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As Kevin yanked on the cord, the lawnmower responded by roaring to life with noisy joy, sputtering an announcement to the entire neighborhood that the Barnes family may have an ugly front lawn NOW but they won't for much longer.

It was seven in the morning on a Saturday, and the only reason Kevin was bravely engaging in the long neglected task of yard care so early in this quiet neighborhood, was that his father-in-law, Richard, was coming to visit later that day, and Kevin needed to be off to work soon. Mary had drawn up a list of errands to be run on his way home: fresh linen at the bed and bath store, followed by fresh fruit and meat at the supermarket, before heading to the video store and renting something entertaining that didn't include any nudity, vulgarity or mindless action sequences. That final task alone would take upwards of a good half hour or more. Richard was a Bishop in the Mormon church and often made it clear how those things had no place in the culture of popular entertainment, so Kevin and Mary strove not to offend him whenever he visited, lest they never hear the end of it.

Richard had been a widower for many years, having lost Mary's mother to a drunk driver in a terrible accident that occurred when she'd stormed out of the house after an argument and drove away in a fit of rage. He'd never quite forgiven himself for allowing their last words to be bitter ones, and he'd become a hard man as a result. He thought Kevin to be a buffoon; it didn't help that Kevin got a little too drunk at his own wedding and, in a moment of jocularity, had gotten down on one knee and proposed to Richard's secretary, a beautiful brunette named Veronica who'd been a friend of Mary's since the fourth grade and thus a bridesmaid. It was all in fun of course even Mary saw the humor in it because she knew Kevin well, and she knew that Kevin was prone to bouts of clowning - but Richard didn't see it that way. He didn't take to "clowning around" and he certainly didn't take to drunkenness. He promptly fired Veronica the following Monday after she'd returned to work at the church office, citing that she "could have been more resistant to the advances of his foolish new son-in-law". She left in tears that morning and her friendship with Mary disintegrated slowly over the next two years, as she grew increasingly distant and difficult to reach. Mary had tried, but Veronica seemed determined to disassociate herself from Mary and Kevin; perhaps because the memory of the

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