“If you want to help Mack feed the goats this evening, you can wear your grandpa’s coat,” Lily said. “It’s hanging over there on the hook beside Mack’s.”

“That would be dorky.” Braden wrinkled his nose.

Mack chuckled. “I don’t reckon the goats would mind.”

Braden shrugged and left the room.

“He’s a good kid. He just got mixed up in the wrong crowd,” Mack said.

“You know the kids here. Will you tell me if he does the same thing in school?” Lily sat down in the chair Braden had just vacated.

“Yes, I will.”

Lily hadn’t had to make a job decision since Holly was born. She’d been in her counseling office through the last day of school, gone into labor that evening, and had Holly on May 28. She’d already started her home sessions in the evenings and had continued with them all these years until she’d moved to Comfort. Now, it appeared, she’d be banging her head against the wall if she tried to set up another practice.

“Sally offered me a job,” she blurted out.

“Are you going to take it?” Mack went to the stove to refill his cup.

“It’s tempting,” she answered. “She’s even said I can open the shop at eight and leave at three thirty. That way I can leave after the bus picks up the kids in the morning and be home by the time they get back here in the afternoon.”

“You could take them to school, and I could bring them home if they don’t mind waiting until four. I have to be there for thirty minutes after the last bell rings,” he suggested.

She shook her head. “Riding the bus is part of their punishment, but thank you.”

“You got to deliver what you promise. That’s what my mother always preached to me.” He sat back down.

“I got the same preachin’.” Lily nodded.

“Our parents were of the same generation,” he said. “I have to go to school tomorrow for a professional day, and then the kids start on Wednesday. The administration office will be open if you want to enroll the kids tomorrow. You’ll need to tell them that Braden and Holly will be riding the bus so their driver will know to come down the lane to get them.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll do that. How many kids are there in the school these days?”

“A little over three hundred total in the high school. We still graduate about the same number each year as we did when we were going to school there—seventy to eighty. Maybe a few more in middle school,” he answered.

“The high school Holly attended had more than two thousand in each grade. Braden and Holly will be in for a culture shock.” Lily had forgotten just how small Comfort was.