“Miller Electric, this is Enoch.”
“It’s Corinne.”
“Corinne?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey. Just a second. Just a second, okay?”
“Yeah.”
It was loud behind him. Corinne imagined him building a house with high school students. She heard a door open and close.
“Corinne? You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Hey. You called.”
“Well, you said you wanted to talk.”
“Yeah … yeah, I do. Do you want to talk?”
Did she want to talk? “I guess … I want to hear what you have to say.”
“I’m not very good on the phone.”
“Enoch, you asked me to call you.”
“No, I mean—could we talk in person?”
“Um…” Jesus. Jesus Christ. “Sure. If that’s what you want. Do you want that?”
“I could meet after work. Do you work?”
“I do. Where do you want to meet?”
“Oh, um … I guess I don’t know, um…”
This might be the end of it. There was nowhere Enoch Miller could meet with her that would be appropriate. Men and women didn’t meet without chaperones. And Christian men didn’t meet with women who had been cast out, not for any reason. Never mind their history. Never mind it; Corinne tried not to.
This was stupid. It was ridiculous.
Corinne didn’t want to talk to someone who considered talking to her a sin. (Not someone outside of her immediate family.)
Enoch Miller was short-circuiting on the other side of the phone line … He’d probably have to have an elders’ meeting just to confess to giving Corinne his card.
Corinne wouldn’t have to go this time.
They couldn’t throw her out twice.
Corinne talked to men. Regularly. She met them for lunch and for drinks. Usually for work. She could talk to a man without confessing. Without praying over it. Without laying herself low.
“Do you like Village Inn?” Enoch asked.
“Do I like it?”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Yeah…”
“I could meet you there by six,” he said.
“Okay,” Corinne said. “I’ll see you then.”