“Come in,” Holly said. “You must be Mrs. Cooper. I’m Holly. Where’s Mr. Cooper?”

“I left him at the barn with Mack and your brother,” Nora answered.

“Hello,” Lily said when she made it to the foyer. “Just hang your coat there on the hall tree and come on into the kitchen. I’m going to take out the dinner rolls so they can rise. Can I get you a glass of sweet tea?”

“That would be wonderful.” Nora removed her long coat to reveal jeans and a sweatshirt. “I didn’t get dressed up. Sometimes Orville insists that I stay out at the goat pens with him, but he’s having a pretty good day today.”

“No need to dress up to come visit here.” Lily looked down at her own jeans and T-shirt. “You’re family.”

“Thank you for that.” Nora followed them into the kitchen.

“I’ll get us all a glass of tea.” Holly made her way around them.

“Except for that blonde hair, she sure reminds me of Vera. Your grandmother, Vera’s mama, was a blonde. Maybe that’s where Holly got that pretty hair.” Nora followed Lily into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“We never knew Mama’s granny. Did you?” Holly asked as she poured tea into glasses and set one in front of Nora.

“She died before I was born, but Mama had a picture of her,” Lily interjected. “It’s probably in one of the albums stored up in the attic.”

“Can we go up there and bring them down?” Holly asked.

“Sure, but not today. We’ll probably have to fight the dust bunnies to even find the albums.” Lily punched down the bread and pinched off pieces for rolls. “Mama talked about her a lot. What do you remember about her, Nora?”

“Well, she lived here with your folks when your mama and I were little girls. She was the sweetest lady I ever met, and she loved to cook. This was one of the bigger houses in Comfort at that time, so she’d let Vera invite me and Polly over here to spend the weekend whenever we wanted. She had this big garden out back. Your grandpa had cattle, but no goats. I remember that he worked right here on the ranch—” Nora stopped and took a long drink of her tea. “Seems like I heard he’d been a foreman here for years.”

“And she had blonde hair?” Holly pressed her for more.

“Oh, yes.” Nora nodded seriously. “A great long mane of beautiful hair. She braided it and wrapped it around her head like a crown. One night when we were all here, she took it down and we brushed it out for her. She sat in a kitchen chair, and her hair almost went to the floor.”

“And my grandfather?” Lily asked. “Mama never talked a lot about him except to say that he was a good father.”

“Albert walked with a limp. He’d had an accident when he was young that left him with one leg shorter than the other,” Nora said. “He had red hair and a million freckles and the clearest blue eyes you’ve ever seen. He was a man of few words, but he adored Annie.”

Lily thought of poor Sophia, who had married a man who apparently didn’t love her like that, and wondered what had become of that woman.

“Now let’s talk about you, young lady.” Nora focused on Holly. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to be a teacher. Not for big kids, though. I want to go into early-childhood development and teach the little kids,” Holly answered. “Braden, my brother, wants to be a vo-ag teacher just like Mack. But I really haven’t made up my mind for sure. Sometimes I think about going to the air force like Faith Torres. It would be great to be a pilot.”

“Those are good and noble ambitions,” Nora said. “I always thought I’d like to teach little kids, but I got married and had twins. Orville was a bank president here in Comfort, but he had the goat farm on the side, and I took care of it a lot of the time.”

“I’m not getting married until I’m thirty,” Holly declared.

“That’s smart,” Nora agreed.

Lily remembered when Holly wanted to be a rock singer, and Braden declared he was going to be a fireman. They would probably change their minds a hundred times before they graduated high school, but it was good to hear that their goals were a little more grounded and realistic.

Mack had set three chairs up on the south side of the barn so his father would be sitting in the warm sunshine that morning. Orville was wearing his rubber boots and his old work coat, and he was having a good day. Could it be, Mack wondered, because he felt at home in the presence of goats and was dressed in old familiar clothes?

“What makes you like goats?” Orville had asked Braden first thing when he’d sat down.

“They’re cute and they’re little,” Braden answered honestly. “Cows and horses kind of scare me. My mama is short and so is my dad, so I’m probably not ever going to grow up to be tall like Mack. I can hold my own with a goat. I might not ever be able to do that with a big animal.”

“Where’d you get that black eye?” Orville asked.

“Well, sir, it was like this . . .” Braden started telling the story of the day before the fight when the two bullies had taken his lunch money, and ended with, “I guess I had just had enough of them.”

Orville chuckled. “Boy, I don’t reckon you’d have a bit of trouble with a big animal.”

“Thank you. Why’d you raise goats?” Braden asked.

“I raised premium goats, and I sold them to kids from all over Oklahoma and Texas for their livestock shows. What I didn’t sell went to the market once a year and paid for two boys’ college educations. See that one out there with the star on her face? She’ll be a prime show goat next spring. And that young ram over there that you call War Lord could take the prize home when you show him. My son . . .” It was evident he was trying hard to remember a name. “My son Adam—no, that’s not right. Aaron is the one that likes to go with me to take care of the goats.”

Mack nodded in agreement. “That’s right, Dad. Now tell me about the rest of my new herd. Which ones should I sell as premium stock, and which ones will bring less money?”

“Aaron?” Braden asked.

“Aaron Matthew Cooper is my birth name,” Mack explained. “They started out calling me Matt, but my brother could only say Mack, and that’s what I’ve answered to ever since.”