My House Or Yours?

Chad nodded and replied, “Actually, he said you’re immature. That you take after your mother who took years to become adult.”

“He did not say that!”

Chad laughed. “No, he didn’t. He’s hard-nosed and it took me forever to just get him to recognize that I love you, and I’d wait through anything to get you back.”

“Hah!”

“That ‘hah’ is proof you haven’t made it yet, but it’s better than ‘baloney’ or—”

She shrieked!

He frowned and complained, “Now what am I going to say when all the TEXANS come arunning to defend your honor?”

“You’ll think of something smooth. You’ll probably say I’m backing out on an agreement to, uh, cooperate.”

He smiled and said, “Great! I knew you’d come up with the perfect defense. Thank—”

“I’ll tell the truth.”

He was disgusted. “You’ve always been a stickler.”

“What did my mother say in all these conversations?”

“She won’t speak to me. She thinks I’m a rat.”

Jo laughed. “Really? I misjudged her! I thought she’d be on your side.”

“What does she say to you?”

“That I’m a fool to let you get away.”

He nodded again. “With parents as logical as yours, how did you get the way you are?”

“Dad says I’m not his, and mother claims I’m a throwback.”

“Thrown away?”

She enunciated clearly as she finished the sentence, “—of another time.”

Three (#ulink_50f5654a-8326-517b-99c6-09041e260d0e)

It was very interesting how Chad could manuever Jo. She was trusting. She was used to computer hacks who were open, honest and sharing. It never really entered her head that Chad was sly.

On their way back north, they did not drive through one single place that had a commercial airport. It was incredible, especially in TEXAS where the distances are far.

Once she said, “I’d no idea the land in TEXAS was so isolated.”

And he’d had the gall to reply, “Yeah.”

They were going up the west side of the state so that, he said, he could see the “real West” for comparison as to the progress in the rest of the country. That was exactly what Chad told Jo.

Chad would go into a filling station miles from nowhere and come back to say to Jo, “Darn, we passed the turnoff too far back.”

Jo would look at the map and hunt. Then she’d look up and ask, “Where is this place on the map?”

And he’d study it and point out a vacant space. “We’re here.”

She’d study it from all angles while she bit her lip and ruffled her hair as she searched the minute dots in that great blank area. She was so diligent that she’d always find something, and she’d tell Chad, “Here’s one. It might just be a double seater, but it could get me to another airport.”

With interest, he’d reply, “Let me see. Yeah, but that’s out of our way. See? There’s a Council Bluff there. It’s an Indian meeting place.”

The sides of her mouth turned down as she retorted, “It seems to me those Indians did a lot of meeting.”

He nodded and agreed, “Probably trying to figure a way to get rid of us.”

With some interest, she asked, “Since you teach World History, how did Europeans manage to ‘discover’ all the virgin lands? I understand there were nine hundred tribes of Indians living just in TEXAS at the time the Spanish landed and ‘discovered’ this ‘uninhabited’ country.”

“It’s attitude,” he explained kindly. “It’s like your inability to see mice.”

She disagreed, “It was the traps I couldn’t empty.”

“You threw the trap away with the poor little, limp, dead body still trapped and you bought new traps.”

She observed, “You’re very knowledgeable. I hadn’t realized you were aware of that problem. When did you notice?”

“You kept a neat stack of receipts. They were fascinating reading.”

She slid a sideways look at him. “You were a snoop.”

As he drove along, he moved out his one arm in an entirely open communication of fact with no secrets. “I had to know how our money was being spent so quickly. It was mostly on mousetraps.”

Prissily, she retorted, “I bought an occasional lipstick.”

“A hussy.” He agreed with the label for her.

She tilted back her head and lifted her eyebrows. “I curled my own hair.”

He smiled.

She mentioned, “You’re a tightwad.”

He watched the road kindly. Since he’d lured her attention from the map, he continued his distraction. “In your checking account at home is something close to six thousand dollars, that’s with interest, which is the accumulation of your pin money.”

“Is that what’s paying for this car?”

He licked his smile. “No.”

She reminded him, “We are divorced. You have no responsibility toward me. The money is yours.”