Uncross My Heart by Austin, Andrews & Austin

and left her in pretty much the same shape I’d found her.
    * * *

    The aftershocks occurred all day and those who could leave campus did so. Others were finally allowed back into their dorms after security made a brief safety check, and so there was nothing left for most of us to do but go home. Ketch whined and shook and stuck by my side as I headed to the car to drive us back to the farm. I turned on the car radio to listen to damage reports and interviews with frantic people who told reporters it was a reminder that we survived at the discretion of a Higher Power.
    “It’s okay, buddy.” I patted my quivering shepherd. “Every once in a while, Mother Earth gets tired of her children crawling all over her so she stands up and shakes her skirts.” Ketch wedged his head under my arm. I wished I had someone to shelter me , I thought. Someone earthly.

Chapter Ten
    Friday morning my world was jolted again when I received a note from Vivienne Wilde saying she hoped the school hadn’t suffered damage in the tremor and apologized for having to postpone her meeting with me until the following week, saying she’d forgotten she had to do a live radio show and wouldn’t have time to get there.
    I was undeniably disappointed. I’d looked forward to…the way the sunlight played on her blond hair.
    I punched the radio’s tune-in button, seeing if I could find the station on which she was appearing. Exasperated when I couldn’t locate it, I called her office and asked Joyce, who gave me the call letters. I tuned in just as she was being introduced.
    “Our guest today is Dr. Vivienne Wilde—activist, author, and friend. Dr. Wilde, welcome, and tell us…well, beginning with all the uproar over your criticism of our local seminary, Claridge.”
    “Thank you for having me,” she said, and I held my breath, wondering if Hightower was tuned in right now gritting his teeth and using my name in vain. “Claridge was merely a placeholder for…fill in the blank with any seminary these days. Most have money issues, and the criteria for entrance and, ultimately, graduation is merely will you pay the tuition?”
    “But you did indicate the zealotry had gone too far when a theologian there said God punished—”
    “A male professor at Claridge was fired and my inquiry was into the reason for that. I was told that perhaps he was too troubled to lead. In fact, he committed suicide.”
    “You have a book coming out.” I wondered if ire had risen in that face framed with the Magdalene hair and the host got the visual message to move on, or if they were truly friends and the host had merely let her off the hook.
    “I do. It’s volume one in a three-part series entitled The Untruths , and it sheds light on the social and political mores we grew up with and examines them in a more mature light.”
    “This one caught my eye. ‘Sexual dysfunction is more prevalent in women. I thought that was called a headache.’” Polite titters of laughter from the host.
    “One study states over forty percent of women experience sexual dysfunction as compared to thirty percent of men, and in both sexes it’s a result of age, education, poor physical and mental health. But in women alone it correlates with poor-to-bad sexual experiences.”
    “So ‘an untruth’ is that sexual dysfunction is more about a man’s inability to perform and less about a woman’s desire to hang in there for the second act. Speaking of which, it’s time to take a break so our sponsors don’t go limp on us.” She laughed heartily and the radio station went to commercial.
    I listened enrapt to the rest of the radio broadcast, grateful religion and Claridge had been a very small part of a much bigger topic and also pleased that Vivienne had steered her host away from the headline she had so callously wrought after our first meeting. I wondered why she’d let me off so easily—she who wrote erroneous headlines and stalked me at the conference with tough