“Well, she lived here with your folks when your mama and I were little girls. She was the sweetest lady I ever met, and she loved to cook. This was one of the bigger houses in Comfort at that time, so she’d let Vera invite me and Polly over here to spend the weekend whenever we wanted. She had this big garden out back. Your grandpa had cattle, but no goats. I remember that he worked right here on the ranch—” Nora stopped and took a long drink of her tea. “Seems like I heard he’d been a foreman here for years.”

“And she had blonde hair?” Holly pressed her for more.

“Oh, yes.” Nora nodded seriously. “A great long mane of beautiful hair. She braided it and wrapped it around her head like a crown. One night when we were all here, she took it down and we brushed it out for her. She sat in a kitchen chair, and her hair almost went to the floor.”

“And my grandfather?” Lily asked. “Mama never talked a lot about him except to say that he was a good father.”

“Albert walked with a limp. He’d had an accident when he was young that left him with one leg shorter than the other,” Nora said. “He had red hair and a million freckles and the clearest blue eyes you’ve ever seen. He was a man of few words, but he adored Annie.”

Lily thought of poor Sophia, who had married a man who apparently didn’t love her like that, and wondered what had become of that woman.

“Now let’s talk about you, young lady.” Nora focused on Holly. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to be a teacher. Not for big kids, though. I want to go into early-childhood development and teach the little kids,” Holly answered. “Braden, my brother, wants to be a vo-ag teacher just like Mack. But I really haven’t made up my mind for sure. Sometimes I think about going to the air force like Faith Torres. It would be great to be a pilot.”

“Those are good and noble ambitions,” Nora said. “I always thought I’d like to teach little kids, but I got married and had twins. Orville was a bank president here in Comfort, but he had the goat farm on the side, and I took care of it a lot of the time.”

“I’m not getting married until I’m thirty,” Holly declared.

“That’s smart,” Nora agreed.

Lily remembered when Holly wanted to be a rock singer, and Braden declared he was going to be a fireman. They would probably change their minds a hundred times before they graduated high school, but it was good to hear that their goals were a little more grounded and realistic.