Twenty two years ago I set my goals for my writing career. I had three items on it.
I wanted to be on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller list. I accomplished that and made a #1 Amazon spot, plus a #1 Washington Post and was also on the Publisher’s Weekly bestselling list and the Wall Street Journal bestselling list.
I wanted to sell a million books on one title. I haven’t reached that goal yet, but I hope to someday.
I wanted to have one hundred published books. I’m reaching that goal on November 12, when The Family Journal hits the shelves.
When I look back on my twenty two year career, I realize that now it’s time to set new goals while I’m waiting to sell a million books on one title. I haven’t figured that out yet, but while I’m working toward making a brand new list, I want to share the first chapter of my 100th book, The Family Journal, with all my fans. Like the song says, y’all are the wind beneath my wings. Your support means the world to me. Your encouraging notes keep me in my writing chair every day. So thank you each and every one for all you do to help me reach my goals.
And now, as promised, here is the first chapter of The Family Journal.
Chapter One
When you come to the end of the rope, it’s time to tie a knot and hang on. Lily Anderson had reached the place where there wasn’t even enough rope left to tie a knot. She’d thought about her problem for a whole day, made a few phone calls, and now her mind was made up. She was moving her kids out of the city of Austin and to her hometown of Comfort, Texas—population a little more than three thousand.
She hated to always be the bad person, but since the divorce five years ago, she’d had no choice. A kid could find a dozen friends on every street corner, but they only had one mother. And in her kids’ case, only one parent—thanks to no help whatsoever from her two children’s father. Knowing all that didn’t make anything easier for Lily on Friday morning. Her hands were clammy and her pulse raced. She felt like gravity was pulling her heart right out of her chest. At least she owned a house in Comfort, and the move wouldn’t be difficult.
She had almost changed her mind and decided to stay, but then her daughter, Holly, gave her one of those go-to-hell looks that was meant to fry her on the spot.
“You’ve got less than twenty-four hours to pack your clothing and whatever else you want to take to Comfort.” Lily’s voice landed somewhere between a whisper and an icicle. “The movers will be here at seven in the morning. Until then, I’ll be taking your cell phone, laptop, tablet, and all the games you play on the television.”
“You can’t do that!” Fourteen-year-old Holly jumped up from the sofa and screamed at her mother. “I won’t leave my friends! You can’t make me! We’ve got parties planned this weekend, and I’m not going to miss them. I’ll go live with Daddy!”
“You should have thought of that before you took a marijuana joint into the library bathroom on Wednesday afternoon.” Lily’s finger shot out like a pistol at her daughter. “Sit down and lower your voice.”
Holly fell back onto the sofa and glared at her mother. “You had no right to come in the bathroom and spy on me.”
“So this is my fault? Do you realize what would have happened if the police had come into the bathroom instead? You’d be in jail, not moving to Comfort.”
“Why do I get punished, too?” Her twelve-year-old son, Braden, pouted. “I wasn’t the one who got caught smokin’ pot in the public library.”
“No, you”—Holly did a head wiggle—“you and your little buddies have been sneaking out at night to smoke cigarettes and drink beer. I don’t see what the big difference is between smoking pot and cigarettes.” She turned back to her mother. “If I’d gotten caught with cigarettes, you would have taken my phone for a week. But your precious little angel of a son is doing that, and you didn’t even know it. I’m calling Daddy.”
Lily focused on Braden with his dark hair and big brown eyes that, at that very moment, were trying in vain to look innocent. Surely this was a nightmare. The walls seemed to be closing in on her, and she had to lean against the back of a recliner to keep from dropping. How did things get so out of control? She was a therapist, for heaven’s sake, and she didn’t even see the signs concerning her own children’s behavior. Talk about having her head stuck in the sand.
“Is that the truth?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I only smoked a few and drank two beers. I didn’t do nothing like she did.”
“Yeah, right,” Holly almost snorted. “You and your little friends think it’s sooo cool. You strut around with them like you’re too cool for the other kids.”
“Do not,” he protested.
