bumped into the old man’s knees in between turning around to consult him on their projects.

Harmony inched in their direction and found what she hoped would be an inconspicuous place for her on the couch near the old man. He smiled up at her while he kept up his conversation with the children. At least someone in this house didn’t consider her an enemy.

Jonas flapped a piece of cardboard in the old man’s face. “Help me make the dashboard for my car, Gramps. How do I make the speedometer?”

When she could get a word in edgewise, Harmony asked the old man, “So you’re the grandfather? These are beautiful children. April said this is everybody’s house. Do their parents live with you, too?”

The old man beamed at her. “April and Jonas live with their parents in their own house down the valley. Their father, Hollan, is my oldest son. Most folks around here settle in their family homes, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Hollan married Claire MacAllister, and she wanted to live near her own tribe, so he built a house closer to the boundary between their territory and ours. The kids just come around here for a change of scenery when they feel like it.”

“Tribe? Territory? That sounds serious.”

“That’s just the way we think about it here. It makes it easier to keep track of everything. When you have more than one family in each tribe, you can’t exactly call the whole extended family a family. It makes it easier to talk about the Kerr tribe, the MacAllister tribe, the Farrell tribe, and so on.”

“I had no idea you had such a developed sense of community with the other families on the mountain.”

“Oh, sure: it’s developed, all right. It gets downright political sometimes.”

Harmony took out her notebook. “If you don’t mind talking about it, I’d like to document your family tree. Would that be all right with you?”

He smiled up into her face. “Sure: whatever you want to know.”

She drew a quick sketch. “I know your wife is Celia. What is your name?”

“I’m Laird Kerr. I’m Alpha of this tribe.”

Harmony’s head shot up. “Alpha?”

“That just means I’m in charge here. I’m the strongest. I make the decisions.”

She bent over her notebook. “I see, and your oldest son is Hollan, married to Claire MacAllister. Do you have any other children?”

“Sure. After Hollan comes Jax, then Alice, Sasha, Barton, Hyatt; Alannis is the youngest.”

Harmony scribbled as fast as she could. “And which of those live with you?”

“All but Hollan and Jax; they’re both married with their own Homesteads, but they stay inside our territory. Oh, and Alice. She married Gavin Mackenzie, so she moved over to their Homestead.”

“Wow. That’s an amazing network of interrelated families.”

Jonas interrupted by leaping to his feet. He tore across the room to where the two young men leaned against the kitchen counter. He waved his cardboard in Barton’s face. “Barton! Barton! Look at my dashboard.”

Barton grinned down at him. “Pretty good, buddy.”

Jonas came back to the coffee table and set to work on what he intended to be the gear shift. Barton pulled a bottle of something to drink out of the fridge and went upstairs. The other man observed the scene from the counter with his arms crossed over his burly chest. He listened to Laird and Harmony’s conversation and made no attempt to hide it.

Every now and then, Harmony glanced up to find his eyes burning into her from across the room. What could be so fascinating about a simple conversation? Maybe her status as an outsider made her a novelty.

She could see quite well that he was a fine specimen of backwoods manhood. He stood taller than anyone in the room, and his eyes took in every detail at a glance. Black dirt crusted his fingernails, but no one could mistake him for a dullard. The curious light of deep contemplation smoldered in his face. Something Harmony couldn’t explain made her glance up at him every few minutes, just to make sure he was still looking at her – which he was.

What did he see in her? She was nothing special. She was a social worker investigating their family for child abuse. Maybe he hated her for that.

Laird droned on in the background. “My father married a Farrell, and we moved down here from….”

Harmony interrupted him. “How do your children and grandchildren learn? Do you homeschool them, or do you have some other organized schooling for all the children on the mountain?” She got herself under control when she saw the surprise in his face. “I just need to know for my report to Social Services. That’s the only reason I ask.”

“Oh. Of course: no, we don’t homeschool and we don’t have any schooling with the other tribes – I mean families. The kids just sort of pick it up as they grow older. As you can see, they learn a lot from their relatives. The older ones teach them to read and do their numbers. They learn enough to do whatever they want to do.”

“Do they learn enough to go to college if they want to?”

Laird gazed into her face with a rapturous smile. “They can go where they want to go, but most go to work in their family businesses. If they want to get out, they can go to work for one of the other tribes. That’s what I did. I worked for the Dodds when I was young. That’s where I met Celia.”

That young man leaning against the counter seemed to look right through her with unwavering determination. He hung on every word she said. Intensity radiated off him and made her squirm. The blood mounted to her cheeks, and she couldn’t stop smiling under his direct gaze.

To make matters worse, Laird stared at her with the same burning intensity. “What about you? Does your family live in Iron Bark? I haven’t seen you around town before.”

Harmony blushed and tore her eyes away from the man at the counter to turn back to Laird. “I don’t have any family, not in Iron Bark or anywhere else. My mother died giving birth to me in the local medical clinic, and I grew up in foster care. I’ve been alone all my life.”

A shadow crossed Laird’s wrinkled face. “That’s terrible. How did it happen?”

“I don’t know all the details. She got an infection when she was pregnant with me. That’s all I know. I never knew my mother, and I don’t know anything about her family. I went away to college to get my degree in Social Work, but after that, I had nowhere to go or any reason to go there, so I just came back to Iron Bark. I’m not related to anyone in town or anywhere else. I’m a lone wolf.”

Laird tried to smile, but he couldn’t hide how much her words troubled him. “Maybe you just haven’t found them yet.”

“I’ve looked. I’ve tried to research my mother and find her relatives, but I can’t find any record of her name before she came to the clinic. Lord knows I’ve tried. I would give anything for a home and family like you have here. I’ve dreamed of nothing else all my life, but somehow I’ve never found it.”

For some reason, her eyes strayed back to the man at the counter. She seemed to speak only to him, even as Laird’s words drifted into her ear. “Maybe when you get married and have your own children, you’ll find your family.”

“That’s the weird thing about it. I’ve tried my best, but I just can’t seem to attract the right man. They always seem to drift away at the worst possible time.” She tried to laugh it off, but no one else was laughing. “Maybe I’m just too ugly or something.”

Laird snorted. “You – ugly? You know that’s ridiculous. Any man would be blessed to nab you.”

Harmony laughed, but she couldn’t stop her cheeks burning. “I’ve got a decent job and some really good friends in town. I guess that will have to be enough to take the place of a man.”

Laird patted her arm. “You just have to keep looking. You haven’t found the right man yet, and when you do, everything will fall into place.”

The man at the counter stared at the two of them together. His eyebrows flew up when Laird touched her arm, but he kept silent.

Harmony couldn’t sit there under a microscope any longer. She put her notebook away. “I hope you’re right.”

Laird leaned forward. His eyes hovered inches away from her face. “You feel free to come back here any time you want to talk about anything. You don’t need any reason to investigate us, either. You can come any time. You’re more than welcome. Maybe you could come up for dinner sometime, without all the official business.”

Harmony blushed deeper. “Thank you. That would be very nice. I’d like to learn more about your family.”