Lily sat down on the bed beside her and gently wiped away the tear with her fingertip. “After that confession, honey, we aren’t even going back to Austin for a visit until summer gets here. You’ll graduate in a little more than three years. Then you can go to college and have a real closet. Or hide a whole rope ladder under your bed.”

Holly’s expression changed from one of pure repentance to absolute rebellion. “When I get out of this prison, I’ll never come back, not even to your funeral.”

“I won’t know it. I’ll be dead.” Lily stood up and headed for the door. “It’s raining. The boxes are all inside the house. At least their contents will be dry. And FYI, one of the boxes with your name on it is filled with hangers. I remembered to pack them while you had breakfast this morning. Holly, darlin’, I do love you.”

Holly sprang off the bed and tipped her chin up in the air. She whipped around dramatically and ripped the tape off a box. Lily turned and headed back down the stairs as if nothing had happened.

“Whew! That was intense,” Mack whispered as he followed her.

“That was just a little bit of temper and a well-trained tear. Intense was when I walked in that library bathroom and caught her smoking a joint,” Lily said. “Are you sure you can handle us living here?”

“I’m a teacher.” He stacked one box on top of another and started back up the stairs. “I’ve seen a little bit of everything.”

“I was a school counselor until Holly was born, but living with a kid twenty-four, seven is different than having them in a classroom for an hour a day,” she said.

“You want a job as a substitute teacher? I can probably get you one at the school. We’re always short on qualified subs.”

“I hope I can build a little counseling practice here in Comfort. If I do, I wouldn’t have time to sub, but thank you.” She followed him up the staircase. “It’ll take a while to get clientele built up, but maybe in a few months, it’ll show some kind of profit. As long as I have a computer and Wi-Fi, I’m good.”

He turned around at the top of the staircase. “Guess you’d better call someone to install Wi-Fi, then, because we don’t have any technical stuff here. I’ve got a cell phone, but I don’t even use all the data I’m given every month.”

“We really are living in the boonies.” She managed a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Yep, and I love every single minute of it.” He disappeared into Braden’s room with the boxes.

She couldn’t quite agree with him, but she hoped that someday she’d be able to say, “Amen.” Right at that moment, Lily felt a whole lot like her daughter. She had been jerked out of her church, taken away from her friends, and didn’t even have a closet, either. But deep down in her soul, she knew this was the right move. She’d brushed so many incidents under the rug, and told herself each one of them was just another phase they were passing through. Now it was time to jerk her head out of the sand.

She reminded herself again that a kid could kick any bush between the Red River and the Gulf of Mexico and a dozen friends would come rolling out, but they only got one mother—mean or otherwise. With a fresh start here in Comfort, she hoped she’d do a better job of being the mom they needed.

Fresh start? I’d say you’re coming back to your roots. Her mother’s gravelly voice, so much like her own, was so clear that Lily whipped around to see if she was coming out of the kitchen.

“Well, there’s that, too,” Lily muttered.

Chapter Three

Lily turned around slowly, taking in the whole room that had been hers before she left for college. The lace curtains were the only things that were the same. When Mack had moved into the house, he’d cleaned out everything from the downstairs bedroom into the room that had been emptied when Lily moved into her first apartment.

Why oh why hadn’t she come back to take care of things? She threw herself backward onto the bed and stared at the full rack of her mother’s clothing on the far wall. Vera had known that her time was short, so she’d taken care of all the legal business with her lawyer, and even arranged her own funeral. She’d made it so easy for Lily to simply lock the doors, put the key in the hands of Teena, her friend from high school and a real estate agent, and just walk away.

“Lily, where are you?” A voice floated up the stairs.

“Speak of the devil.” Lily raised her voice. “In my old bedroom.”

Teena didn’t even knock on the closed door, but came right on in and bent to give Lily a hug. A tall brunette without an extra ounce of extra weight on her slim body, she’d changed very little since high school. Not even having a set of twins had widened her narrow hips or put another inch on her waist.

“I figured I’d given you enough time to get here,” Teena said. “Mack was just getting in his truck to leave, and he said for me to come on in. Sally is on the way. We’ve got a couple of hours to help you get unpacked.” She glanced over at the clothes rack. “Those are your mama’s things. I remember that blue dress. She wore it to your folks’ anniversary party at the church the year before your dad died. All us girls went shopping with her to pick it out. Good God, Lily! Why haven’t you taken care of some of this before now?”

Lily drew in a lungful of air and let it out slowly. “I planned to, but if I didn’t, then I could pretend she was still here. If I didn’t come back to Comfort, well, y’all understand.”

“Yes, we do, but it’s time to let your mama go.” Teena straightened. “And that starts by taking care of some of her things. I’ll put all that on the bed so you can hang up your clothes. We’ll use the boxes you brought your stuff in to pack all Vera’s stuff. Sally and I will take everything to the church clothes closet when we leave today. Someone can get some good out of it.”

“Good out of what?” Sally leaned on the doorframe, huffing. “I’d forgotten how steep those stairs were.”

“Lily hasn’t even gone through her mother’s stuff,” Teena said. “Come to think of it, she hasn’t been home in five years.”

“I don’t blame her. When my mama dies, I’m going to give that job to my sister.” Sally met Lily halfway at the foot of the bed, grabbed Lily’s hands, and jumped up and down like a little girl. “We’re all together again. I’m so happy I could dance a jig in a pig trough on Main Street.”

Sally’s blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Shorter than Lily, she’d always carried a few extra pounds, but she’d been the life of the party when they were kids. Now she was divorced, had no children, and owned a cute little vintage boutique in Comfort.

She pulled a box cutter from the hip pocket of her jeans and asked, “What do you want opened first?”

“You got a concealed carry permit for that weapon?” Teena started piling clothing on the bed.

“Yep.” Sally nodded as she sliced through the tape on the nearest box. “It’s called a business license to sell antiques.”

Lily got to her feet. “Thank you both for being here.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for,” Teena said. “I’ll take the clothes off the hangers and fold them. Sally, you can hang up Lily’s stuff and repack the boxes. Lily, you start going through the dresser drawers.”