"Well good we agree on something. I'll look forward to hearing the results of the experiment: paradise or penitentiary in Kansas. Feel free to email me through the process. Go on and get Betty." As he left she knew that fear had motivated her to mention the plane ticket. The thought of cajoling a response from a child by appeasing him, and doing it from a legitimate fear or, worse, perhaps a baseless one, appalled her. Her will and her foundation of motherhood seemed to be collapsing. She could no longer move him by her words any more than an old woman could twist a lid off of a jar; and for the first time in her life she was losing confidence in her own will. Betty came out to her. "You gotted all of the lights up there, Miss?" "Yeah, well...enough. I guess too much, Hispanic Betty. Todo las luces para esto ano de navidad estara poco y yo tengo miedo que poco esta desmasiado. We will be the only people who will enjoy them. Nathaniel is going to visit his aunt in a few days." "Miss, we need to talk orita. You pay for me for to have my own apartment but I never go there. Nunca, nunca! No tengo una vida. I'm illegal but I should not a slave. There should more to my life than the two of you. Quiero permiso para un vacacion pagado para dos meses." "Dos meses? Do I look mad? Dos semanas okay." "And where you will get other slave? There are many masters to be gotted and not many slaves." Gabriele thought about this crucial fact: Indeed, there were many masters to be had but few slaves. The idea resonated off the inner walls of her brain. "Y entonces tu volveres a nuestra hogar?" "Si." "Okay, Hispanic Betty, stay until Christmas Eve and then you are free as a bird hasta luego Febrero. 2 months of paid vacation. Here, hold the ladder so that I can get down." Soon Nathaniel, as well as the man with the unmemorable name, was gone; and seeing the vacuous ruts that they had made in spinning away from her she was reminded of the fact that the outside world was changeable and that only weaklings and fools placed happiness on others. And yet with Michael out of her life, and worse, Rick and Nathaniel who were as much as lost to her now, her world was unsettled in a four-fold loss.