The Cowboy's Big Family Tree

by Meg Maxwell

  Except, dammit, he wasn’t. But he still had to figure out how to live with it, how not to let it consume him.

  “Let’s go wash up for lunch at Hurley’s,” he said, putting that train of circular thought out of his mind as he led the pony back to her stall. “I hear one of today’s specials is the mac and cheese.”

  The boys zoomed out of the barn toward the house, Harry’s Batman cape flying in Henry’s face, which made him trip into Harry’s path. Both ended up falling. Harry kicked at Henry; Henry kicked back at Harry.

  “Dummy!” Harry shouted.

  “Bigger dummy!” Henry yelled.

  “Guys,” Logan said. “How we’d go from being excited about going to Hurley’s for mac and cheese to calling each other names?”

  They shouted at each other for another ten seconds.

  “Well, what are you going to do about this problem?” Logan asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Let’s make up so we can have mac and cheese,” Henry said to his brother.

  “I’m getting lemonade with mine,” Harry responded.

  “I’m getting chocolate milk,” Henry said as they both flew into the house.

  Resolution. If only his own problems could be taken care of so simply and easily.

  He followed the twins inside the house. “We have about a half hour before it’s time to head over, so why don’t you play a bit?”

  The boys ran over to their blocks area and started stacking. Stacking and then running full speed into their block-walls was among their favorite pastimes.

  Solution. Having a problem. Doing something about it. Right now his problem was that he was driving himself crazy and needed to know something more about Clyde Parsons than he did. Over the past few months he’d thought about people his mother might have confided in, but Ellie Grainger had always been so private that he couldn’t imagine her telling such a personal thing to the few friends she’d had, such as their nearest neighbor at the ranch he’d grown up on, Delia Cooper, who was very chatty and social. His mother didn’t have any siblings to open up to, either. She’d probably kept the information to herself.

  Go over to the computer and type in Clyde T. Parsons and Tuckerville and see what comes up, he told himself.

  Maybe he has family, he recalled Clementine saying.

  That’s of no concern to me, he recalled himself snapping back.

  And it wasn’t, he reminded himself. But he did have low-level basic curiosity about the man who’d fathered him. Did Parsons have siblings? Parents? Other children?

  Not that they were any kin of his. Just because you shared DNA didn’t make you family. Being there made you family. Giving a damn made you family. Taking responsibility made you family. But that DNA meant something in and of itself. Unfortunately. He shook his head at how danged complicated the whole thing was. Was, wasn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t, should, shouldn’t, is, isn’t. What the hell had happened to things being black or white? Gray areas were murky. Logan hated murky.

  He forced himself over to the laptop computer on the living room desk and sat down. In the search bar, he typed in Clyde T. Parsons and Tuckerville, Texas, and hit Enter.

  An obituary came up. A short obituary.

  Clyde T. Parsons, Tuckerville: Clyde Turnbull Parsons was born on September 3, 1966 in Austin, Texas, to Dotty and Delmont Parsons, who predeceased him. A traveling man who supported himself as a ranch hand, Clyde lived all over the state of Texas and spent the last two years in Tuckerville. A funeral is scheduled for Sunday, August 27 at three o’clock in the afternoon at the Tuckerville Funeral Home.

  No mention of leaving anyone behind. If he’d seen his own name there he would be steaming mad, so at least the man had had sense not to leave information about Logan. But no other family?

  So what, Logan thought. It wasn’t as though he was about to drive out to Tuckerville again and ask after Clyde Parsons. What he’d been like. Why he’d spent the last two years in Tuckerville. Logan had been to Tuckerville a bunch of times over the past ten years. Many rodeo events and the championships were held in Stocktown, about fifteen minutes away, but Tuckerville had a bustling downtown where all the action was afterward, particularly for champs, like he’d been until The Liar had come along.

  He shook his head to clear his mind of Bethany and the rodeo and his life before this ranch.

