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!