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Ruth.”
    “Who?”
    “Guess.”
    “I really couldn’t say.”
    “Come on.”
    “Dana—”
    “Okay. Jess Deeping.”
    He looked blank. Then, “Oh—that fellow, the one who’s on the town council?”
    “Yes, but—the one who used to be Carrie’s boyfriend! In high school.” God, men. “You remember, I know you do. You didn’t care for him any more than I did.”
    “That boy? Really?” Hard to believe, but he was just now making the connection between childhood friend and Clayborne city councilman. “Well, he turned out all right, I guess. Did you and Carrie have a nice visit?” he asked politely, eyes drifting toward his computer screen.
    “Get this, George.” I leaned in closer. He frowned at my hip, which was encroaching on his papers. “Remember the Arkists?”
    “The artists?”
    “ Arkists. The religious cult that started up around here years ago, the paper did a story. Those people who called themselves the Arkists? The Sons of Noah?”
    “No.”
    “Oh, you do, too. The ringleader was that tobacco farmer, Pletcher, something Pletcher. Carrie went to school with the son.”
    “ Oh , yes, yes, very, very vaguely. But it wasn’t a cult, I don’t believe, it was a sect. I thought they’d died out by now.”
    “Cult, sect—no, they didn’t die out, and the old man’s still alive. And the son not only owns the farm next door to Jess Deeping, he’s also his very good friend .”
    “You don’t say.”
    “And—follow me, now—this cult is all set to build an ark—an ark, I’m saying ark —and Jess Deeping wants Carrie to build the animals!”
    “What?”
    “A life-size ark! They want to sail it on the river for the glory of God! Can you believe it?”
    No.” He joined me in a wonderful laugh, our best in ages, we leaned back and rocked with it. “Why, that makes no sense at all.”
    “I know! You should’ve heard Jess Deeping trying to explain it.”
    “What did Carrie say?”
    “She said no, of course.” But not forcefully enough, if you ask me; she left room for hope, left the door open a crack. “I don’t think so,” she told Jess Deeping, and “I just can’t imagine it. But I’m flattered you thought of me.” Baloney. It wasn’t flattering, it was frightening.
    “She does need a job, though,” I told George. “Soon, because she could lose that house.”
    “I still say she ought to sell it. Move someplace smaller.”
    “I know, but Ruth loves it. No, Carrie needs a good paying job, that’s what she needs. She has to get out of that house, quit making those damn flower arrangements. Lord, they make me shiver, dried-up little things. They look like nests, they look like dead animals. If she’d gotten an education degree twenty years ago, none of this would be happening. She could’ve been teaching art at the middle school right now, maybe even the high school. George .”
    “Mm?”
    “I’ve invited Brian Wright to dinner tomorrow night.”
    He looked up at that. “What for? Brian Wright? I thought Carrie and Ruth were coming tomorrow.”
    “He’s thinking of hiring an assistant.”
    “Brian is? How do you know?”
    “He told me—I ran into him at the bank. This’ll be good, wait and see. Brian’s on the rise.”
    George sniffed.
    “He is, he’s got gumption, he’s making something of himself. Carrie could do a lot worse.”
    He looked alarmed.
    “In a boss , she could do worse in an employer . That’s all I’m talking about.”
    Suspicion narrowed his eyes for a second. But then he lost interest and turned full face to his computer screen. My time was up.
    *   *   *
    I served pot roast. I can make smarter, more glamorous meals—the other night I made chicken Monterey for the Becks, and a Peking duck last month for the academic dean and his wife. But Brian Wright is divorced, his wife got the kids, and he lives by himself, and something just told me a nice pot roast would be the thing. Warm and homey.
    I thought the evening went well.