“Shut up,” Adam growled. “I’m going to take her up on that coffee. It’s cold out there, and it’ll warm me up.”

“Hey.” Holly nodded to both of them as she passed through the foyer and went upstairs.

“That’s my sister,” Braden said. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s just in a mood. Let’s go get some cookies. My mama makes the best cookies in the whole world. I hope they’re peanut butter today. That’s my favorite, especially dipped in good cold milk.”

Mack followed Braden and Adam into the kitchen and went straight to the coffeepot. He poured two cups and carried them across the room. He set one down in front of his brother, who’d already taken a seat, and took a chair across the table from him. He added two spoonfuls of sugar to his mug and took a sip.

“Only sissies have to have sugar in their coffee,” Adam said. “Or dip cookies in their milk.”

“Guess I’m a sissy.” Braden made a show of dipping a cookie in his glass of milk. “Me and Mack do this all the time, don’t we, Mack?”

“Sure do.” To prove the point, Mack dunked a cookie right down into his cup.

“Never,” Adam answered. “I hate crumbs floating in my coffee.”

“The best part is when you get a spoon and eat all those soaked-up crumbs from the bottom,” Braden said. “Sometimes I let half a cookie just drop off in my cup so I’ll have even more.”

Mack bit back a smile when Adam shivered at the thought. Adam could never stand for dirt to be under his fingernails, among other things.

“So how are things between you and Charlene?” Mack asked.

“Right now I’m living in a hotel. We haven’t filed papers yet,” Adam replied. “Mama is mad at me. When Dad is lucid, he won’t talk to me, and when he’s not, he thinks I’m a teenager and is constantly giving me advice. And to top it all off, my secretary quit.”

It was hard for Mack to be sympathetic when his brother had brought all of it on himself.

Lily had been restless all day. She’d gone up to her bedroom so she could call Sally and talk to her in private. Leaving Adam like that might be rude, but she’d never liked him, anyway, so a phone call seemed like a damn good excuse not to have to be around him. Fate had to have had a part in all this. It simply could not have happened by chance.

She called Sally and was about to hang up after six rings, but Sally finally answered. “Hello,” she huffed.

“Are you all right?” Lily asked.

“I left my phone on the checkout counter, and I was all the way back in the furniture room,” Sally said. “What’s going on? Did the kids do all right on their first day of school? Damn, I’ve got to lose weight. I can’t even catch my breath.”