Mr. Johnson, at the Darling Savings and Trust, was about to foreclose on her mother’s house.

Lizzy put her hand to her mouth, scarcely able to get her breath. “Foreclose!” she gasped. “But—”

“The fifteenth of October!” Mrs. Lacy cried dramatically. She was a large woman with a pillowy softness that was belied by her habit of sharp, petulant speech, which not even her Southern drawl could soften. Between her physical size and the power of her vocal chords, Lizzy always felt small and squeezed, as if her mother took up all the space and sucked up all the air, leaving almost no space and no air at all for her.

“October! But that’s just a few weeks away!” Lizzy protested, bewildered. “He can’t do that! Why, how long have you known?”

Her mother looked away. “Only since April.”

“April!” Lizzy exclaimed in disbelief. “But that’s . . . that’s over five months! Why didn’t you tell me earlier, Mama? We might have been able to work something out.”

“Work what out? There’s no workin’ out something like this where Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson is concerned. That man is just bound, bent, and determined to be as heartless as he can be.” Mrs. Lacy whipped a lawn handkerchief out of the lace-trimmed bodice of her purple rayon chiffon dress. “He says I have to move all of my furniture and belongings out by the fifteenth. But where am I goin’ to go?” She sniffled and dabbed at one eye. “Where, I ask you?”

It was a calculating question, and Lizzy refused to answer it. “But how . . . how could this be?” she asked wonderingly. “Daddy left the house to you free and clear, with a little annuity—enough money to make you comfortable for the rest of your life. What on earth could have happened?”

Mrs. Lacy dabbed at the other eye, then tucked her hankie back where it came from. “Yes, that’s what your daddy did,” she said in a defensive tone. “Your daddy was a good man. He took care of us. As for the annuity—” She lifted her broad shoulders and let them fall in a gesture of resignation, implying that it, too, was gone.

“But what could have—”

Mrs. Lacy lifted her chin. “The stock market was blazin’ away like a house afire, and I couldn’t stand to be left out. So I borrowed some money to invest and put the house up. Collateral, is what it’s called.”

“Oh, Mama, you didn’t do anything so foolish!” Lizzy exclaimed despairingly. “You didn’t put the money into the stock market!”

Mrs. Lacy bristled. “Well, I don’t know why not. Everybody was doing it. Every time I opened a newspaper or magazine I read about people makin’ a fortune on Wall Street. So I asked Miss Rogers for the name of her broker and I invested—”

“You didn’t invest, Mama,” Lizzy cut in grimly. “You gambled. You gambled with your house and you lost.”

Mrs. Lacy pulled out a chair, examined it to be sure there was no dust, and sat down. “Well, there’s no point in givin’ me one of your lectures, Elizabeth,” she said in a huffy tone. “What’s done is done, and that’s all there is to it.” She picked up her glass. “Are we goin’ to have something to drink, or did you put the glasses out here just for show?”