Must Love Cowboys by Cheryl Brooks Page B

letter written in the wake of the worst tragedy of his life was one I had no desire to read.
    I went over to the desk and pulled up the census data on my computer but didn’t get very far. If I’d ever known about the seventy-two-year blackout on census data, I’d forgotten about it. The most recent information I could get to was from 1940—perhaps as many as ten years before Calvin was born.
    â€œLooks like I’m going to have to sign up for one of the genealogy sites to find anything. Too bad we don’t know his father’s name. He would’ve been on the 1940 census along with any of Calvin’s older siblings.” That alone would’ve given us the information we needed, especially if he had any brothers. Any sisters would, of course, have been listed under their maiden names, which would make them difficult to track down if they had ever married.
    Still, we knew Calvin had lived in Texas after the war. I tried a White Pages search, but all I learned was that Calvin probably knew everyone who lived and worked on the Circle Bar K Ranch.
    â€œMy, how helpful,” I muttered.
    â€œNeed a hand?”
    I glanced up to see Wyatt standing in the doorway. The condemning scowl was gone, possibly because I was sitting at the desk while Dean lay sprawled on the bed, evidently absorbed in the letter he was reading.
    â€œSure,” I replied. “All I’ve come up with so far is that Calvin lives here in the bunkhouse with you guys.”
    â€œHow come you aren’t reading the letters?” he asked.
    â€œI couldn’t do it. I—” My voice faltered as I turned back toward the computer screen. My nice, impersonal link to the world. A link that didn’t include the kind of troubling emotions I was bound to find in those handwritten letters.
    â€œHits too close to home,” Dean supplied for me. “I don’t blame you, Tina. This stuff is tough to read, and I’m not talking about the handwriting.”
    Without a word, Wyatt crossed the room, picked up a handful of letters, and took a seat in the recliner. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he very methodically chose the first letter in the stack, removed it from the envelope, and settled down to read.
    Wow. Two cowboys in my bedroom. I would have entered that momentous bit of data into my diary, if I’d ever kept one. I’d flipped through one of Grandpa’s journals after he died. He had diligently recorded the high and low temperatures and the amount of rainfall every day along with a list of the things he’d done, but he never mentioned his thoughts about what was happening.
    Not like those letters Dean and Wyatt were reading. I was still hesitant to start poking around in Calvin’s belongings, but continuing a fruitless search when I could be doing something productive was a waste of time.
    â€œI’m going to look for the other letters,” I announced.
    â€œThink you’ll find anything useful in them?” Wyatt asked.
    â€œProbably not, but I can’t read the letters Calvin wrote. I just can’t.”
    He shrugged. “I’m sure Calvin wouldn’t mind if you read the others. At least, not any more than he’d mind us reading these.”
    â€œFeels intrusive, doesn’t it?”
    â€œA bit.” It was nothing like reading letters written in another century, even if the correspondents happened to be my ancestors. I barely knew Calvin, but I had known my grandfather quite well.
    I glanced at Dean. As riveted as he was to what he was reading, Wyatt and I might not have even been on the same planet.
    With a nod, I rose from the desk and headed down the hall to Calvin’s room.
    Nothing had been touched since the ambulance crew had left the night before. The bed was stripped, the mattress still askew on its frame. The pill bottles sat on the desk, leaving me to assume that the medics had made a list of them. Choosing one at random,