Unfortunately, Mr. Richardson had more questions and concerns about the loan than Megan ever would have imagined. He wanted to go over every possible blemish on his credit and find out from Megan exactly how each could affect the chances of them securing the loan.

Megan repeatedly told him not to be concerned at this point and just to wait for the application to be processed, and then they would deal with the specific issues, if there was any need.

However, try as she may, by the time the Richardsons finally left she was almost twenty minutes late leaving work. Her admittedly inappropriate driving had helped makeup about four minutes on the way home, but she was still way behind schedule.

She needed to get dinner ready and on the table by the time her husband, Jake came in from the barn. He was supervising as his workers got the herd into the barn and got the new milking system going. There had been some problems with the new system the night before and some of the cows were late getting milked. Because of this problem, he'd decided to personally watch over the process for the next few days.

Dinner was already going to be a fast-paced event tonight since it was Tuesday. Their daughter Lauren had a softball game each Tuesday evening at 6:00 pm, which always meant things were extremely hurried at suppertime.

Bursting through the front door, she was greeted by the noticeable smell of tomato sauce cooking.

Mildly short of breath, she hurried through the family room, where her son Ray was sitting in front of the Xbox, playing a video game. All Megan caught sight of on the screen as she walked through the room, was a burst of simulated machine gun fire tearing into the chest of a large animated creature, with a massive head and many eyes. Ray didn't even notice her as she walked past.

She entered the kitchen and found Lauren placing the uncooked pasta into a pot of boiling water.

“Hi, Mom. I figured since it looked you were going to be late, I'd get supper started so I wouldn't miss the start of the game. I hope that's okay.”

“I'm sorry I'm late honey. Thanks for getting this started, it's a big help. If you can watch it for me for just another minute, I'll take over and you can get dressed for the game.”

“Sure Mom.”

Megan went to the bedroom and quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt before returning to relieve Lauren in the kitchen.

As Megan was finishing the cooking, Jake Tanner stepped through the back door and removed his mud-covered work boots. “That smells great hon,” he commented.

“Good, but Lauren did most of it before I even got home.”

“Really? When did she start cooking?” Jake asked.