She loved her home-the acre of yard that provided privacy and plenty of play room for the kids and Hoover, the mature shade trees, the roomy floor plan. She loved that her children felt like they belonged here. She loved that they felt close to Kurt.

What she didn't love was the mortgage-$1,500 a month, every single month, even after refinancing.

She munched down hard on the Triscuit, wiping a few errant crumbs off her scout leader shirt.

She'd told herself countless times that it could have been worse-Kurt could have died with no insurance instead of a modest amount. He could have died leaving a mountain of debt instead of a few conservative investments. It's just that no man thinks he's going to drop dead at age thirty-four. And no woman thinks she's going to walk into the family room to rouse her napping husband for dinner only to find him cold.

The bottom line was they weren't prepared for the wage earner in their family to die. And Charlotte refused to go out and get a full-time nursing job with the kids this young. They needed her attention. They needed her time. They needed her-because she was all they had.

Multi-Tasker, Inc., was something she could do while the kids were in school. It was something she could juggle in the summer and something she could set aside if one of them was sick. With the life insurance and social security* it made them just enough money to squeak by.

She squirted out a big, sloppy pile of Day-Glo cheddar on a cracker and shoved the whole thing in her mouth.

She immediately stopped chewing and her ears pricked.

Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba…

It sounded like muffled gunfire. She choked down the cracker and sat up straight, her ears straining to identify its source.

Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba… Then she heard a loud "Uhmph!"

Charlotte shot to her feet and stared up toward the children's bedroom windows. It wasn't coming from there.