“I don’t primp,” Braden declared. “And I want a shower, not a bath.”

“You’re out of luck, kid. Our bathroom only has a tub, and the weatherman says there’s no chance of rain for a couple of days,” Lily told him.

“What’s rain got to do with it?” Braden asked.

“Duh!” Holly snorted. “You have to go outside and dance around naked if you want a shower.” She clamped a hand over her mouth and groaned. “How am I supposed to wash my hair with no shower?”

“See that plastic pitcher sitting on the ladder-back chair?” Lily pointed.

“Are you serious?” Holly asked.

“Yep, I am, but on the positive side, that big old claw-foot tub is deep enough that you can sink down in it all the way to your chin,” Lily said. “You might even learn to like it after you take a few baths.”

“Yeah, when them goats out there sprout wings and fly.” Holly stormed off to her room and slammed the door.

Lily remembered the last time they had been there, Braden had called the deep tub his swimming pool. In those days, Holly had been content to read her Harry Potter books in the evenings, and there was no problem with sharing a bathroom. Wyatt was still with her then and had comforted her all through the days leading up to the funeral and even on the way back to Austin when she’d been so sad. Two days later, he’d told her that he wanted a divorce.

She went back to her bedroom and closed the door, sat down on the bed, and stared at the old oak secretary without really seeing it. “The bastard,” she whispered. “He was holding me and thinking of Victoria the whole time. Thank God I didn’t get pregnant that last night we were in this house.”

She blinked, bringing the secretary into focus. Lily had played at her mother’s feet when Vera would lower the little flap to make a desk so she could answer letters every Sunday afternoon. Her mother had warned her constantly to be careful with the curved glass door, behind which Vera’s most prized knickknacks were kept.

Lily stood up and lowered the flap. Each of the little cubbyholes was filled—one with stationery, another with matching envelopes, and still another with a roll of forty-nine-cent stamps. In the space under the cubicles sat a leather-bound book about two inches thick. Thinking it might be a first edition of one of the classics that her mother loved, she slid it out slowly and laid it on the desk. A thin piece of leather wrapped around a big brown button on the top kept it closed. She ran her fingers over the tooled title: Family Journal. Why hadn’t her mother ever showed it to her or even mentioned buying it?

She unwound the leather latch and opened the book. “Holy smoke! It’s not a book. It really is a journal. I wonder where Mama got it.” She opened it and started to flip through it when Holly peeked in the room.

“Mama, I hate it here. You’ve proven your point. Please take us home,” she begged. A tear slowly made its way down her cheek, showing that she was truly miserable.

Lily almost caved, but then a voice in her head reminded her to deliver what you promise. She remembered her mother saying those very words.

“But you haven’t proven your point,” Lily said. “When you’ve proven that you can be trusted, then we’ll have this discussion again. Until then, we’re staying right here.”

Holly wiped the tear away with the back of her hand and glared at her mother. “I’ll never forgive you for making me do this.” She turned around, crossed over to her room, and slammed the door.

Feeling as if she was reading something sacred, she stared at the first entry—small, neat handwriting from someone named Ophelia Smith.

June 1862, Vicksburg, Mississippi: My heart is broken. My life is in shambles and I have no idea what to do. I can run a household, but William took care of the plantation, and now he’s dead and gone. I’ve kept things going, but it hasn’t been easy. A woman doesn’t have the authority that a man does. William left six months ago to fight for the Confederacy. They brought his body home yesterday, and we buried him today. Now I have two children, a daughter, Matilda, and a son, Henry, to raise on my own. Times are hard right now, and children need a father, especially Henry, who isn’t old enough to help me run this place, and is already showing rebellious signs. I fear he’ll run off and join the fight as soon as he’s old enough. Our foreman left today, and several slaves have already run away, too. I can see nothing but disaster in the future. Our way of life is gone, but it’s all I know, so what do I do now?

Feeling as if she were peering into the window of a woman’s soul, Lily couldn’t force her eyes away from that first entry. She read it several times and thought of Braden. Evidently, there had been single mothers trying to raise children on their own for a century and a half. She carefully closed the journal, put it back in the secretary, and lifted the flap back into place. She wanted to read more, but just reading that much made her feel guilty about peeking at someone’s intimate thoughts. Besides, tomorrow was Sunday, and that meant going to church, so she couldn’t stay up reading about Ophelia’s life half the night. She got dressed for bed, turned off the light, and slipped beneath the covers.

She closed her eyes, but the words from the journal still ran through her mind. Had Ophelia and William slept in a four-poster bed like this one? Had she soaked her pillow with tears for him every night that he was gone to the war, or did she have so much to do, trying to keep her children fed and clothed, that she had no time for tears?

Lily seldom ever dreamed, and when she did, she usually woke up with every detail still fresh in her mind. The next morning, she sat up in bed, and for a split second, she was Ophelia, and Braden and Holly were Matilda and Henry. She rubbed her eyes and looked around at the room. Then she remembered who and where she was. She turned the alarm off two minutes before it was set to ring and threw back the covers.

“That was one crazy dream.” She longed to read more of the journal that morning. She felt like a moth drawn to a flame, as if she should read it from the first to the last. Maybe by the time she’d read the rest of Ophelia’s story, she’d figure out who the woman was and why Lily’s mother had the journal. Maybe Ophelia just needed someone to sympathize with her even though more than 150 years had passed. But Lily had breakfast to cook, and then it would be time to get ready for church. The kids had been used to sleeping in on Sunday, so there was no doubt that there would be groaning and moaning.

She dressed in jeans and a baggy T-shirt, pulled on a pair of socks, and padded down the staircase. When she made it to the foyer, she could smell coffee, and she saw that the light was on in the kitchen.

“Good mornin’,” she said as she entered the room and headed for the coffeepot. “Are you an early riser, too?”

“I’ve been up for a couple of hours,” Mack told her. “Five o’clock is when I start my day. I’ve already fed the goats and chipped the layer of ice off their water tank. Do y’all go to church?” He beat her to the coffeepot, filled two mugs, and handed one to her.

“We do today.” She leaned against the counter and sipped her coffee. “We haven’t been in more than a year. The kids didn’t want to go, and I let them make the decision. Do you go?”