“You are the meanest mother in the world. All the other kids . . .”

Her daughter’s unfinished sentence reminded Lily of what her own mother used to ask: If all the other kids jumped off a cliff, would you follow them? The memory almost put a smile on her face. She crossed the room and hugged Holly, who looked a lot like pictures of Lily’s mother when she was a young girl—same size, same height, same face shape. Holly had inherited her blonde hair from Lily, but those beautiful blue eyes had come from Wyatt’s gene pool. The rest of her genetic makeup was straight Vera Miller.

Holly squirmed away and shot a dirty look toward her mother. Lily felt the sting of Holly’s glare as if it had been a sharp knife stuck all the way through her heart.

“All the other kids don’t have mothers who hate their kids like you do.” Holly glared at Lily.

Lily tossed the box on the bed and left before she lost her resolve.

She found Braden sitting on his bed, looking bewildered. That wasn’t hard to understand. They’d moved into the apartment when he was only seven years old. Lily had done the packing as well as the unpacking that year, but if he was old enough to smoke and drink, then he could figure out what he wanted to take to Comfort all on his own.

“I brought your first box,” she said. “When it’s finished, you can take it to the living room, and I’ll get another one ready for you.”

“Mama, what do I do first?” His voice broke.

For a minute she thought he was about to cry, but the expression on his face denied there were tears on the way. His voice had begun to crack last month. That meant he was starting to go through puberty. Next thing she knew, he would be shaving and chasing girls.

“I’d suggest that you pack your clothing first. Leave out something to wear tomorrow, though. Good luck.” She eased the door shut and went straight to the kitchen, where she took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the cabinet, poured herself a shot, and threw it back like a cowboy in an old western movie.

With the burn still in her throat and stomach, she taped up half a dozen more boxes. Then she pulled her cell from her hip pocket and called the home phone at the house in Comfort.

Mack Cooper kicked off his work boots and left them sitting just inside the utility room. The sun hadn’t peeked out from behind a layer of gray clouds in almost a week. Even the goats were huddled up together in the shelters closest to the house. That morning, he’d seen the first sunrays doing their best to split the clouds. They’d reminded him of the light from a single bulb trying to sneak down through a layer of smoke in an old honky-tonk.

The Christmas break from his regular job as the vocational agriculture teacher at Comfort High School would be over in a few days. Teaching was his passion, and he was eager to get back to school.

He stopped in the kitchen for a cup of coffee and had just reached for his favorite mug when the old black wall phone rang right beside his ear. In the five years he’d rented the house from Lily Anderson, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d heard the phone ring. Two of those had been wrong numbers.

He set the pot aside, put the phone to his ear cautiously, and said, “Hello?”

“Mack, this is Lily,” the husky voice on the other end of the line said.

“Why are you using this phone and not my cell?” he asked.

“I’m so rattled that I didn’t even think of that,” she replied. “The kids and I will be in Comfort in the morning.”

“Before noon? I’ll have dinner ready for y’all,” he offered. “Are you coming to town to go through your mother’s things?”

“Dinner would be great. Thank you. But I’ve decided to move the kids to Comfort, so we’re coming to stay for a while. We’ll be there until summer, at the very least,” she said.

He felt like all the air had just been knocked out of his lungs. “You’re what? I’ve got forty goats, and—”

“I’m not asking you to move out. The house is big enough for us all. The kids and I will take the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. You can go on about your life as usual in the downstairs. You and the kids will be in school after this next week, so it’ll only be in the evenings that we’ll be sharing the living room and kitchen,” she told him.

“Are you sure you want to . . . ,” he stammered before trailing off.

“We are adults, you and me, and we’ll be roommates, nothing more,” she said.

“Comfort is a small town. You do remember that, don’t you?”

“Oh, I remember that all too well,” Lily said. “But a couple of days ago, I took Holly to the library and . . .” She told him what had happened that day. “I’ve got to get them away from this big-city life. They aren’t happy about it, but neither am I.”

“Kids will be kids. They’re easily influenced by whatever their peers are doing,” he said.

“I know that,” Lily said. “I wasn’t hatched out as a full-grown adult, but I also know that the way to fix it is to change the environment and their group of friends. And for me to spend more time with them.”

“I’ll have a pot of soup ready when you get here.” As long as he didn’t have to move, he could survive with having people stomping around upstairs. If living with a couple of city kids who hated country life got to be too much, he would find another place to rent.

“Sounds great. I’ll stop along the way and pick up a dessert,” she said. “See you then.”

His thoughts swirled as he put the phone back on the base. He leaned back against the cabinet and tried to settle his mind. Then his twin brother, Adam, yelled from the front door, “Hey, where are you?”

“In the kitchen.” Of all the people occupying the planet, Adam was the last person Mack wanted to see or talk to that day. He bit back a groan and got down two mugs, filled them both with coffee, and added two spoons of sugar to his.

It was a surprise to see his brother in Comfort on a Friday morning.

Adam had followed in their father’s footsteps and gone into business after college. Orville, their father, had been the president of a small bank right there in Comfort, and raised goats as a hobby. Adam was the head honcho of a huge bank in San Antonio, but Mack could never see him doing anything that would get his fancy shoes dirty.

No one would ever guess that he and Adam were twins by looking at them. Adam had a standing appointment with his hairstylist every Saturday morning to have his blond roots touched up and styled, and he went to the gym at least three days a week. Mack had jet-black hair that he seldom even thought about until it was time to go to the barbershop—maybe once a month. Adam had a movie-star face and body—the former from birth, the latter with help from his protein supplements and weight lifting. Mack hadn’t been quite as blessed in the good looks department, but he wasn’t ugly by any means, and his muscular chest and arms bore the proof of his hard work.

“What are you doing so far from the big city?” Mack asked. “I poured coffee for us. Have a seat.”

Adam removed his suit coat and hung it on the back of the chair before he sat down. “We’re foreclosing on the old Bailey property. I had to drive over and take a look at it. You should buy it. There’s forty acres and a house that’s not a hundred years old out there. Not a new brick, but a nice little two-bedroom frame house that’s pretty sturdy. You’re wasting your money renting this place.”