  I don’t care who Parsons was, why he couldn’t stick to one place, why he spent a couple of years in Tuckerville, he told himself.

  But dammit, a piece of him did. A piece of him wanted to know something more.

  “I’m starving, Uncle Logan,” Henry said. “Is it time?”

  Logan got up and headed over to where the boys were building a very high tower.

  “How can we leave before you two knock over this wall? It’s taller than you are.”

  The boys grinned, shot up and ran over to the far side of the room, then came hurtling over to the wall of blocks, one arm extended in a fist like a superhero, sending the blocks flying in every direction in a burst of laughter.

  Logan smiled. Nothing like adorable three-year-old boys to take your mind off your troubles, even for just a minute.

  * * *

  Clementine took very good care of table four, the round one with the view of the mountain range in the distance and the handsomest men in the restaurant. The Grainger twins shared the special macaroni and cheese and smiley face fruit plate, and their uncle had the smothered chicken po’boy with a side of spicy sweet potato fries. As always, Clementine was touched by what a good father Logan was to his boys. He shushed them when they got too loud, he praised them for eating their mac and cheese with closed mouths, he made sure they knew that her sister Georgia’s chocolate chip cookie dessert depended on not throwing a slimy piece of macaroni at one’s twin brother—Henry—or shooting a grape off the table like a marble—Harry. Not for the first time she wondered how a man who’d lived and breathed for the rodeo circuit, no interest in settling down, had such fatherly instincts and patience. But Logan had both.

  Back when she was babysitting for him over the spring and summer, he used to shrug and talk about what a great dad he’d had and how he probably just had a great firsthand teacher at fatherhood without even thinking much about it. Once he’d said he was probably more ready to settle down than he ever realized. Then he’d seemed to get all flustered at having said too much and retreated a bit, and Clementine knew that catching Logan Grainger might not be that easy, that she might have to wait to be caught herself. So she’d shaken off her expectations but kept her hopes, a hard balance, and then wham, a month later in August, the kiss. That beautiful kiss in the middle of his living room, his lips everything she’d fantasized about, along with what it was like to be in his arms, the object of his desire. Man, she’d been flipping happy in that moment.

  When Clementine realized that Edwin Fingerman at table two had been trying to get her wandered attention, she snapped back to waitress mode and refreshed his basket of biscuits and apple butter. She noticed Annabel chatting with Logan and wondered what they were talking about. The smothered chicken po’boy probably. Annabel was an amazing cook.

  She headed over to the Grainger table to clear plates and overheard the last bit.

  “West and I are so glad they love their pony!” Annabel was saying. Clementine recalled that West had given the boys a pony when they’d lost their parents. He was a big believer in animal therapy. “So how about you pick up the boys from our ranch around six?”

  What was this? Clementine stacked empty plates and raised an eyebrow at Annabel.

  “I invited the Grainger boys over to the ranch for pony rides with Lucy and then a movie about horses,” Annabel said. “Lucy keeps asking if the twins can come over and Logan said they’d love to. Plus the three of them can practice ‘Jingle Bells’ for you.”r />
  Clementine smiled. Truth be told, she felt a tiny bit left out, but she would get to see the Grainger boys three times a week now. Still, Annabel and West were on a friend level with Logan...and she wasn’t.

  “You’re free for the afternoon,” Annabel said to Logan. “Enjoy it.”

  “I guess it would be nice to have a few hours to myself,” Logan said. “I appreciate it. Thank West for me too.”

  Annabel nodded. “Our pleasure. Oh, and Clementine, since there are three servers in the dining room, you should take a break yourself. Between working, volunteering at the foster home, directing the holiday pageant and spending all your spare time perfecting your Creole sauce, you deserve some time to relax. Go, shoo. I’ll have Willa clear your tables.”

  Was Annabel Hurley Montgomery doing a little matchmaking here? Clementine narrowed her eyes at her sister and Annabel smiled. “Come on, boys,” Annabel said to the twins. “I’ll give you a tour of the kitchen and then we’ll head over to my house to play with Lucy and ride the ponies.”

