Over the music I eavesdropped on the adults’ conversation as my mother cheerfully interrogated Rory’s mom, Nancy. In the first week of July the Shaws had moved from the Bay Area into the 1950s rambler across the street, and my mom, a self-appointed welcome wagon for any new neighbors, had promptly taken them a lemon pound cake and invited them to stop in at the Eatery. Which they’d done this afternoon. By the end of their conversation my mother was already planning to hire Rory as a busboy at the diner when he was old enough and had invited the Shaws over for a cookout that weekend. My mother
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