“Sweet Jesus,” Lily muttered. “You just lost all your techie devices, also. Both of you will have to earn them back, and that won’t happen before summer.”
Holly ripped her phone from the hip pocket of her jeans in a dramatic gesture. “I refuse to live like a prisoner. I mean it! If you force me to give up my phone, I will go live with Daddy.”
“Tell him I want to live with him, too,” Braden said.
Lily folded her arms over her chest and waited. The children thought their world was tumbling down around the toes of her cute little boots—it was about to take another major nosedive when she called her father, Wyatt Anderson.
“You can use your phone for one more call, but you have to put it on speaker,” Lily said.
Holly rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, hit speed dial, and laid the phone on the coffee table. Her father, Wyatt, answered her call with, “Hello, princess, did you have a good Christmas?”
“Wonderful, Daddy, but it would have been better if I could have spent some time with you.” She smirked at her mother.
“Darlin’, I would have liked that, too, but Victoria had plans for us to spend the holiday in the beach condo. It’s just not big enough to fit us all,” Wyatt said.
Lily fought the urge to roll her eyes. Wyatt could weave a lie so sweetly the angels in heaven would believe him. Why didn’t he just tell the kids the truth? He liked his new, rich lifestyle with his second wife, and she didn’t want to share him with children.
“Mama’s bein’ a bitch, so me and Braden are going to come and live with you,” Holly said.
“Add riding the bus to school for the whole semester for calling me a bitch to your punishment,” Lily said.
“No!” Braden yelled. “Daddy, she really is being a bitch.”
“That puts you on the bus with your sister,” Lily said.
“Only geeks ride the bus!” Holly whined. “You can come get us tomorrow morning at seven, Daddy.”
The silence that filled the room was so heavy that it seemed to suck out every bit of the oxygen. Even though Lily was still angry with her children, she felt sorry for them. If she’d been paying more attention to them, maybe none of this would’ve happened.
“Are you still there, Daddy?”
Lily knew what Wyatt was about to say to them and that it would almost literally break their hearts. Poor Holly’s tone was so desperate that Lily wanted to hug her, but right then tough love was the only way to get through to her children. If it kept those two out of trouble and out of jail, it would all be worthwhile.
“Honey, I’m real sorry,” Wyatt said. “But you can’t live with me. Victoria and I made an agreement about children when we married. I’ll come see you real soon, and we’ll have a day all to ourselves. Maybe in July we can even have a whole weekend while Victoria is in California on one of her business trips. If free time comes up between now and then, I’ll call you for sure.”
“Daaa-deee.” Holly dragged the word out into several syllables. “Mama is moving us to Comfort. I don’t want to live in that Podunk town,” she whined. “You just have to come and get us. I’ll die in that place. You just have to go to court and get custody of us.”
“Me, too,” Braden yelled from across the room.
“You have to understand. I simply cannot have you kids living with me and Victoria. It wouldn’t work, and you’d be more miserable here than in Comfort.” Wyatt was beginning to sound frustrated. “Put your mother on the phone, and take it off speaker.”
Holly hit the right button and tossed the phone toward her mother. Lily caught it in midair and said, “Hello, Wyatt. So no deal on helping raise your children?”
“I told you when we divorced that I’d pay child support and see them when I could, but I didn’t want custody then, and I don’t want custody now. Victoria and I have a lifestyle that doesn’t . . .” He paused. “Why are you going back to Comfort, anyway, and at this time of year? Can’t you do what’s best for the kids and at least stay in Austin until summer?”
“I am doing what’s best for them. I caught your daughter smoking pot in the public library bathroom two days ago, and I just now found out that your son has been sneaking out at night to smoke and drink with his little preteen buddies. So I’m taking them out of the city, and they aren’t getting their phones or tablets for a long time.” Lily carried the phone into the next room. “If you think you can do better with them, maybe they could spend some quality time with you that involves more than taking them to dinner every six months, or to a hotel for a couple of days while Victoria is off somewhere on one of her business trips.”
