The Cowboy's Big Family Tree. Meg Maxwell

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.