If only she’d taken care of her mother’s things earlier, she would have already read all of the journal. Now she felt like she should hold off and let Holly catch up so they could talk about each entry together. She wandered down the stairs toward the kitchen to get a scoop of ice cream.

“Busted!” Mack came out of the living room with a dirty bowl in his hands. “I always figure if no one catches me having a second helping of dessert late in the evening, then it doesn’t have fat grams or calories. I got another slice of your cake and topped it with a spoonful of ice cream.”

Lily passed him on her way to the kitchen. “I was about to get some ice cream.”

“Put a little sliver of cake underneath it,” Mack suggested. “I was going to put something in the DVD player. Want to watch a movie?”

“Sure,” Lily said. “What are we watching?”

“I was thinking about Lethal Weapon, the television show, but you can choose whatever you want. I’m afraid there’s not many chick flicks in my collection.” He followed her to the kitchen, rinsed his bowl, and put it in the sink.

“I saw a couple of episodes of that show.” She got out what was left from a cobbler she’d made a couple of days ago, and the ice cream. “I wouldn’t mind watching it.” She carried her bowl into the living room and settled into her mother’s recliner.

Mack put the DVD into the player and sat down in her dad’s chair. They were two episodes into the season when she finally asked.

“Why didn’t you ever get married, Mack?”

He hit the pause button on the remote. “I don’t talk about it, but if you really want to know, it’s because of my brother.”

“What did Adam do?” Lily’s curiosity was piqued.

“It was my last semester in college, and I was going to ask my girlfriend, Brenda, to marry me. We’d more or less been living together that last year, and I was in love with her. So I brought her home to meet the folks over spring break. Mama said the first one of us boys to get married could have the engagement ring that had been passed down through the family for five generations. That didn’t matter so much to me. I figured Brenda would be just as happy with a different diamond ring, and I’d already been looking at one. Anyway, to make a long story short . . .” He stared into space for a long time.

“If it’s painful, you don’t have to tell me,” she said.