Mack Cooper kicked off his work boots and left them sitting just inside the utility room. The sun hadn’t peeked out from behind a layer of gray clouds in almost a week. Even the goats were huddled up together in the shelters closest to the house. That morning, he’d seen the first sunrays doing their best to split the clouds. They’d reminded him of the light from a single bulb trying to sneak down through a layer of smoke in an old honky-tonk.

The Christmas break from his regular job as the vocational agriculture teacher at Comfort High School would be over in a few days. Teaching was his passion, and he was eager to get back to school.

He stopped in the kitchen for a cup of coffee and had just reached for his favorite mug when the old black wall phone rang right beside his ear. In the five years he’d rented the house from Lily Anderson, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d heard the phone ring. Two of those had been wrong numbers.

He set the pot aside, put the phone to his ear cautiously, and said, “Hello?”

“Mack, this is Lily,” the husky voice on the other end of the line said.

“Why are you using this phone and not my cell?” he asked.

“I’m so rattled that I didn’t even think of that,” she replied. “The kids and I will be in Comfort in the morning.”

“Before noon? I’ll have dinner ready for y’all,” he offered. “Are you coming to town to go through your mother’s things?”

“Dinner would be great. Thank you. But I’ve decided to move the kids to Comfort, so we’re coming to stay for a while. We’ll be there until summer, at the very least,” she said.

He felt like all the air had just been knocked out of his lungs. “You’re what? I’ve got forty goats, and—”

“I’m not asking you to move out. The house is big enough for us all. The kids and I will take the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. You can go on about your life as usual in the downstairs. You and the kids will be in school after this next week, so it’ll only be in the evenings that we’ll be sharing the living room and kitchen,” she told him.

“Are you sure you want to . . . ,” he stammered before trailing off.

“We are adults, you and me, and we’ll be roommates, nothing more,” she said.

“Comfort is a small town. You do remember that, don’t you?”

“Oh, I remember that all too well,” Lily said. “But a couple of days ago, I took Holly to the library and . . .” She told him what had happened that day. “I’ve got to get them away from this big-city life. They aren’t happy about it, but neither am I.”