“Good God!” he gasped. “I wouldn’t know what to do with them, and believe me, Miami is worse than Austin.”
“Then Comfort it is,” Lily said.
“Good luck,” Wyatt muttered, and the call ended.
Lily returned and dropped the phone into the tote bag she had sitting on the end table. Then she turned to face Holly and Braden, who were still pouting on the sofa. “I expect all your electronic devices to be in that bag in ten minutes.”
Holly groaned and Braden moaned at the same time.
“Until you earn the right to have your phones back, you can talk to your father when he calls on the house phone in Comfort. Oh, and FYI, it’s a corded phone that hangs on the kitchen wall. Since you won’t have anything else to do this afternoon, you can start packing. Set your alarms for six thirty in the morning.”
Braden pulled his phone out of his hip pocket and dropped it in the bag. He looked longingly at it, as if he were looking at his best friend lying in a casket. Finally, he let out a heavy sigh and started down the hall toward his bedroom. “What am I supposed to pack in?”
“The moving company is bringing boxes in . . .” Lily paused when she heard a truck outside. “Looks like they’re here now. You’ll have your own bedroom in Comfort, but we’ll all have to share one bathroom. So remember that. And one more thing—if either of you ever call me a bitch again, I’ll add another punishment to the list. Believe me, it will be something I can guarantee you will hate worse than giving up all your devices. Now, you can bring your tablets, your video games, and your laptops to me.”
“Our laptops, too? That’s not fair,” Holly whined.
“Fair flew out the window like the smoke you were blowing in the library, Holly,” Lily said, “and was drained like the beer you were drinking, Braden.”
“I can’t survive without my own bathroom.” Holly’s whining took on a whole new level. “I refuse to share one with Braden.” She jumped up from the sofa and glared at her brother.
“Sorry, princess.” Lily used the same nickname that Wyatt had given their daughter before she was big enough to walk. “It’s either share one with me and Braden or else you can use the one that’s out behind the storage shed. No one will fight you if you want that one. It was still standing the last time I was home. Just remember to take toilet paper with you.”
“I hate that house! I hate Comfort! I hate—” Holly’s mouth snapped shut.
“And right now you hate me, but that’s all right. I love you both, but I don’t like either of you very much today,” Lily finished for her. “And for your information, I hate leaving this apartment, too. I hate leaving my clients, my few friends, and our church. I hate that you and your brother’s misbehavior has made this move necessary. So, darlin’ girl, I don’t have much sympathy for you right now.” She pointed down the hall. “Go pack. If you ever even think about smoking another joint, I’ll homeschool you, and you’ll have no social life at all.”
“Not that there’ll be much of a possibility for a social life up there in the middle of nowhere, anyway,” Holly grumbled, and started down the hallway at a snail’s pace.
Lily remembered feeling the same way about Comfort when she was growing up in the small town. Her family lived three miles south of town, and they’d only had one vehicle, which her dad took to work every day. That hadn’t left much opportunity for the kind of socializing her kids were accustomed to having.
I think your words were that you couldn’t wait to go to college and get away from Comfort and all its prying eyes. Her mother’s voice in her head scolded her, but just imagining Vera Miller’s sweet voice took the sting out of the words.
“And now, after twenty years, I’m going right back to it,” she whispered.
Welcome home, baby girl. You should never have left. Vera’s voice was so real that Lily’s mother could have been in the room with her.
“You got that right.” Lily went to the front door and opened it before the doorbell even had time to ring.
An older guy with a rim of gray hair around his otherwise-bald head brought in an armload of flat boxes, dropped them in the corner of the living room, and left her six rolls of packing tape. “You do know that we’ll be glad to pack everything for you?” he asked.
“We’re not moving out permanently—at least not yet. These should be enough for now. See you early tomorrow morning.”
“Not me, but Skipper will be here to load up for you. Y’all have a safe trip.” He nodded toward her, and she closed the door behind him.
