“That’s great,” Sally said. “Things are working out just like they should. How’re things between you and Mack?”

“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I know something will go wrong because nothing can be so right,” Lily said. “The kids like him. His dad asked him if he was going to marry me. Oh, and Wyatt called last night.”

“What did that bastard want?” Sally asked.

“Victoria kicked him out for a younger man, and he wants to sublet my apartment. Allegedly, when he gets his life straightened out, he wants another chance at being a father,” Lily told her. “We’ll see.”

Sally drove up to Granny Hayes’s yard. Chickens squawked and ran around the house. The ducks on the porch eyed the two vehicles cautiously. “He doesn’t deserve it, but you’re going to say, ‘for the kids’ sake,’ aren’t you?”

“What is that?” Lily pointed to a huge pile of dirt with rocks laid all around it.

“Sweet Jesus!” Sally groaned. “Dusty must’ve died, and she’s buried that big old mule. That’s why she wasn’t in church this morning. He died, and that’s his grave. See that little cross propped up with rocks? It’s got his name on it.” Sally was out of her van and running toward the cabin before Lily even got her seat belt undone.

“Keep everyone outside until—” she yelled as she cleared the porch and knocked on the door several times. When there was no answer, she tried the knob, and the door swung open.

Holly slid out of the front seat of Mack’s truck and was on the porch when Sally came out and closed the door behind her. Lily stopped in her tracks and knew what had happened before Sally said a word. Granny Hayes was dead, and Holly was going to be devastated.

“We can’t go in there, not until the doctor comes.” Sally’s voice cracked, and tears dripped onto the collar of her coat.

“Is Granny Hayes sick? Is she going to be all right?” Holly asked.

Mack pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Sally. “I’ll call Doc Greene. He usually goes to the Comfort Café for lunch on Sunday, so maybe I’ll catch him there.”

“She’s gone, and probably has been for days, maybe since the night after she got old Dusty buried.” Sally dabbed at her eyes.

“No, Mama! She can’t be dead. She’s my friend, and she can’t . . .” Holly threw herself into Lily’s arms and wet the front of her mother’s sweater with tears.

Sally passed the hankie over to Lily, and she wiped Holly’s cheeks with it as she held her and let her cry as long as she wanted. Braden got out of the truck and walked out to the mound of dirt, with Mack right behind him. Lily watched from the corner of her eye as Mack made the phone call and then draped his arm around Braden’s shaking shoulders.

“She left a sealed letter with me last month, and then in church last week she handed me another one,” Sally said between sobs. “I wasn’t to open them until she was gone. She said they had all her wishes in them. I laughed after she’d walked away because I thought she’d live to be a hundred for sure. She was always secretive about everything, but the one thing she told me was that we weren’t to take her off her property. No embalming and no big funeral at the church. The rest I’ll have to read when I get back to the shop. The letters are in the safe.”

Holly plopped down on the top porch step. “We would have helped her bury that old mule. All she had to do was call us.”

“Honey, she didn’t have a telephone.” Sally sat down beside her. “I tried to buy her a simple one, but she wouldn’t have it.”

“She lived the way she wanted.” Lily took a place on the other side of her daughter. “It was her time to go, and now she’s with her brothers and her parents.”

“She didn’t like any of them, except her mother.” Holly took the handkerchief from her mother and wiped her face with it. “Granny Hayes said her mother was an angel for putting up with her daddy. She said he was a hard man that demanded a lot from his wife and daughter.”

They were still sitting there fifteen minutes later when Dr. Greene pulled in beside Sally’s van. He nodded at them, went inside, and came back out in just a few seconds. “She probably went in her sleep last night. Rigor has come and gone. Should I call the undertaker?”

Sally told him what Granny Hayes had set out.

“Well, then, you should abide by her wishes. Let me know if you need me for anything else. I’ll get a death certificate ready and file it since she didn’t want to go to the funeral home.”

“I can’t leave her,” Holly said. “She was my friend.”

“Is it all right if we go inside now?” Sally asked Dr. Greene.

“Don’t see why not. She was a strange little bird. I only saw her once about a month ago. She’d never been to a doctor in her life,” he said, “but she marched into my office without an appointment. She wouldn’t go for tests, but I was pretty sure from her coloring and what she told me about her symptoms that she had pancreatic cancer. I told her if she didn’t get treatment, she probably wouldn’t make it six weeks. She told me she’d lived a long life and lived it the way she wanted, and she wasn’t doing anything but getting her affairs in order. She put you”—he nodded toward Sally—“down as her emergency contact person and gave us permission to tell you anything about her condition if you asked.”

“I’ll go right now and get that letter. Then I’ll tell the cemetery folks what we need to do,” Sally said. “I’ve never been in charge of anything like this, so I’m flying blind.”

Dr. Greene patted her on the shoulder as he started down the stairs. “I’m sure Granny Hayes has it all lined up from A to Z. She might have been an odd duck, but she took care of her own business.”

Sally got to her feet. “Y’all can go inside where it’s warmer.”

Holly didn’t waste a second. She jumped to her feet, crossed the porch, and opened the door. Lily didn’t know how her daughter would react to seeing a dead person or what condition Granny Hayes might be in, so she rushed inside right behind Holly. To Lily’s surprise, Holly pulled a rocking chair up to the bed and sat down.

Granny Hayes looked smaller than usual in her flannel nightgown buttoned up to her wrinkled and thin neck. She was lying on her back with the covers pulled up to her chest. Her arms were stretched out beside her body on top of the piecework quilt, and her braids lay down across her breasts and to her waist.

“Are you sure she’s not just asleep?” Holly whispered.

“Positive. The doctor has pronounced her dead.” Lily brought a ladder-back chair across the floor and sat down beside Holly.

Mack and Braden came into the one-room cabin. Mack crossed the room and stood behind Holly and Lily. Braden sat down on the floor and gathered the mama cat and all three kittens into his lap. “I ain’t never seen a dead person except Granny Vera, and she was in a casket. Granny Hayes don’t look dead. She looks like she’s asleep.”

“Are you ladies all right? Can I get you anything?”

Lily reached over her shoulder for his hand, and he laced his fingers in hers. “Not a thing. We’ll just sit here with her until Sally gets back and tells us what to do.” The touch of his hand brought comfort to the strange but peaceful turn of events that morning. It seemed like time stood still until Sally came through the door with two envelopes in her hand. She dragged a second chair over to the other side of the bed and opened the first one, scanned through it, broke the wax seal on the second one, and read out loud.