School set the children an assignment to explore their family trees.
The Gardiner tree was pretty straightforward, but Skip and Bob were completely lost with theirs, and asked the girls for help. They couldn't do it either, and Jane came and sat with them, asking questions and encouraging the children to make notes. This was the tree that was finally discovered.
Skip's cousin Trigger is Susie's half-brother through Buck, and his father wanted to marry Shana Natcher, and take their teenage daughter, Susie, Skip's other cousin, with him. Skip's sister Ruby married Don Lothario.
"Our family looks so simple compared to yours!" said Felicia. Just Mum and Dad, then we three, and the two boys."
"It helps if people don't die," sighed Skip. Aunt Mary Lu died when Susie was still very small."
His Uncle Buck married Shana Natcher and they moved to a small house with an apartment above the garage. They converted part of the garage into a large bedroom for Susie, and she lived just across the road from her brother and cousin and the rest of the family. But they still spent most of their time with the rest of the family.
Before she married Buck, Shana in turn had two children, Lulu Mather and Oscar Alphender, ("Silly posh names" said Bob. Da says she is a stuck-up..." "I'm sure she isn't," smiled Jane) who were now Susie's and Trigger's half-brothers.
Skip told them that Sharna had a fire in the house, but nobody was hurt. The house was ruined, and the family moved to a new housing development at the edge of Riverview. "The houses are all - stuck up on end," he explained.
"He means they are tall houses - Skip's house is flat on the ground, these are big, tall houses all joined up," said Bob. "We might be moving there soon as well. There's a playground, it's cool."
Jane had heard of this, it was quite a controversial modern development. Personally she didn't like tall, concrete-and-glass buildings, but she could see they could be practical if you had a lot of people to fit in - and if they didn't want to do much gardening, something she could barely imagine after years of farming with Fritz. Some people in Riverview thought a development like that was better in a big town, not a small country place.