Regions Of Passion novel Chapter 9

"Atta girl."

She smiled. In that moment Scott supposed he was still in love. It had come on with painful abruptness back at Norwalk High. A shock of brown hair, curling to a point in the center of a slender back, was all it had taken. Love.

He had later proclaimed it to her rather stupidly on a rainy morning by her locker, without so much as an introduction, or even an hello. It was utter surrender, after weeks of yearning, to the emotion which had overcome him--an emotion which, even to this day, he did not fully understand. Ingrid was pretty, to be sure. Beautiful even. But there had been a lot of beautiful girls going to Norwalk at the time; none of them had captured his attention for very long. What it was about Ingrid remained a mystery--a flower pressed between the pages of a used book. He could not even lay blame on that old stand-by about it being something in her eyes, because he had fallen in love with her before ever seeing her face.

He cleaned the table and left to give her some privacy with the telephone. A suspicion lingered that she had not been altogether truthful about what happened at her house today. If this was the case, then "smoothing things over" was probably not the proper way to define the goal of the call. All the same, Scott left her to it. He lay back on his bed with an auto magazine and waited. Ingrid's voice soon came from the next room, low at first, then a bit louder. Towards the end of the call her tone took on a pleading quality that twisted his heart. The whole ordeal took about ten minutes. After that, she was standing in the bedroom with him, the smile on her face long gone, the light in her eyes extinguished.

"She's giving me two days," she said. "Two days to come home. After that, she calls the police."

"Damn."

"Oh it could have been worse. Nancy doesn't yield to anything, but I think the way Randy was acting might have creeped her out a little."

"How was Randy acting?"

The shrug came again. "Pissed. But I guess it all turned out for the better. I've got two days to let the dust settle."

Scott nodded in a mixture of confusion and empathy. That ghostly suspicion was stronger now. There was no sense entertaining it though. Ingrid did not look like she'd be willing to answer more of his questions at the moment. She looked exhausted and worried.

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