“You are the meanest mother in the world. All the other kids . . .”

Her daughter’s unfinished sentence reminded Lily of what her own mother used to ask: If all the other kids jumped off a cliff, would you follow them? The memory almost put a smile on her face. She crossed the room and hugged Holly, who looked a lot like pictures of Lily’s mother when she was a young girl—same size, same height, same face shape. Holly had inherited her blonde hair from Lily, but those beautiful blue eyes had come from Wyatt’s gene pool. The rest of her genetic makeup was straight Vera Miller.

Holly squirmed away and shot a dirty look toward her mother. Lily felt the sting of Holly’s glare as if it had been a sharp knife stuck all the way through her heart.

“All the other kids don’t have mothers who hate their kids like you do.” Holly glared at Lily.

Lily tossed the box on the bed and left before she lost her resolve.

She found Braden sitting on his bed, looking bewildered. That wasn’t hard to understand. They’d moved into the apartment when he was only seven years old. Lily had done the packing as well as the unpacking that year, but if he was old enough to smoke and drink, then he could figure out what he wanted to take to Comfort all on his own.

“I brought your first box,” she said. “When it’s finished, you can take it to the living room, and I’ll get another one ready for you.”

“Mama, what do I do first?” His voice broke.

For a minute she thought he was about to cry, but the expression on his face denied there were tears on the way. His voice had begun to crack last month. That meant he was starting to go through puberty. Next thing she knew, he would be shaving and chasing girls.

“I’d suggest that you pack your clothing first. Leave out something to wear tomorrow, though. Good luck.” She eased the door shut and went straight to the kitchen, where she took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the cabinet, poured herself a shot, and threw it back like a cowboy in an old western movie.

With the burn still in her throat and stomach, she taped up half a dozen more boxes. Then she pulled her cell from her hip pocket and called the home phone at the house in Comfort.