“I don’t want the journal to end. I like reading it and talking about it with you,” Holly whined.

“Well, someday you can have it and read what I write in it,” Lily promised.

“Will you write about me?” Holly’s grin was downright impish.

“Most likely. Good night,” Lily said.

Holly hugged her tightly. “Night, Mama.”

When Holly was gone, Lily tucked the journal into the secretary. “Why didn’t you write more, Mama? I want to know more. What about those years after I left home and you passed away?”

It’s your life and your journal now, the voice in her head said bluntly.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The sun was still a full orange ball on the horizon that evening when five people gathered round the wooden casket. Holly hadn’t even put on makeup, because she said she’d just cry it all off. She stood between her mother and Sally, with Mack and Braden on the other end of the small crowd.

Sally nodded at the funeral director, and he pushed a button on a CD player. Alan Jackson’s voice singing “I’ll Fly Away” floated out across the rolling hills as the sun dipped behind the bare mesquite trees. Mack handed clean white hankies to each of the three women when the song started. When it finished, Sally took a step forward, opened a well-worn old black Bible, and read, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die.” She closed the Bible and handed it to Holly. “She would want you to have this since so many of your ancestors’ births and deaths are recorded in this book. Granny Hayes wanted to be buried as the sun was going down. It seems appropriate, but I like to think of her in a place now where there is no night or day, no age or youth, and time doesn’t matter anymore. That’s all I have to say, but I thought we needed a little more than a song.”

“Amen,” Lily said.

Holly laid a yellow daisy on the casket. “You weren’t a rose, Granny Hayes. You were a wild daisy, doing what you wanted. I really loved you.”

That reminded Lily of a Dolly Parton song, “Wildflowers.” She pulled it up on her phone and turned the volume up as high as it would go. The lyrics said that wildflowers didn’t care where they grew, and that she’d grown up in a different garden than other folks. There wasn’t a dry eye among the bunch of them when the song ended.

The sunset was beautiful with the bright array of oranges, yellows, pinks, and purples that evening. Lily was sure that God had planned it special for Granny Hayes, just as surely as she’d felt that He had answered her prayers that morning when the sun came out bright and warm. It just wouldn’t have been right or fair for that particular Monday to have gray skies and rain.

Holly was sobbing and wiping her eyes with the hankie Mack had given her when the song ended. “Mama, that song was perfect for Granny Hayes. Thank you for playing it for us.” She wrapped her arms around Lily.

“I should go visit Mama and Daddy’s graves.” Lily motioned toward her right. “They’re over there and . . .”

“I’ll take the kids to Dairy Queen. We’ll meet you there,” Sally whispered.

“Thank you.” Lily gave her a quick hug. “I don’t think Holly can take much more today, but I haven’t been . . .”

“I understand.” Sally shushed her with a wave of her hand. “Go on. We’ll get a table and be waiting for you.”

Mack took her hand in his, and together, they walked across the brittle grass. Several of the graves still had poinsettias from Christmas on them, but the first thing she noticed when she got to her folks’ grave was a lovely arrangement of yellow tulips in the vase at the end of their tombstone.

“I should have been here to take care of this, rather than leaving it in Sally’s hands,” she said.

“There is a time for all seasons,” he quoted Scripture. “A time to break down and a time to build up. You’ve had your time to break down, and now it’s your time to build up. Don’t punish yourself for what you didn’t do. Just put all that behind you and move forward.”

“I love you, Mack Cooper,” she said.

“And I love you, Lily.” He drew her closer to his side. “Times like this, when we send a person on to their eternity, or when I see my father slipping away a little at a time, those things remind me that we should say what’s in our hearts more often.”

She’d thought that her heart would flutter if and when Mack ever said those words to her, but instead of a rush of excitement, there was simply peace and happiness. What they’d had in the bedroom had so much heat that she’d been surprised that it didn’t fog the windows. She had no doubts there would be plenty of love in their lives.

“You are so right,” Lily said as she let go of another bit of her past. What Wyatt had done or hadn’t done was on him. She had a bright future ahead of her—hopefully sharing every minute of it with Mack and her children.

Something that her mother had asked her just before she walked down the aisle to be married to Wyatt came back to mind.

“Do you like Wyatt?” Vera had asked.

“Mother, I love him,” Lily had told her mother.

“I didn’t ask if you loved him or even if you were in love with him. I asked if you like him. There’s a difference between love and being in love, and also in liking a person. Love is akin to lust, and lasts a few minutes a day. In love is deeper than that. But, honey, you better like him first and foremost, because that goes beyond all the rest. It’s what’s left when you’re old and lust isn’t there anymore for health reasons. It’s the glue that holds a marriage together,” Vera told her.

Lily didn’t remember how she’d answered her mother that day, but looking back, she didn’t think she’d ever liked Wyatt, with his ego and his manipulation. She’d loved him, but she had doubts that she was ever in love with him. She was in love with Mack, and even better, she really, really liked him.

“I’d ask you to move in with me”—he chuckled—“but you kind of already have, and besides, it wouldn’t be a good example for the children for us to sleep together with them in the house. So what are we going to do about us?”

“I guess we’ll take one day at a time and do the best we can with whatever life throws at us. I’m glad you’re here with me to help me with whatever that might be,” she answered.

“I want so much more than just friendship or even this relationship we’re in right now,” he said.

“So do I,” she admitted.

A soft southern breeze blew her blonde hair across her face. Mack reached over and tucked it back behind her ear and then kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll leave the timing to you, but I do want you to know that I’m ready when you are.”

“Mack, are you proposing to me?”

“Not in a cemetery.” He shook his head. “Although I like to think that maybe your mother wouldn’t mind, since she’s right here with us. I’d rather my proposal be a little more romantic, though. Maybe this is just a commitment toward that end, if you’d be willing for that much.”

“I’m willing.” She laid a hand on her parents’ tombstone. Her mother’s name was on one side, her father’s on the other. Their marriage date was engraved below a set of entwined wedding bands. There it was right there—dates of birth, dates of their deaths, and the most important thing to Lily that day, a symbol of their commitment to each other. That’s what she wanted when she was finished with this life and Holly took over the family journal. She had been born. She had died. But the most important thing in her life, other than her children, would be when she became Mrs. Mack Cooper.