“I’ll go to school,” Holly blurted out.

“Good.” Lily nodded. “If the schedule is still like it was when I was in school, the bus will pick y’all up at seven fifteen every morning.”

“You’ve got to be kidding, right?” Holly spit out. “We can’t ride the bus! That’s for nerds and geeks. You’ll have to take us.”

“Sorry, darlin’. You’ll just have to get out your nerd shirts and your geek jeans.” Lily turned on the radio and found her favorite country station.

“Are we going to have to listen to that the whole way?” Braden whined from the back seat.

“Can’t we just have our Nintendos until we get there?” Holly begged.

Lily shrugged. “They’re packed in a box, and it’s in the moving van.”

“This is too much punishment for just smoking one joint,” Holly fumed.

“You think so?” Lily asked. “Just imagine what would have happened if the police had caught you, especially since you had a little bag of the stuff stashed in the lining of your purse.”

“You went through my purse?” Holly raised her voice.

Lily turned up the volume on the radio. “Yes, darlin’, I did, and we’ll have random checks of your purse and your room until you earn back the trust I’ve given you all these years.”

“God! All over one joint! What if you’d found . . .” Holly stopped and glared at her mother.

“Did I miss something in your purse, sweetheart? Do I need to unpack all your boxes and make sure there’s nothing tucked away with your cute little bikini underbritches?” Lily asked.

“No, Mama,” Holly sighed. “It’s just that pot is such a minor thing. My friends do all kinds of worse things.”

“Then it’s time to get away from those friends. I’m not your friends’ mother. I don’t watch my children ruin their lives. Sit back. Enjoy the ride. And listen to some good old country music,” Lily said.

“No, you ruin our lives for us,” Braden said from the back seat.

Lily ignored both of them. When she had left Comfort to go to college, she’d vowed that she would never live there again. Small-town life wasn’t for her, especially in a historic little town that catered to tourists looking for a trip back in time. She had wanted to go forward with her life, not live forever in the past, with historical markers everywhere. That was twenty years ago. Now the idea of historical markers didn’t seem so bad.

The kids remained silent until she turned south in Fredericksburg. That’s when Holly moaned dramatically. “We’re dropping off the edge of the world.”

“And falling into—”