She glanced around the large living room in her apartment and sighed. She had rented the place because of that feature—lots of space so she could be with the kids more. At first, it had been great—they did their homework in the living room while she made supper. They ate around the table every evening, and they played games together. A little bit at a time, that all got away from her somehow, and a few months ago, she’d realized she was eating alone and the kids were spending all their time in their rooms or with their friends.
With another long sigh, she took stock of what had to be moved. Her lease wasn’t up until June, and her mother’s old house was still fully furnished, so the furniture would stay. If she had a pickup truck, she could probably move what they packed in it, but her compact car wouldn’t hold it all.
She picked up two of the flat boxes, folded them into shape, sealed them with tape, and carried them down the hall. She knocked on Holly’s door but didn’t wait for an invitation to enter. “Here’s your first box. When you get it filled, call me, and I’ll tape it shut and get you another one.”
Holly turned away from the window. “I’m sorry. I’ll do the dishes by hand for a year. I’ll never smoke weed again. I’ll even miss the parties this weekend.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Lily said, “but the weed was the last straw, not the first one. You’ve been getting more and more belligerent and disrespectful. I’d expect some of that out of a senior in high school, but not a freshman. We’re moving to Comfort. It’s up to you and your brother whether we come back to Austin for the next school year, or if we stay there until both of you graduate.”
“You are the meanest mother in the world. All the other kids . . .”
Her daughter’s unfinished sentence reminded Lily of what her own mother used to ask: If all the other kids jumped off a cliff, would you follow them? The memory almost put a smile on her face. She crossed the room and hugged Holly, who looked a lot like pictures of Lily’s mother when she was a young girl—same size, same height, same face shape. Holly had inherited her blonde hair from Lily, but those beautiful blue eyes had come from Wyatt’s gene pool. The rest of her genetic makeup was straight Vera Miller.
Holly squirmed away and shot a dirty look toward her mother. Lily felt the sting of Holly’s glare as if it had been a sharp knife stuck all the way through her heart.
“All the other kids don’t have mothers who hate their kids like you do.” Holly glared at Lily.
Lily tossed the box on the bed and left before she lost her resolve.
She found Braden sitting on his bed, looking bewildered. That wasn’t hard to understand. They’d moved into the apartment when he was only seven years old. Lily had done the packing as well as the unpacking that year, but if he was old enough to smoke and drink, then he could figure out what he wanted to take to Comfort all on his own.
“I brought your first box,” she said. “When it’s finished, you can take it to the living room, and I’ll get another one ready for you.”
“Mama, what do I do first?” His voice broke.
For a minute she thought he was about to cry, but the expression on his face denied there were tears on the way. His voice had begun to crack last month. That meant he was starting to go through puberty. Next thing she knew, he would be shaving and chasing girls.
“I’d suggest that you pack your clothing first. Leave out something to wear tomorrow, though. Good luck.” She eased the door shut and went straight to the kitchen, where she took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the cabinet, poured herself a shot, and threw it back like a cowboy in an old western movie.
With the burn still in her throat and stomach, she taped up half a dozen more boxes. Then she pulled her cell from her hip pocket and called the home phone at the house in Comfort.
*****
Mack Cooper kicked off his work boots and left them sitting just inside the utility room. The sun hadn’t peeked out from behind a layer of gray clouds in almost a week. Even the goats were huddled up together in the shelters closest to the house. That morning, he’d seen the first sunrays doing their best to split the clouds. They’d reminded him of the light from a single bulb trying to sneak down through a layer of smoke in an old honky-tonk.
The Christmas break from his regular job as the vocational agriculture teacher at Comfort High School would be over in a few days. Teaching was his passion, and he was eager to get back to school.
He stopped in the kitchen for a cup of coffee and had just reached for his favorite mug when the old black wall phone rang right beside his ear. In the five years he’d rented the house from Lily Anderson, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d heard the phone ring. Two of those had been wrong numbers.
He set the pot aside, put the phone to his ear cautiously, and said, “Hello?”
“Mack, this is Lily,” the husky voice on the other end of the line said.
“Why are you using this phone and not my cell?” he asked.
