“Well, in that case…” She made a little slide-step dance move. “Maybe I will. How about that?”
In his anger, he didn’t care. Her maybes were like needles to his brain. He dropped into his desk chair and turned away from her. “Suit yourself.”
Only after she was gone did he reconnect with his desire. All in all, he thought, their meeting could hardly have gone better. The revelation was how positively she’d responded to his anger, how negatively to his begging. He’d stumbled upon the key to her. If he kept away from her, let her think he’d lost his patience with her, she might yet defy the surgeon and go to Arizona.
But it was a torment not to know what she was thinking. The following Sunday, at the last Crossroads meeting before Spring Trip, he searched the teenaged throng for Larry, intending to ask him what his mother’s plans were. When he discovered that Larry, unaccountably, had skipped the meeting, his torment became acute. The next morning, first thing, he went to Ambrose’s office and asked if he’d heard anything from Mrs. Cottrell.
Ambrose was reading the sports section of the Trib. “No,” he said. “Why?”
“When I saw her last week, I had the sense she might bail out.”
Ambrose shrugged. “No great loss. We already have Jim and Linda Stratton for Many Farms. Two parents there is plenty.”
Russ was bewildered. A month earlier, when he and Ambrose had worked out the adviser assignments, he’d made sure that Frances was in his group.
“I thought—” he said. “That’s not right. We had Mrs. Cottrell down for Kitsillie.”
“Yeah, I switched her out and gave you Ted Jernigan. If she wants to wear blue jeans and hang out with the kids, she can do that in Many Farms. I’m not even sure why she’s coming—she kind of pulled a fast one on me.”
“You underestimate her. She’s in my Tuesday women’s circle. She really gets it.”
“Then we’ll see how she does in Many Farms.”
“No. She needs to be in Kitsillie.”
The eyes that flicked up from the sports pages were unpleasantly shrewd. “Why?”
“Because I’ve worked with her. I want her in my group.”
Ambrose nodded as if something made sense to him. “You know, I did wonder. Back in December, I wondered what moved you to come and see me. It was only because she’d been in my office the same day. She was hell-bent on going to Arizona, and then there you were, wanting to go to Arizona. I’m not taking anything away from the courage of what you did—I just had a little glimmer of wondering. I wouldn’t have thought of it if it weren’t for the business with you and Sally Perkins.”
“Mrs. Cottrell is thirty-seven years old.”
“I’m not judging you, Russ. Only saying I know you.”
“Then tell me this. Why did you swap her and Ted Jernigan? To spite me?”
“Cool your jets. I don’t care what you do on your own time. Just keep it out of Crossroads.”
“You need to put her back in Kitsillie.”
“Nope.”
“Please, Rick. I’m not demanding—I’m asking. Please do me this favor.”
Ambrose shook his head. “I’m not running a dating service.”
It seemed to Russ, as it had all winter, that every piece of good news—in this case, that Frances was evidently still on for Arizona—came paired with news more than bad enough to negate it. Ambrose had seen through him, and there was nothing he could do. He had no grounds for appeal beyond his having imagined a long walk alone with Frances, a hike up into the pinyon forest, a first kiss on a wind-scoured hilltop; and this was no argument at all. The Lord was with Ambrose.
When Russ went home that night, Becky informed him that she wasn’t coming on Spring Trip. A day earlier, he would have been relieved to hear it—she and her friends had signed up for Kitsillie, where she would have observed his attentions to Frances—but now it only seemed like another sign of their estrangement. Under the influence of Tanner Evans, Becky was becoming ever more hippieish and defiant, and she’d been staying out to all hours, even during the week. When Russ had tried to impose a weeknight curfew, she’d run to Marion, which had led to an impasse, resolved in Becky’s favor.
“I thought you were looking forward to the trip,” he said.
She was sprawled on the living-room sofa with her Bible. In her hands, in the militancy of her rejection of him, the Bible was oddly distasteful.