The Cowboy's Big Family Tree

by Meg Maxwell

  But he’d checked every inch of the playground behind the town hall, the shops, and had twice run into Clementine and her birth mother making their own checks. None of them had found Phoebe.

  He couldn’t get Clementine’s frantic voice on the phone out of his head. She must be out of her mind with worry. As he was looking in the alleyway beside the coffee shop, he saw Clementine running toward him down Blue Gulch Street, panic on her face. “I can’t find her anywhere. I called home, and she’s not there. Gram looked in every room, every closet, the backyard—she’s not there. Where could she have gone?”

  Logan ran a hand through his hair, racking his brain for anything, something Phoebe might have said over the past few weeks that would give a hint about where she’d go if she was upset and wanted to get away. They’d all checked the obvious places.

  Logan put his hand on Clementine’s shoulder. “We’ll find her.”

  Clementine spun around slowly, straining her neck to see, but there was no sign of Phoebe.

  Where the heck would Phoebe go? Come on, think, he told himself. It was barely three forty-five and still light out, so at least Phoebe wasn’t roaming around in the dark. But according to Clementine she’d run off in hysterical tears and a girl that upset wouldn’t pay attention to where she was going. Rush hour would start soon, cars whizzing by in both directions. They had to find her.

  “Wait a minute,” Logan said, freezing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the library. “I have an idea where she might be.”

  Clementine’s eyes filled with relief. “Where?”

  “Follow me,” he said, hoping he was right.

  Across from the town hall was a feed and supply store. During Phoebe’s weekly visits to the ranch, Logan had explained to Phoebe that he sometimes ground his own feed and sometimes bought from Rancher Tate’s Feed and Supply in town. He’d also mentioned last week that the owner of the shop was a rodeo fan who had a big framed photo of Crazy Joe and some other famed rodeo bulls on the wall above the cattle feed bags. The shop was large and there were places a slight girl of nine could hide between huge sacks of feed and tack supplies.

  “The feed store?” Clementine said as he led the way inside.

  He nodded. “I just have a feeling.”

  The shop wasn’t very busy at just before four o’clock. Holding on to Clementine’s hand, he led the way to the cattle section, looking for those orange sneakers between huge sacks.

  Bingo.

  All that was visible were those orange sneakers and the bottoms of her jeans. She was wedged in the narrow aisle between bags of feed, sitting directly beneath Crazy Joe’s photo in a gold frame.

  He upped his chin at the sneakers and Clementine looked over and covered her mouth with her hand. Then she flew into his arms and whispered, “Thank you.”

  “Phoebe?” she called out, her voice soft. “It’s me, Clementine. And Logan. We were so worried about you when you ran off.”

  “How’d you find me?” she asked, staying put.

  “Logan had a pretty good idea that since you were upset, you might want to be with your buddy Crazy Joe and since a picture of him was the closest thing to the town hall, he thought you might come here.”

  Clementine looked at him as if wanting his assurance that she was on the right track. He nodded. She didn’t need his help, but Clementine didn’t know that yet.

  He hung back as Clementine inched closer and sat down beside the bag of feed, her eyes on Phoebe’s sneakers. The girl was wedged in so far against the wall that they couldn’t even see her face.

  “Phoebe, I’m sorry the conversation you had with Lacey upset you. Want to come out and we’ll talk about it? Lacey’s worried sick about you. She asked me to text her when I found you.”

  Phoebe inched out halfway and Logan could see her face. She looked up at him and tears welled in her eyes, then her gaze stayed on her sneakers. “I thought if I didn’t talk about anything, if I didn’t think about anything, that all the sad things I think about would just go away. I could just pretend they didn’t exist.”

  “I know what you mean,” Clementine said, and Logan had the sense she was holding her breath.

  “But when I saw Lacey sitting right next to you, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know stuff. I want to understand.” She burst into tears and Clementine reached in for Phoebe’s hand.

  Logan waited, holding his own breath, hoping Phoebe would take Clementine’s hand. He had a feeling she would. Time seemed to crawl.

  And then there was a sob and the girl leaped out into Clementine’s arms, crying, her shoulders trembling.

  “It’s okay to want to know,” Clementine said, brushing stands of hair away from her wet cheeks. “Talking about your deepest thoughts is good for you, Phoebe. Talking about what bothers you, what scares you, what hurts you is the way to make things better.”

  Phoebe wiped at her eyes with her forearm. “Do you want to know why I told you I didn’t want you to call me Phoebes the way my mother used to and Clyde did sometimes?”

  Logan recalled Clementine telling him about the conversation, and the expression in her eyes had said all he’d needed to know about how much it had hurt Clementine.

  “Why?” Clementine asked.

  “Because everyone who called me Phoebes went away,” Phoebe said. “That’s why I’m scared to like you too much.” She started crying again and looked down at the floor, the forearm going up again to wipe away tears.

  Oh, Phoebe, Logan thought, his heart clenching in his chest.

  Clementine’s eyes welled. “I can understand that. Both things. But I promise you, Phoebe Pike, I’m not going anywhere. And you’re not going anywhere. I love you. I love you very much.”