“I’m so rattled that I didn’t even think of that,” she replied. “The kids and I will be in Comfort in the morning.”
“Before noon? I’ll have dinner ready for y’all,” he offered. “Are you coming to town to go through your mother’s things?”
“Dinner would be great. Thank you. But I’ve decided to move the kids to Comfort, so we’re coming to stay for a while. We’ll be there until summer, at the very least,” she said.
He felt like all the air had just been knocked out of his lungs. “You’re what? I’ve got forty goats, and—”
“I’m not asking you to move out. The house is big enough for us all. The kids and I will take the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. You can go on about your life as usual in the downstairs. You and the kids will be in school after this next week, so it’ll only be in the evenings that we’ll be sharing the living room and kitchen,” she told him.
“Are you sure you want to . . . ,” he stammered before trailing off.
“We are adults, you and me, and we’ll be roommates, nothing more,” she said.
“Comfort is a small town. You do remember that, don’t you?”
“Oh, I remember that all too well,” Lily said. “But a couple of days ago, I took Holly to the library and . . .” She told him what had happened that day. “I’ve got to get them away from this big-city life. They aren’t happy about it, but neither am I.”
“Kids will be kids. They’re easily influenced by whatever their peers are doing,” he said.
“I know that,” Lily said. “I wasn’t hatched out as a full-grown adult, but I also know that the way to fix it is to change the environment and their group of friends. And for me to spend more time with them.”
“I’ll have a pot of soup ready when you get here.” As long as he didn’t have to move, he could survive with having people stomping around upstairs. If living with a couple of city kids who hated country life got to be too much, he would find another place to rent.
“Sounds great. I’ll stop along the way and pick up a dessert,” she said. “See you then.”
His thoughts swirled as he put the phone back on the base. He leaned back against the cabinet and tried to settle his mind. Then his twin brother, Adam, yelled from the front door, “Hey, where are you?”
“In the kitchen.” Of all the people occupying the planet, Adam was the last person Mack wanted to see or talk to that day. He bit back a groan and got down two mugs, filled them both with coffee, and added two spoons of sugar to his.
It was a surprise to see his brother in Comfort on a Friday morning.
Adam had followed in their father’s footsteps and gone into business after college. Orville, their father, had been the president of a small bank right there in Comfort, and raised goats as a hobby. Adam was the head honcho of a huge bank in San Antonio, but Mack could never see him doing anything that would get his fancy shoes dirty.
No one would ever guess that he and Adam were twins by looking at them. Adam had a standing appointment with his hairstylist every Saturday morning to have his blond roots touched up and styled, and he went to the gym at least three days a week. Mack had jet-black hair that he seldom even thought about until it was time to go to the barbershop—maybe once a month. Adam had a movie-star face and body—the former from birth, the latter with help from his protein supplements and weight lifting. Mack hadn’t been quite as blessed in the good looks department, but he wasn’t ugly by any means, and his muscular chest and arms bore the proof of his hard work.
“What are you doing so far from the big city?” Mack asked. “I poured coffee for us. Have a seat.”
Adam removed his suit coat and hung it on the back of the chair before he sat down. “We’re foreclosing on the old Bailey property. I had to drive over and take a look at it. You should buy it. There’s forty acres and a house that’s not a hundred years old out there. Not a new brick, but a nice little two-bedroom frame house that’s pretty sturdy. You’re wasting your money renting this place.”
“I like the location and the house.” Mack carried both mugs to the table. “And the rent is less than I’d pay in property taxes and insurance on a place of my own.”
It was evident that Adam wasn’t happy with his response. Mack had always been able to read his brother, though they’d never been close. They’d grown even farther apart as the years passed. In high school Mack was interested in vo-ag classes; Adam played football. Then Mack went to Texas A&M and Adam left for Baylor, and the separation got even wider a couple of years after that when Adam stole Mack’s girlfriend. They had nothing in common anymore, except for their parents and the blood in their veins.
Adam sipped at his coffee, careful not to get it on his white shirt or his $100 tie. “There’s another reason I came by. Charlene and I are getting a divorce.”
