While she was helping her mom prepare dinner she told her about the afternoon. When Brian Warner called her mom handed her the phone. She and Brian talked and he promised to call her later in the evening. Her mom saw the disappointment. When she was about to hang up her mom motioned to talk to him. Laura said, “My mom wants to talk to you.”

She handed the phone to her mom. “Brian?”

“Yes, Mrs. Durin.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Is there a reason you can’t come over this evening?”

“Well. Ah. I. I mean.”

“Is it because of her leg?”

“No, Mrs. Durin. That doesn’t matter to me. I mean, it makes me sad.”

“Then why don’t you ever come over? She has called you several times.”

“Well, I have to watch my brother in the evenings.”

“Could you bring him along?”

“My mom wouldn’t want me to bother you.”

“Brian, how could you or your brother be a bother?”

“Well.”

“Could you ask your mom?”

“I. I haven’t made our supper yet. Mom is at work.”

“Call your mom. Tell her my husband will pick you up and take you home. You can eat with us. Call me back. I’m a mom. You should understand that I don’t understand the word “no”.”

She hung up the phone.

“There’s enough roast for two more, peel three more potatoes, I’ll just add a pack of green beans. That way there will be something they like.”

The phone rang. Leah picked it up.

“Hello. Durin’s.”

“Mrs. Durin.”

“Yes.”

“This is Stella Warner. Brian called me, said you wanted him and Brad to come over. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Durin, I don’t want my boys making a nuisance of themselves. I don’t want him to be bothering society people. We don’t have much, we live in a trailer, but we know our place.”

Laura could not hear the other end of the conversation, but she knew something was very, very wrong. Her mom’s face was as red as it was the day she finger-painted her room.

“Mrs. Warner, if one of my kids said that about you I would be washing his mouth out with soap, bad tasting soap. We aren’t high society. My family lived in a trailer, in a trailer park, right across the driveway from the one my husband grew up in. And my first two kids came home from the hospital to a trailer. Laura spent the first six years of her life in a trailer. It was what we could afford. It was home. Are you saying you don’t think we are good enough for your boys to come over?”