Mack took her hand in his, and together, they walked across the brittle grass. Several of the graves still had poinsettias from Christmas on them, but the first thing she noticed when she got to her folks’ grave was a lovely arrangement of yellow tulips in the vase at the end of their tombstone.

“I should have been here to take care of this, rather than leaving it in Sally’s hands,” she said.

“There is a time for all seasons,” he quoted Scripture. “A time to break down and a time to build up. You’ve had your time to break down, and now it’s your time to build up. Don’t punish yourself for what you didn’t do. Just put all that behind you and move forward.”

“I love you, Mack Cooper,” she said.

“And I love you, Lily.” He drew her closer to his side. “Times like this, when we send a person on to their eternity, or when I see my father slipping away a little at a time, those things remind me that we should say what’s in our hearts more often.”

She’d thought that her heart would flutter if and when Mack ever said those words to her, but instead of a rush of excitement, there was simply peace and happiness. What they’d had in the bedroom had so much heat that she’d been surprised that it didn’t fog the windows. She had no doubts there would be plenty of love in their lives.

“You are so right,” Lily said as she let go of another bit of her past. What Wyatt had done or hadn’t done was on him. She had a bright future ahead of her—hopefully sharing every minute of it with Mack and her children.

Something that her mother had asked her just before she walked down the aisle to be married to Wyatt came back to mind.

“Do you like Wyatt?” Vera had asked.

“Mother, I love him,” Lily had told her mother.

“I didn’t ask if you loved him or even if you were in love with him. I asked if you like him. There’s a difference between love and being in love, and also in liking a person. Love is akin to lust, and lasts a few minutes a day. In love is deeper than that. But, honey, you better like him first and foremost, because that goes beyond all the rest. It’s what’s left when you’re old and lust isn’t there anymore for health reasons. It’s the glue that holds a marriage together,” Vera told her.