“That means the historical marker is still in the front yard. The porch swing still squeaks, and the most exciting part of the whole day is when you hear a second car go by out on the road.” Holly sighed again, this time with lots of self-pity.

“Because the house is so far back on the lane, you damn . . . darn sure can’t see the cars going by.” Braden blushed again.

“Ain’t life grand?” Lily looked up in the rearview mirror at the reflection of her son in the back seat. “Only now, we’ll be sharing the house with Mack Cooper, the vo-ag teacher at the high school, and the pasture is full of goats.”

Holly threw her hands over her eyes. “This gets worse and worse.”

“Goats? You mean real animal goats we saw at the petting zoo when we were little kids? I kind of liked them,” Braden said.

Holly whipped around to glare at him. “Traitor.”

“Well, I did.” He shrugged.

Lily wasn’t looking forward to being back in the house that held so many memories, or living with Mack, either, but that was the price she was willing to pay to keep her kids out of jail. The last time she’d been home was for her mother’s funeral. She’d planned on driving back over to Comfort every weekend until she got the place cleaned out and put up for sale, but she’d been so busy with the divorce and the move to the apartment soon after that she just let that business slide. Thinking of the divorce still made her angry, even after all these years. Right after she’d buried her mother, Wyatt revealed that he’d fallen in love with one of his clients, oil baroness Victoria Banfield—he had told her in a tone that sounded like he was discussing the weather. He was willing to give Lily the house they lived in at the time, but there was no way that her salary as a work-at-home mom could ever make the mortgage payments. So they’d sold it. She’d put her part of the equity into a college fund for the kids and paid the first year’s rent on an apartment that was really too expensive for her budget, but it gave the kids their own bathroom and privacy. They deserved that much when their sorry father didn’t even want normal custodial rights.

Wyatt was married within days of the divorce, in another state or another country. She had moved herself and the kids into the apartment, and life went on. The house in Comfort had been on the back burner. She had seldom thought about it. With everything going on in her life at that time with the pain of a divorce, she just couldn’t put herself through the heartbreak of sorting out her mother’s things. Two months went by, and Mack Cooper called to ask if she’d be interested in renting it—as is—with everything inside the place included in the rent. As the new teacher in Comfort, he needed a place outside town with a few acres to run his goats. They’d agreed that he would move the furniture from her parents’ bedroom to the empty room upstairs.

Lily remembered Mack from her high school days. He had a twin brother who was downright sexy and always had a harem around him, but Mack was withdrawn and shy. Adam had been the football hero. Mack had been into the ag program. They sure didn’t act or look like twins. Even so, she’d checked out all his references and settled on an amount for the rent. He’d never been late on a single payment, and Lord only knew how much the money helped her get by.

She’d been a high school counselor before Holly was born, but Wyatt had wanted her to stay home with the baby, so she’d given up her job and run a counseling service out of the house. They’d had a sweet little guesthouse that worked great for that business, and then when she moved to the apartment, she managed to keep up the work out of the tiny office she’d fixed up in the guesthouse. As she neared Comfort, she slapped the steering wheel in anger. She’d been blind to the way her own children were getting out of hand. Looking back, the signs had been there, but she’d had her head buried in the sand so deep that she’d ignored them. Things were sure enough going to be different from here on out.

“Almost there.” She made a sharp right-hand turn onto her old homestead, where she’d grown up back before she’d married and when she was Lily Miller. “We’re actually on your grandparents’ property right now. It looked a little different the last time y’all were here. If you look to y’all’s left, you’ll see the goats. To the right, well, darlin’s, that’s more goats.”

“Kind of cute,” Braden said.

Holly narrowed her eyes, turned around, and gave him another drop-dead look.

“Well, they are.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Lily came to the end of the drive and parked her car in front of the house. When she had come home for a visit, her mother, Vera, had always been on the porch swing, waiting for her. But not today. The old blue swing looked lonely, like it was waiting to tell stories, and it could sure enough tell a lot. That was where Lily had gotten her first kiss when she was Holly’s age. That was where she would’ve lost her virginity after the junior prom if her mother hadn’t switched on the porch light five minutes before curfew.

She took a deep breath and got out of the car. “Y’all can come on in or freeze out here. It’s up to you, but it looks like rain. That means all those boxes on the porch could get wet. It would make for a lot of laundry. Which reminds me—Saturday mornings will be for cleaning and getting the laundry done. I figure that a few chores might help keep you out of trouble. Be sure not to wash your white things with red or you’ll have pink underwear.”

“God!” Holly moaned. “Is there anything else? Like maybe making us live on bread and water for a year?”

“Don’t give her any ideas.” Braden flung the rear door open, got out of the car, and started toward the house.

Holly did the same, only she stomped every step of the way. When she reached the door, Lily called out, “You might as well pick up one of your boxes and carry it upstairs to your room. They aren’t going to grow wings and float up there for you.”

Holly looked over her shoulder and rolled her big blue eyes toward the gray skies. “Why didn’t the movers put them in the rooms where they belonged?”

“Because I told them to leave them on the porch,” Lily answered. “And I told Mack not to bring them inside. So get on with it, my darlin’s. It’ll be a big mess if it rains on them.”

She almost felt sorry enough for Braden to help him, but then she remembered her own shock, dismay, and disappointment over the preceding events.