" There was a nervous chuckle, but no one left."Are you ready for a challenge like this?" I asked Beth.She looked at me with that little grin. "Tommy,...I've been challenged ever since I met you. Remember that first Saturday?" she said as she snuggled next to me."Okay, break it up you two!" Greg leaned over the seat and grinned.Two hours later we were on our way home. Results of the auditions wouldn't be posted until the following Tuesday, so everybody had the weekend to sweat. Of course, one. I explained to Tessa that after my divorce I had found nobody and had almost given up when the chance encounter with Ann happened.Tessa remarked on how great it was to see her mother happy again and that it had been a long time coming.I cleared away the lunch dishes and loaded the dishwasher. Ann and Tessa said they were going back to their house but would be back. We could hear Dave crashing around and cursing.“He will be like that for a few more hours until he passes out drunk,” Ann remarked,. "Her laughter rose even higher and I turned to give her a rueful grin as she walked towards me saying, "Oh man alive, the look on your face was priceless..." ... Almost as priceless in seeing your expression when I phoned up the pest control people to ask 'em if they did frogs," I interrupted."I knew you were windin' me up," she replied coolly to my bark of sardonic laughter as we carried on past the rose bushes to our left and onto the cool grass where I stopped to see how ripe the pears. Hoping to preoccupy the collective, she planned to begin by noting that the need for the increased gravity they'd been enduring for the past few weeks had passed, and wouldn't return.When she first arrived in the Edenform bay, though, it was immediately apparent that most of her thought-out commentary on the gravity would be redundant. Not only the Edenites themselves but also the animals accompanying them were clearly reveling in the return to their normal weight, and she was amused to see the.