“Not tomorrow.” Tootsie came in from the dining room. “You’re going with Luke to Clarksville in the truck to get some more shingles, and while you’re there, y’all can go to the grocery store and fill the weekly list. Luke wants to finish up the roof on Monday since we change the time in another week. He wants to get it done before it starts getting dark earlier.”

“And I’ve filled the woodshed—there’s enough there to last through several more years when we come back here for the fall,” Carmen said.

“So this is going to be a yearly thing?” Diana asked.

“I’d love it if it were.” Tootsie beamed. “Maybe we could get Joanie to come down from Arlington for a few days while we’re here, and it could be like our own little family reunion.”

“Sounds great to me.” Joanie shoved her hands into a couple of oven mitts and took a bowl of macaroni and cheese to the table. “Maybe I can even bring Brett if he can get time off.”

“That would be even better,” Tootsie said. “These past weeks have been just what I needed to get through some of this grief. Y’all will never know how much all y’all being here has helped.”

Carmen raised her hand. “You can double the amount that it’s helped you. There wasn’t an ax at home or a huge pile of wood that needed to be split. Eli has no idea how lucky he is. I might have used the ax on his head instead of a stick of wood.”

“So you’re feelin’ better?” Luke asked as he entered the room.

“Oh, yeah.” She smiled.

Diana reached out and took a leaf from his hair. “You missed one.”

“Thanks. Guess the damsel in distress is helping out the knight this evening,” he said.

“What’s that all about?” Joanie motioned them into the dining room.

“I’m the knight who’ll save Diana from tornadoes. She’s the damsel in distress,” Luke explained.

“Yeah, right. I’m not a little wisp of a girl you can scoop up and put on the back of a white horse.” Diana took her seat at the table.

“I beg to disagree,” Luke argued. “If I remember right, I saved you from being beaten to death by hailstones when you fell after that last storm. I might not have put you on the back of a white horse, but I got you inside the house.”

“Seems like I recollect that.” Tootsie winked.

“A damsel can be any size and have any color hair. The knight is always strong enough to save her, and the horse is big enough for both of them to ride. Haven’t you seen the animated princess movies?” He seated Tootsie and then took his own place.

“Have you?” Joanie asked.

“I’ve watched every one of them to see if I could use any of their ideas in the games I created. Let’s give thanks for this food before it gets cold.” He bowed his head and said a short prayer.

Joanie passed the meat loaf around the table, and when she took a bite, a pang of guilt shot right through her heart. She was eating Zoe’s very favorite meal that evening, and when she got home, she’d have to pack up everything in her daughter’s room. It would be like telling her goodbye all over again, and Joanie dreaded that part of the job awaiting her even more than telling her friends goodbye.

“Is something wrong with the food?” Carmen asked.

“It’s delicious,” Joanie sighed. “I was dreading the idea of taking down Zoe’s bulletin board and packing all her things.”

“We’ll be there to help,” Carmen said. “You aren’t going to have to make this move all by yourself. We’ll get a bottle of wine and sit on the floor and cry with you when the job is done. I’m glad that Eli has agreed to let me have the house so I don’t have to do that for a while, but the time will come when Natalie will want to move all her things to a new place.”

“Good Lord!” Diana gasped. “I hadn’t even thought of that. It’ll take a backhoe to scoop out Rebecca’s messy room.”

“Amen to that.” Carmen nodded. “And thank goodness Natalie got my tendencies toward OCD, and everything has to be in its place. When she moves her things out, each box will be marked and packed like a professional. With a spreadsheet.”

Tootsie giggled. “They both got part of me in them.”

“OCD is not a good bed partner with messy,” Luke said. “And I’ve never seen your house messy. Not the one in Sugar Run or this one. You’re an immaculate housekeeper. Uncle Smokey said he tried for years to get you to hire a cleaning lady, but you’d have no part of it.”

“What’s on the outside is OCD.” Tootsie smiled. “But what’s on the inside is Rebecca all over again. Do not ever open either the living room closet or the hall closet doors, and only go into my little storage shed in the back if you have your life insurance paid up.”

“You’re kidding me.” Joanie’s eyes widened so far that they ached before she remembered to blink. “I figured your closets would look like Natalie’s.”

“Nope.” Tootsie shook her head. “I never was a neat person until I married a career army man. I didn’t want to embarrass him at inspection time. But they never opened the closet doors when they did a walk-through, so that was my secret.”

Joanie thought of the space under the sink in her bathroom. It was always a jungle, but those were her private things, and nobody ever saw it but her. That would have to be cleaned out, too.

“I just remembered that we’d only lived in the base house a couple of years when we left it for the one in Sugar Run. Moving was downright traumatic—what to take with us, what to sell, what to give away—and every single thing, even as small as a hairpin in the bathroom drawer, had to be handled,” Joanie said.

“Yep.” Diana nodded. “And you’ve been in this house six times that long, so just imagine how much junk you’ve accumulated and will have to go through.”

“I’ll have to make even more lists,” Joanie groaned.

“I’ve never been in your homes,” Luke said. “Are they all pretty much like Aunt Tootsie’s place?”

“You know someone in the market for a house in Sugar Run?” Joanie asked.

“I might,” he said. “A friend has been looking to relocate close to San Antonio but not in the town itself.”