  “Yay!” the twins said in unison, leaping out of their seats.

  “At least hug your uncle goodbye,” Logan said, his arms outstretched. “I’ll pick you two up at six. You be good for Miss Annabel, you hear?”

  He got two nods, their blond mops shaking up and down before they zoomed into the kitchen with Annabel.

  Clementine collected the cash Logan had left on the table, noting the hefty 50 percent tip he’d left.

  “I’m good but not that good,” she told him with a smile, then mentally kicked herself. She sounded like a flirty fool. The man was going through some serious life upheaval. And had made it clear romance between them was off the table.

  He looked at her for a long moment. “I could use a sounding board, since you’re free.”

  “Meet me on the porch swing in a minute,” she said, curiosity building. Last night he’d shut down completely. Maybe he’d slept on what they’d talked about—about doing a little digging into his biological father’s world.

  Bless you, Annabel, she thought about her matchmaking sister as she made sure the dining room was indeed covered. Clementine would like to stay out on the porch and talk to Logan forever, really. She wasn’t so sure that was in her best interest, but it was the truth.

  * * *

  “Remember last night when you mentioned that Parsons might have family?” Logan said as Clementine came out of the restaurant, two glasses of iced tea in her hands. He stood up and took one, waited for her to sit and then sat back down. “Turns out he didn’t.”

  She was about to take a sip of her tea but paused. “He just died alone?”

  Logan shrugged.

  “Seems awful. No one coming to visit? No one to care?”

  When she put it that way, he almost felt for the man—and was surprised he felt anything at all. “I guess some people don’t want any entanglements, like to keep their lives small and closed. It makes me feel better in a way.”

  She tilted her head. “That he walked away from your mother because that’s who he was?”

  He glanced at her and nodded, grateful that he didn’t have to answer a bunch of questions; Clementine just seemed to get it. “He probably wasn’t capable of more, period. I guess you were right about the couldn’t.” He shrugged, shaking his head. “I don’t know. It helps to think so.”

  She touched his arm. “Sorry about all this, Logan. I know it must be hard to take in.”

  He leaned his head back against the swing, staring at the white Christmas lights strung across the top. He pictured Clyde Parsons, an almost thirty-years-older version, lying in some hospice without a single visitor. No family. No friends. No neighbors.

  Though that was what you got for being a class A jerk, Logan thought. You died alone. With no one.

  Bitter much? he thought, again worried that he’d let that bitterness seep inside his bones and make him harder than he already was. The twins needed their guardian to be warm and fun-loving, not a brooder.

  “Why do I have this notion to go to Tuckerville and find out something about him?” he said. “Why do I even care who he was?”

  Clementine smiled at a couple walking up the porch steps to the restaurant. “It’s natural,” she said once they went inside.

  “Doesn’t feel natural at all. In fact, it feels very unnatural.”

  “Well, I do know what you mean. When I was a kid, I wanted information about my biological father, but the times I was physically close enough to my birth mother to ask, she’d pretend she couldn’t hear me or she’d just change the subject to the weather. When I was eighteen, my caseworker finally gave me his name, which was on the record and I looked him up. I felt no connection at all to the person who’d come up in the search. That did feel unnatural—knowing you had someone’s DNA, someone’s blood coursing through your veins, yet they were just a name. So I do understand, Logan.”

  He glanced at her and nodded, part of him wanting to get up and walk away. Sometimes when he talked to Clementine, the intensity of it all was too much. The way she seemed to understand him, the way she looked at him, the way he wanted her. “Did you find out anything about him you would have been better off not knowing?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “He had a similar rap sheet to my mom’s of drug arrests and he died of an overdose when I was five. The information didn’t make me feel better, of course, but I was glad to have it. Sometimes you just have to know, especially when it concerns you in such a basic way.”

