The countryside rolled by, small town after small town. Mary and her mother had left the dumpy little community in which they had only spent the day on the far fringe of civilization far behind and were heading somewhere with more opportunity.

The side to side motion of the train caused Mary to drift into a dream where she floated face down on a large body of water. Boulders of every shape and size were strewn across the bottom and appeared to be just a few feet beneath the surface, but when she tried to reach out and touch them, she found the clarity of the water had made the depth deceiving and she was actually in much deeper water than she realized.

Most things which do not have good underpinning and support will start to develop cracks and weaknesses before coming apart. A resourceful person like Mary’s mother, who was attractive and had an understanding of human nature used misdirection and false promises to outsmart people she purposely targeted for financial gain.

Unfortunately her mother’s mode of operation was at best, unstable and when applied as a lifelong vocation had a  high probability of making mistakes. Mistakes could extract heavy tolls and threaten to bring things crashing down around them.

Mary had sensed changes during the past year. It felt like her mother was slipping and small cracks were beginning to form. There was nothing in particular Mary could point to, it was more like a lot of little things which made it harder for her mother to successfully play her dangerous game.

Her mother had a more desperate look now and no longer conveyed the cool confidence she had once possessed. It was clear to Mary that she was struggling and the people she was associating with had a harder edge about them.

After all of the years of being on the road she was starting to show her age. She was still a stunning woman, but just below the surface, Mary detected a weariness which had set-in permanently. Her mother’s disarming smile was forced and the reception from a chosen person of interest was no longer guaranteed or predictable.

Mary could often see a distant look in her mother’s eyes, where she seemed to be looking beyond their present situation, trying to conjure up a better place and time.

Mary woke up as the train arrived at their new destination and she was encouraged by the look and size of the town in the early morning light. It had been built on the shores of a large lake and tidy clapboard houses were aligned in neat rows on land which inclined sharply from the lakes shoreline. There was a church steeple which rose above the buildings in the town center and even at this early hour the streets were alive with activity.

Mary had a good feeling about this place and hoped it was somewhere they would be able to stay on for a while.Never had Mary’s first impressions of a place been so wrong.