  “I love you too,” Phoebe wailed and wrapped her arms around Clementine.

  Logan let out one long breath.

  Phoebe pushed her hair out of her face and looked at Clementine. “Do you remember when you asked if I might want a dog and I said no?”

  Clementine nodded. “Yup, I remember. It was the day Annabel had her beagle over in the front yard.

  “I didn’t mean it. I’ve always wanted a dog. My whole life. Clyde said he would have taken me to the shelter to adopt one, but he was allergic to dogs and cats and even gerbils and hamsters.”

  Logan felt himself stiffen at the little anecdote about Clyde Parsons. He hadn’t expected that reaction. When the hell would the man’s name engender anything but acid in his gut?

  Clementine smiled at Phoebe. “Well, I understand why you said no at first. And I think a trip to the county shelter is in order. It’ll be wonderful to adopt a dog for Christmas.”

  Phoebe gave a tremulous smile. “Speaking of Christmas, would it be all right if I give you the present I bought you even though Christmas isn’t for a few days?” Phoebe said. “It’s your Christmas present, but I want to give it to you now.”

  “The present you bought this afternoon in the gift shop was for me?” Clementine asked, her eyes registering her surprise.

  Phoebe nodded and reached into the narrow aisle between huge feed sacks for her backpack and pulled out a small gift bag. She handed it to Clementine.

  So that was the important something she was saving up for, Logan realized. A Christmas present for her foster mother. For Clementine.

  Clementine bit her lip, then pulled out a small wrapped box. She unwrapped it, put the paper in the bag and then set down the bag on one of the feed sacks. She held a small red velvet box. She opened it and gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh, Phoebe, this is beautiful.”

  “Turn it over,” Phoebe said.

  Clementine turned it over and Logan could see tears welling again.

  “Well, when do I get to see what it is?” Logan asked with a smile.

  Clementine laughed and
held up a silver necklace with a heart-shaped pendant engraved with Mother. On the back was engraved, For CH with love, PP.

  Logan glanced from the necklace to Phoebe, very aware of what this would mean to Clementine. “That’s a beautiful gift, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe beamed.

  Clementine nodded and fastened the gift around her neck, then reached a hand up to touch it. “I’ll always treasure this, Phoebe. We’re family.”

  “Family,” Phoebe said, flinging herself back into Clementine’s arms and wrapping her arms around her.

  Logan stood there, realizing he was stepping backward to the point that he’d moved across the aisle. Family. The word echoed in Logan’s head. Family. Family. Family.

  His family had been the Graingers. His parents. His brother. His nephews. They were his family. Not some stranger who’d done one nice thing in his life. Phoebe Pike wasn’t his stepsister. She was Parsons’s stepdaughter.

  He thought of his mother crying on the swing behind the town hall, alone and pregnant and betrayed. His maternal grandparents betrayed by the ranch hand to whom they’d offered room and board and employment. Clyde Parson had walked out on his mother without a care if she or her baby—his baby—were okay. He’d let another man step in, step up and take responsibility for what was his.

  If Clyde Parsons hadn’t walked away, you wouldn’t have been raised by Haywood Grainger, he realized, the thought slamming into his head. He wouldn’t have been your father. He would have been an acquaintance of your mother’s, a man she never knew had secretly pined for her for years.

  His entire life until four months ago would have been very, very different.

  My father was Haywood Grainger, he told himself. That’s all I need to know.

  He needed to get out of here. He needed to breathe.

  “I’d better get back to the ranch,” he said. “I’ll come by rehearsal to pick up the boys.”

  “Okay,” Clementine said, tilting her head at him. She knows, he realized, that I can’t do this. Can’t pretend that Phoebe and I are a family, can’t deal with it. Because it would mean accepting what he still refused to accept, no matter what the hell he said about the truth.

  Clementine had kept herself scarce the past few weeks, barely speaking to him during the two hours Phoebe had spent at the ranch each week, smiling politely when he’d pick up or drop off the twins, which he’d found himself doing because she was acting so...distant. Now he just wanted to escape from her again.

  He wanted to go home to his nephews and the world he’d created for them, a Grainger world where Clyde Parsons didn’t exist.

  But Phoebe made him exist just by being. And she and Clementine were now a package deal.

  But besides, Clementine wanted more from him than he could ever give. His ability to believe in love and trust and happy endings had been obliterated.

  “See you at pickup,” he repeated, hating how he was ruining a beautiful moment between Clementine and Phoebe by being so shut down.

  He managed a smile to Phoebe, who smiled back, and again the urge to get away was stronger than anything else he felt.

  Chapter Ten

  Part of her Christmas wish had come true, Clementine realized as she pulled up to Logan’s house later that night. She and Phoebe were a family. And Clementine had made good on her hope to surprise her grandmother with an outdoor dining room in the garden. Essie’s Christmas gift wouldn’t be finished until early spring, but the carefully drawn plans and contract were rolled up with a big red bow, and Clementine knew her grandmother would love it.

  Two Christmas wishes down. One to go.