“I’m not surprised. Who’d you screw around with this time?” Mack drummed his fingers on the table. “Have you told Mama and Daddy?”
There was the familiar old Adam shrug. Translated, it meant that Mack would most likely be the one breaking the news to their folks.
“Oh, no! Not this time.” Mack shook his head. “You can go by and tell them while you’re in town. I told them when you and Brenda divorced and when you and Natalie split up. I’m not doing it a third time. Man up and do your own talking. What happened anyway?”
Another shrug. “She caught me in a motel with my secretary, Darcy.”
“Good God, Adam!” Mack raked his fingers through his dark hair, which was peppered with gray. “Aren’t you ever going to settle down? You must like paying alimony.”
“Only on the first one.” Adam grinned. “After that, I insisted on prenups. And I really don’t like upsetting Mother. She takes things so much better from you than from me. So come on, be a decent brother and break the news to her for me.”
How two boys could be raised in the same household and turn out so differently was a total mystery to Mack. He loved kids and animals. That’s why he had become a teacher. Mack had raised show goats when he was in high school. Adam had been the quarterback. Mack had always been shy and withdrawn. After he’d had the mumps, Adam wasn’t able to have kids, and he always had a girl hanging on his arm—a girl he seemed to change more often than his socks.
“Well, brother, you’re on your own this time,” Mack said. “You can tell them or you can wait for the gossip to get to Comfort. Mama really loved Charlene, so good luck.”
“You’re really not going to help me out?” Adam asked. “Could you just maybe even hint that Charlene has been acting strange, and that maybe she’s been having some problems, like with drinking or depression? That way it wouldn’t be my fault.”
“Nope.” Mack refilled his coffee mug and sat down at the table. “I told you last time that I’m not paving the way so you can keep your glory-child crown anymore. We’re forty-one years old. You need to own up to the fact that you can’t keep your pants zipped when a pretty girl is anywhere close to you.”
“You’re just jealous because Mother loves me most, but then why shouldn’t she? I’m making three times what you do. I’ve always been better-looking, and damn, Mack, you could put on a thousand-dollar suit and still look like you just walked across a cow pasture.” Adam’s tone had turned nasty.
That was as predictable as his famous shrug. When Adam didn’t get his way, he turned off the charm and flipped the switch on downright meanness.
“Maybe so, but this time, you tell the folks that this divorce is your fault,” Mack said. “And I’m comfortable in my skin. I don’t need Mama’s approval. I’ve lived with the fact that you’re the fair-haired child for a long time. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
Mack’s cell phone rang, and he slipped it out of his hip pocket, laid it on the table, and put it on speaker. “Hello, Mama. What’s going on in San Antonio?”
Adam waved his hands and mouthed, “Don’t tell her I’m here.”
“Charlene is here,” his mother said.
With just those three words, Mack could tell that his mother was upset about something.
“She’s cried until her poor eyes are swollen. Have you seen your brother? If you do, tell him he’d do well to steer clear of me for a while. Cheating on her like that with a secretary that’s twenty years younger than he is. What can he be thinking? Now I’m wondering about those stories he told about his first two wives. I might take a switch to him even if he is a grown man,” Nora Cooper fumed.
“If I see him, I’ll give him your message,” Mack said. “You and Dad should make a trip up here soon. I’ve got five new baby goats, and you know how he loves to watch them play.”
“We’ll do our best to come visit when the weather clears up. His memory gets worse every day, but you’re right, he does love your goats and has a good time when we’re there. I’ve got to get back to the living room and console Charlene. Bless her darlin’ heart. If I’d caught your dad with another woman, I would have shot the both of them. Bye, now.”
“Bye,” Mack said.
“Well, crap!” Adam moaned.
“Maybe it’s time to talk to your wife about that counseling,” Mack suggested.
Adam pushed back the chair and put on his coat. “Don’t gloat.”
“The goat boy never gloats.” Mack followed him to the door and held it open for him to leave.
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