“Oh. My. Goodness!” Clay stood up and his eyes widened. “You are so beautiful, Holly. I’m going to have the prettiest date at the prom.”

She smiled, a little shyly for Holly Anderson, but then Clay brought out the best in her. “Thank you. I’m going with the most handsome boy in the whole school.”

“If y’all are through kissin’ up to each other, let Mama take some pictures of you putting that corsage on her wrist so me and Isaac can get back to watchin’ our movie.” Braden’s voice had gone through the cracking changes. Now his drawl was even deeper than Mack’s and sounded like it came from a much bigger man.

“Little brothers are such a nuisance,” Holly fussed. “I’m never having sons. I’m only having daughters.”

Lily snapped several more pictures and then a final one of their backs as they were walking off the porch. Mack draped an arm around her shoulders.

“Time kind of gets away from us, don’t it? Before you know it, we’ll be watching her leave with some guy. Only she’ll be wearing a white dress and veil,” he said.

Lily shoved her phone into her hip pocket and turned around to face Mack. She put her arms around his neck and tiptoed to kiss him. When the kiss ended, she leaned her cheek against his broad chest. “I don’t want to think about that day, but I do hope that she finds a man who treats her as good as Clay does, and as good as you treat me.”

“We make a pretty good couple, don’t we? So have we got everything in order for our belated honeymoon at the end of next month?”

“All we’ve got to do is pack our bags and drive to the airport. From there it’s all planned out for us. The kids are excited to go on a ten-day Alaskan cruise,” she answered.

“I’m looking forward to it, too,” he said. “Ten days to celebrate our marriage.”

“That happened a year ago.” She tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek. “And we’ve celebrated it every day since.”

“But not on a big ship. Maybe we should do this every year,” he suggested. “But right now I’d better go take care of the evening chores.”

“I’ll have supper on the table when you get back,” she told him.

He left by the back door, and she sat down on the bottom step. It had been a good year, but somehow she’d never gotten around to writing anything in the journal. She had meant to—she really had. The time just never seemed quite right.

“No time like the present,” she said as she stood and went up to her old bedroom, which was now her office. She opened the oak secretary, pulled down the flap, and took out the journal. She thumbed through the pages, scanning more than a hundred years of handwriting from her ancestors. Happy times. Sad times. Deaths. Births. Life in general. It was all there to show her that her life was what she made it and that her choices would have consequences. When she reached the first clean page, she reached for an ink pen and began to write:

Lily Miller Anderson Cooper, April 2020: I’ve never been happier than I am right now. My life is not perfect by any means, but then, no one ever promised it would be. I just watched my daughter, Holly, leave for her very first prom with Clay. He’s the preacher’s son and is a young man that I both admire and appreciate for his convictions and values. Six years ago Holly’s father walked out on us—Holly, her younger brother, Braden, and me—and for five of those years I was little more than a zombie. Then one day circumstances made me sit up and take notice. I realized that my kids were completely out of control, and it would take drastic measures to put them back on the right track. I took them out of the environment they were in and brought them to Comfort, Texas—back to my roots and the house I’d been raised in. It was during those first days that I found this journal, and it has helped me so much to understand that life is what we make it. The kids’ father, Wyatt Anderson, is struggling to find his way. They see him about every three months for a weekend, and I have hopes that someday they’ll have a decent relationship. That’s up to him and them, and I try to stay out of it. I remarried after I came home. Mack Cooper and I said our vows last summer. He’s a good man, a good husband, and a wonderful role model for the children. We have an amazing life here on our little goat farm. Holly knows about this journal, and she knows that someday she’ll have the same responsibility that I have.

Lily laid the pen down and fiddled with her wide gold wedding band. It still seemed surreal that she and Mack were married. She picked up the pen again and began to write for the second time.

Mama died at the age of seventy, just like her mother. She’s been gone six years now, but if I open the bottom drawer of her old dresser and get a whiff of her rose-scented sachet, it seems like she’s still here. Braden asked me once if the place was haunted, and I told him no, but I wouldn’t mind if it was. I think Mama would be happy that Mack and I are married. She never really trusted Wyatt, and with good reason, but she was wise enough to let me make my own decisions, even if they weren’t good ones. I pray that I can let Holly make her own path and support her like Mama did me.

Lily reread what she’d written. It wasn’t good prose and didn’t say as much as some of the previous women had written about, but it was from the heart. She put the journal back into the secretary and was on the way downstairs when she heard Sally yell from the front door.

“Hey, where are you?” Her voice floated up the stairs. “I brought a cheesecake for dessert with hopes that you’d invite me to supper. You said when you left work you were frying chicken tonight.”

“I’m on my way down,” Lily called out.

Friends and family, and a man who loved her just the way she was. Life didn’t get a bit better than that!