Meg Maxwell - The Cowboy's Big Family Tree

Tuckerville was just over an hour away. During the drive, he kept the radio loud to drown out his thoughts. When he pulled into the Tuckerville post office parking lot, he didn’t hesitate; he got out of the truck and went inside, ready to finally do this, to know something for sure.

He fished the old gold key from his pocket. 137 was imprinted at the top of the key. He found the right box on the last row, stuck in the key and felt his stomach twist with the lock.

He opened the little square door. Inside the long, narrow box was stacks of money, small bills haphazardly bundled in rubber bands and a bunch of envelopes, some large manila ones, some letter size.

Logan pulled out the large envelope and reached in. He could feel several photographs.

He pulled one out. Ellie McCall Grainger sat on the bank of a river in one, grinning in the sunshine. She wore a yellow T-shirt and jeans rolled up to the knees, her bare feet in the water. God, he missed her. His mother was kind and patient.

He didn’t have to wonder who had taken the picture.

He turned the picture over. Beauty at the River. With a date, November, twenty-eight years ago.

Logan was born almost exactly nine months later.

The next three photographs were also of his mother alone, smiling, looking very happy, either at the riverbank or in two of the photos at a farm stand, pointing at the display of Christmas wreaths.

He pulled out the final photograph and gasped, the picture slipping out of his hands. Logan stepped back, his hands shaking. No. No way.

Get ahold of yourself, he ordered.

He steeled himself and picked up the photograph, forcing himself to look at the man pictured, his arm around Logan’s mother.

Clyde Parsons was a dead ringer for Logan. The height. The dark hair. The Clint Eastwood squint. The shape of his face, his features, the expression.

His stomach felt like someone had just socked him hard, and his head felt so woozy he had to grip the side of the box unit to steady himself.

Clyde Parsons had been telling the damned truth. Logan wasn’t a Grainger.

* * *

Well, it was a good thing Clementine had gotten bold and insisted on bringing the boys home since Logan had arranged for her replacement, the twins’ sitter, to drop them off at the rehearsal after school today. She had no doubt the woman would have come to pick them up too. Anything so that Logan could avoid her. Well, no more.

He didn’t have to want to date her. But he couldn’t just fire her without a reason. Dump her from his life with no cause. And she wasn’t leaving tonight until she had that reason. She was tired of racking her brain at night, tired of wondering if she’d done something wrong. Tired of trying to figure out what in the heck was in that letter that seemed to change everything. And if she was going to spend the next few weeks with the Grainger twins at rehearsal, she had to know what had caused Logan to push her away.

She pulled up to the sprawling white farmhouse, the front porch festooned with white lights, a three-foot tall painted wood nutcracker soldier standing aside the door next to two sorry-looking carved jack-o’-lanterns that Logan probably couldn’t bear to get rid of. Clementine loved how he tried so hard to make a sweet life for his nephews. Decorating for the holidays and carving pumpkins hadn’t been part of his world before he’d taken them in. Last summer, he’d told her stories about his life on the rodeo circuit, and though it sounded lonely to Clementine, he’d said he loved it. He’d muttered under his breath about something, a bad incident, but he wouldn’t talk about it. Then, Clementine had just been starting to understand Logan Grainger somewhat—he didn’t like to talk about what upset him, same as her, same as probably lots of people, except her two sisters. Now she wished he was more like Annabel and Georgia and said outright what was digging at him.

Clementine turned around and glanced at the twins in the back in their car seats. Both of them were fast asleep, Henry’s head hanging down, Harry’s to the side, his little pink mouth open. Both clutched the little stuffed reindeers she’d bought for them from a sidewalk fund raiser in town. She couldn’t bear to wake them.

Clementine walked up the three steps to the porch and smiled at the jack-o’-lantern, took a deep breath and knocked. Logan opened the door, eyebrow raised since his nephews weren’t at her side. “The boys fell asleep in their car seats. I think the rehearsal tuckered them out. My gram brought turkey po’boys and a few side dishes as a surprise for everyone for the first rehearsal, so they did eat.”

He looked past her at the car. “That was nice of her. Tell her thank you from me. I’ll carry them up to bed.”

She stood on the porch while he carried in Harry. When he went back out for Henry, she headed into the kitchen. She didn’t work for Logan anymore and had no business going into his kitchen and making a pot of coffee the way she used to, but too bad. The man needed coffee and so did she. And she wasn’t leaving without knowing what had him so tied up in knots.

He hadn’t opened up to her in three months. Why would he now?

She heard him walking upstairs, then a door being slowly closed. Then his footsteps on the stairs again.

He came into the kitchen, glancing briefly at her. “Is that coffee I smell?”

“I took the liberty. You looked like you could use some.” She bit her lip. Well, go ahead, Clem. He’s not going to bring it up. “Logan, I—I know you’ve made it crystal clear that you don’t want anything to do with me. I don’t know what happened back in August. You kissed me, and I thought something was happening between us. Then a minute later, you read a letter and that was it. All of a sudden, the next day you fired me and wouldn’t talk to me.”

He turned away for a moment, then leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry, Clementine. I was a real jerk to you.”

But why? she wanted to scream. Why, why, why?

She waited for him to elaborate. Maybe if she stopped trying to fill the silence, he’d go on.

She could hear the coffee dripping into the pot. The second hand on the big analog clock on the wall ticking away. Her own beating heart.

He looked at her for a long few seconds, then said, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

Please do, she thought.

“Sure,” she said, practically holding her breath.

He looked at her, his blue eyes intense, then he glanced away. “Did you feel, deep down, that the Hurleys were your parents, that you were their child? Or did you feel...adopted?”

What the heck? Where was this coming from? Was he worried about how the twins would feel being raised by their uncle?

She stared at him, having no idea where he was going with this or what this had to do with her question. But clearly, it did. “To be honest, both,” she said. “But the Hurleys took me in when I was eight. From that point on, I did feel they were my parents and I loved them and I believed they loved me. Annabel and Georgia felt like my sisters from the start because they were so loving to me. They made me feel like I was one of them. But maybe because I was eight when they adopted me, I was very aware that for the years prior, I was in limbo. Foster care. I had a birth mother, but she couldn’t take care of me.”

He nodded. “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

Again, what the hell? Hadn’t she and Logan talked about this a bit when he’d first hired her as the boys’ after-school sitter? He knew Clementine’s story. It had come up because when she’d first starting babysitting for him last spring, not long after he’d come home to raise the boys, he once asked aloud if the twins would accept Logan as a father figure. She’d talked a lot about love and commitment and being there as what mattered.