“But not on a big ship. Maybe we should do this every year,” he suggested. “But right now I’d better go take care of the evening chores.”

“I’ll have supper on the table when you get back,” she told him.

He left by the back door, and she sat down on the bottom step. It had been a good year, but somehow she’d never gotten around to writing anything in the journal. She had meant to—she really had. The time just never seemed quite right.

“No time like the present,” she said as she stood and went up to her old bedroom, which was now her office. She opened the oak secretary, pulled down the flap, and took out the journal. She thumbed through the pages, scanning more than a hundred years of handwriting from her ancestors. Happy times. Sad times. Deaths. Births. Life in general. It was all there to show her that her life was what she made it and that her choices would have consequences. When she reached the first clean page, she reached for an ink pen and began to write:

Lily Miller Anderson Cooper, April 2020: I’ve never been happier than I am right now. My life is not perfect by any means, but then, no one ever promised it would be. I just watched my daughter, Holly, leave for her very first prom with Clay. He’s the preacher’s son and is a young man that I both admire and appreciate for his convictions and values. Six years ago Holly’s father walked out on us—Holly, her younger brother, Braden, and me—and for five of those years I was little more than a zombie. Then one day circumstances made me sit up and take notice. I realized that my kids were completely out of control, and it would take drastic measures to put them back on the right track. I took them out of the environment they were in and brought them to Comfort, Texas—back to my roots and the house I’d been raised in. It was during those first days that I found this journal, and it has helped me so much to understand that life is what we make it. The kids’ father, Wyatt Anderson, is struggling to find his way. They see him about every three months for a weekend, and I have hopes that someday they’ll have a decent relationship. That’s up to him and them, and I try to stay out of it. I remarried after I came home. Mack Cooper and I said our vows last summer. He’s a good man, a good husband, and a wonderful role model for the children. We have an amazing life here on our little goat farm. Holly knows about this journal, and she knows that someday she’ll have the same responsibility that I have.