" He stopped.Light in the room faded, so that there was a grayness to the place. The fewpeople present seemed frozen in time."As I expected. The shift...ng of realities still manifests itself in grayuncertainty."Hanson tried to speak, to run. To scream, but he was frozen, too. Hefelt an odd sensation, a tingling as if a mild electric current was runningunder his skin. He did notice that the room seemed to be growing.He was shrinking down from 6 foot 1 to 5 foot 7. As he shrank, his bodyslimmed,. "And you are the reason she never married him. You took Nick from her so that she wouldn't leave"."But she did leave", he said. "Those months that you stayed with me when you ... She lied to you. It wasn't that she couldn't find a job. She tried to go away from me, to start a new life even if it meant leaving you behind"."That's a lie", she yelled. Her mother whom she adored couldn't possibly have done such a thing. He was trying to hurt her, to make her suffer once more."It isn't. I took you. Torrie and I had been dating for 8 months when I got restless in our relationship and started talking to Mary. Mary was a cute petite redhead I went to school with. After several weeks of regular telephone calls Mary suggested we go see the movie ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Saturday evening. This was in the day when drive-in theaters were in every town. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was showing at our local twin screen drive-in theater. At this particular theater there were f****y movies like ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Grandma died. I had to live with Mom. Mom might've not had any shame, but I had enough for both of us."A bunch of us gravitated to Nikki's side. Actually, Nikki and Dan's place. Dan's her husband. He's Dad's age, maybe a couple of years older. Engineer. And a good teacher.Let me explain. Rural parishes don't have a lot of places for kids to hang out in the first place. Add to that a storm surge that topped twenty feet, wiping out the few places there were, so you know you're going to end up at.