It's a fact of life in every neighborhood. People move in and people move out. Although very few of them pack up and leave at two o'clock in the morning. But it wasn't the first time that Betty Applewhite had tried to leave in the middle of the night. It had happened once before in Chicago. The same night one of her sons tried to break up with his girlfriend. A young woman named Melanie Foster. Yes, a year had come and gone since the Applewhite's had left Chicago. And Betty thought they could again slip away in the middle of the night. But as she soon discovered, it's not that easy to slip away in the suburbs. Because in suburbia, once the neighbors hear you are going, they all insist on showing up to say goodbye.

Mary Alice