  Logan had the urge to draw Clementine against him. She spoke so matter-of-factly, but he knew somewhere deep inside all the harrowing things she’d been through, the pieces of her past, her history, had to rise up sometimes and poke at her. He was glad he’d opened up to her, something he never did since he didn’t have anyone to open up to. Just the cattle and the horses. Not only was he able to talk to Clementine, she understood. Even if they didn’t see eye to eye on everything, she understood.

  “My birth mother was in and out of my life from the age of two,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “You know my story—then I was in a few different foster homes until I was eight and the Hurleys took me in. They were great parents. Everything a kid could ask for in a mother and a father. But being curious about my biological parents isn’t a reflection on that. It’s just natural curiosity. A man and a woman had a baby. That baby was me. That man and that woman are a part of my history. Of course it means something. So of course you want to know more about Clyde Parsons.”

  He’d been blindsided as an adult. He tried to imagine a tiny Clementine, confused and wondering where her mother was, why she didn’t have a father, why she had to live with strangers in foster care. Again he was gripped by the urge to take her hand and hold it. Shake it off, man, he ordered himself. “I don’t want it to mean something. I hate that it does.”

  “You’ve got the whole afternoon to yourself till six,” she said. “You could drive out to Tuckerville right now and see if you can find out something, settle something for yourself.”

  “Maybe you—” Why the hell did he just say those words? Yeah, he couldn’t imagine going to Tuckerville alone and asking about his biological father. But bringing Clementine further into all this wasn’t a good idea. He wanted distance from her. Yet here he was, blabbing his innermost problems. And he almost asked her to come with him.

  “Or I could come with you,” she said, glancing at him.

  He wished she wasn’t so good at reading his mind. He wasn’t about to start something up with Clementine or anyone. He’d done enough damage last summer. His insides felt shuttered, so completely closed he was sometimes surprised when his heart lurched over watching the twins sleep or some silly antic of theirs. Or when he looked at Clementine sometimes. Like when she’d come out on the porch with the glasses of iced tea in her Hurley’s waitress unifo
rm, which was a yellow apron that hid her sexy body. She had a heart-shaped face and round brown eyes and a wide pink mouth and that long, dark hair. He found her almost irresistible. But resist her, he would. So why ask her to come with him on the most personal journey of his life?

  Because he couldn’t go alone. He just couldn’t. If he did end up talking to someone who’d known Parsons, who knew how he would feel? He might get all riled up or start shaking the way he did when he’d found out his brother and his wife had died. He’d been alone that day, grumbling mad about the bull besting him the night before at a rodeo, his attention still all over place since what happened with Bethany and how she’d betrayed him and cost him a championship the week before. So he’d been alone in a cheap motel room when he’d gotten the call from the Blue Gulch police. They’d gone to the ranch and had spoken to the sitter who’d led them to the kitchen and the list of emergency contacts. Logan was the first name.

  He’d sat on that thin bed, trembling, unable to believe what he’d heard. Then he’d thought of the twins, just two years old then, innocently playing and with no idea that one conversation later, their entire world would change. He’d gotten up, quickly packed and headed to Blue Gulch in a state so numb he was surprised he’d gotten home alive. He’d had that conversation with the boys and he’d never looked back, the past, including the rodeo, Bethany, all of it, gone.

  Now here was Parsons, forcing Logan’s hand with a new past he hadn’t even known existed. Hell yeah, Logan had no idea how he’d react to learning more about him, meeting someone who knew him.

  He needed Clementine to come with him.

  And he didn’t like that one bit.

  Chapter Four

  Logan appreciated that Clementine was mostly quiet on the drive over, except to point out a beautiful tree and an old Italian restaurant where her grandparents had celebrated their engagement fifty years ago. Otherwise, she looked out the passenger window, humming along to the radio. She seemed to know he needed to be alone with his thoughts rather than voice them. The closer he got to Tuckerville, the more his stomach clenched. And not only because this was where Parsons had lived and died.