  Logan wasn’t expecting her. He’d picked up the twins at the end of rehearsal, but because it had been the final one, she was bombarded by kids and counselors and volunteers with questions and lost costume pieces and little fires to put out. She hadn’t had a chance to even talk to Logan. Out of the corner of her eye she’d seen him wave to Phoebe, who’d been sitting with her friends, singing their showstopper hymn one last time before the Spectacular tomorrow night. Then he’d left and she’d felt so strangely bereft—as if she’d ever really had him at all.

  She reached a hand up to touch the necklace Phoebe had given her. Mother engraved on the front of the heart, their initials on the back. Clementine’s own heart had opened wide because of the gift. She was being entrusted with a child’s heart. And she was going to take very good care of it.

  But Logan had made it clear in that feed shop that he didn’t want to be entrusted with either of their hearts. That he was never planning on being part of that family—either as Phoebe’s big brother or as Clementine’s husband.

  She needed to let him go once and for all. Let the dream of him go. She’d tried the past few weeks by simply avoiding him, but avoiding wasn’t the same as “handling” or “dealing with.” She had to ask him the question burning in her gut and if the answer was can’t, sorry, she would walk away.

  She needed him to say it to her face tonight so that she knew, for absolutely sure, that when asked directly, when asked to make a choice between having her in his life or not, his answer was not. She expected no different. Then she’d try to move on. She was done trying to read into things, read minds. She wanted to hear it from the man himself.

  She walked up to the porch, glancing over at the cattle in the pastures, at Crazy Joe standing in the dark, another bull by his side. She smiled at him and telepathically told him that Phoebe sent her love, that Clementine owed him one, and then she gently knocked on the door, knowing that the twins were asleep.

  Logan opened the door, surprise in his blue eyes. He had to look so damned handsome, didn’t he? He wore a long-sleeved green henley shirt and jeans and he filled the doorway with all six feet two inches of him. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I know and I’m sorry for just coming over. But I need to know something for sure. I don’t want to come in. I just want to know, to hear it from your lips right now.”

  “Hear what?” he asked, but she was sure he knew exactly what she was talking about. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his expression wary. And weary.

  Just say it, Clem. Say it and you’ll know, one way or the other.

  She couldn’t help glancing up at the night sky, catching a star and making a wish. But she wouldn’t hold out too much hope. Not after how he’d reacted in the feed store.

  She cleared her throat. “I need to know if I should give up on you, Logan Grainger. Give up on the dream of us. A future.”

  Logan stepped back and something crossed his features that she couldn’t read. It was a look that said don’t push me. But push him, she had to. “I care about you, Clementine. You know that.”

  “I care about you, Clementine, but,” she said. “I need to hear the but so I can walk away. Because I can’t do this anymore, Logan. It’s tearing me apart. And I need to focus on Phoebe. I can’t have a worried heart all the time. Either you love me or you don’t.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest again. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Can’t you come in and we can talk?”

  She wasn’t leaving this porch. “Do we have a future, Logan?”

  He stared at her, then those broad shoulders sagged. “I—I—” He ran a hand through his hair, clearly unwilling to finish what he’d been about to say.

  She lifted her chin. “Goodbye, then. I’ll be cordial when I see you. I know that Phoebe will want to keep working for you, so at this point, given that she’s been here for a month, I feel comfortable dropping her off so that I don’t need to stick around. And now that Phoebe and I have had our breakthrough, you can think of her as my foster daughter and not as your stepsister. That should help.”

  He just stared at her and didn’t say a w
ord.

  “Goodbye, Logan,” she said, her heart breaking. “You are being a wouldn’t. Because I’ve seen you in could action. You’re choosing to be alone, choosing to hold on to the bitter part of a truth that you could accept if you’d allow yourself to, if you’d just live by what you preached to Phoebe weeks ago in that pony pasture.”

  “Can’t,” Logan said. “Not won’t.”

  She shook her head. “You’re choosing bitterness over love, Logan Grainger. And semantics aside, that’s just plain wrong.”

  She blinked back the tears in her eyes, turned around and walked away, but her heart came with her this time. Broken, but not left behind.

  * * *

  Clementine waited at Blue Gulch Coffee for Lacey, not sure if the woman would really show up. After Logan had left the feed store yesterday, Clementine had finally texted Lacey that she’d found Phoebe and all was well. There was so much more she’d wanted to say to Lacey, so much she wanted to talk about after all Lacey had said to Phoebe before she’d run off, but she couldn’t exactly text all that. And Lacey never answered her phone or her door. Clementine was done chasing people who didn’t want her in their lives.

  But then Lacey had shocked her by showing up at Hurley’s this morning while Clementine was working on the Creole sauce for the Christmas buffet. She asked if they could meet for coffee later that afternoon and talk. Clementine had almost fainted with shock.

  But Lacey was ten minutes late. Then fifteen minutes late. Then twenty minutes late. Clementine got up, ready to give up. Lacey had done a world of good for Clementine yesterday; she’d provided the catalyst to break apart the barriers between her and Phoebe. But all those things she’d said about how she felt about Clementine, how she’d always felt, how she felt now, had deeply touched Clementine. Lacey was who she was, who she’d always been. It was time to accept it.