“Where did she get that kind of money?” Lily finally asked. “Was she growing pot out there on her land?”

“I would imagine that her father had no time for banks, and her mother never used them, either,” Mack said. “This is probably her inheritance from them. She probably added to it every year when she sold a steer or two that she didn’t need for meat. Did you see that rifle hanging above her fireplace? I wouldn’t be surprised if she had done some hunting—maybe deer, quail, rabbits. She would raise the steers, but then when she didn’t need them, she’d sell them and put the money in the coffee cans.”

“Should we really keep all this money?” Lily asked.

“It’s what she wanted, but I would suggest that you take it to the bank in the next few days and get it put away somewhere safer than in those coffee cans. Maybe one of those 529 funds,” he suggested. “It’s late, darlin’. Kids are sleeping, and I’m yawning. Let’s think about this tomorrow after the graveside services.” He walked her to the bottom of the staircase and kissed her good night.

“I’d like to spend the night in your bedroom and wake up cuddled up next to you,” she whispered. “But I don’t think that would be a good example for Holly and Braden.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” Mack drew her close to his chest and raised her chin with his knuckles. His dark lashes rested on his high cheekbones, and he found her lips with his eyes closed.

When the kiss ended, she turned and went right up to her bedroom, but she was too wound up after the whole day’s events to ever go to sleep, so she got out the journal and opened it to the next entry.

Holly eased into her room and said, “Mama, I’m still awake. Can we please read some more in the journal?”

“I’ve already got it out, and it looks like Sophia has gotten married again. This will be my grandmother that’s writing now, and your great-grandmother,” Lily said, and began to read:

Sophia Ann Callahan Mayer Johnston, July 1946: Mama gave me this journal to add my story to hers and my grandmother’s when Fred died and I went home for the first time since I left Oklahoma and moved to Texas. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he wasn’t the same man I dated once we were married. He was as controlling and mean to me as his father, Hermann, was to Fred’s mother. I hated living in this house with him and them, and the only bright spot in my life was my mother’s letters and getting to visit with Albert, the foreman, on my daily walk around the place. If Albert hadn’t been there to talk to me for all those years, I might have taken a whole bottle of my mother-in-law’s sleeping pills and simply gone to sleep forever. I thought things might change when his parents passed, but they only got worse. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without him, not even to church. He blamed me for us not having children, and then when I did get pregnant after years and years of marriage and was almost past childbearing age, he said the baby didn’t belong to him. Fred drank too much one evening and fell down the stairs. He died when I was three months pregnant. Albert declared his love for me, and we were married when my daughter was two years old, and he adopted Vera. He’d always called me Annie, not Sophia, and I liked that, so when Fred was gone, that was the name I adopted. I think it was more of an effort to draw the line between the horrible life I had with Fred and the wonderful life Albert and I started, rather than an effort on my part to be someone else. Someday I’ll pass this journal on down to Vera Ann, and she’ll understand why she lives in this house and why I didn’t want her to be a Mayer.

“I’m confused, Mama,” Holly said. “So Grandma Vera was really a Mayer, and that made her kind of kin to Granny Hayes?”

“Yes, it did,” Lily answered. “Shall we go on?”

Holly nodded. “I like that I’m kinda kin to Granny Hayes.”

“Me, too,” Lily agreed. “She was a wonderful woman.”

Lily flipped to the next page to read:

Annie Callahan Johnston, August 1950: Vera is now five years old and will go to school next year. She reminds me of my mother, Rachel, who passed away last summer, but she has Albert’s kind and sweet heart. Life goes on here on the place, and as the saying goes, the seasons come and the seasons go, but I’m happy in my lot. I have Vera and Albert. We were both forty-two this year on our birthdays, which are only three weeks apart. We are at war again, this time with Korea. The newspapers call our involvement a police action, not a war. I’m glad that Vera was a girl and not a boy who could be drafted. That’s selfish, I know, but the thought of sending my child to war terrifies me.

“One more, please, Mama? We’re to the part now when Granny Vera will start writing in the journal, right?” Holly begged.

“I think there is only one more, so we’ll read it and then you’ve got to get to bed,” Lily told her.

“I promise I will,” Holly said.

Vera Johnston Miller, December 1990: I found this in an old trunk in the attic when I was cleaning it out last week. I don’t know why Mama never mentioned having it. I would have loved to have read all this before now. It’s strange to think that I am biologically related to the people on the historical plaque out in front of this house, even stranger to think of all the women in the family who have written in this journal for more than a hundred years already. I feel an obligation to write my story in this book, but I’m not sure where I should begin. Mother and Daddy are both gone now. They passed away within six months of each other. Like my mother, I was married several years before I had a child. Then I had two beautiful daughters within two years—Rosemary Ann was born first and then Lily Joann. We lost Rosemary before her eighth birthday to a rare form of cancer, but Lily is now nine years old. I held my breath until she passed her eighth birthday, always fearing that I might lose her, too. Mother passed away when Rosemary was only a few months old, but she told me often that she had finally gotten her official badge of honor and was really a grandmother, so her life was complete.

Lily couldn’t put the journal down, though it was getting late. She turned the page and continued to read:

Vera Johnston Miller, June 20, 2004: Today is Lily’s wedding day. I worry about her so much. She has finished college and has a good job, but Wyatt Anderson, her fiancé, is controlling like Mama’s first husband, Fred. He’s not as blatant about it as I imagine Fred was, but the wedding is basically what he wanted, not the small, intimate event that Lily had in mind. She assures me that she loves him, and I only hope that he will change. He’s a very handsome and charismatic young man, but he has a wandering eye when it comes to pretty women. I hate to think of him breaking her heart. It’s time for me to set the veil on her head so the photographer can take a picture. With motherhood comes worry and fears—that’s just life and it can’t be changed. My mama, Annie, always said, “Once a mother, always a mother, no matter the age or the era.” Truer words have never been spoken.

“So Granny Vera didn’t like Daddy so much,” Holly said. “Well, I don’t like him so much right now, either, Mama.”

“Give it time. He could change.” Lily hugged her daughter. “Now off to bed with you.”