Chapter Nine
The three weeks with Dale away were nearly at an end. When Christina talked to her fiancé every afternoon, the talks were short but lighthearted, filled with, “I miss you, I can’t wait until your home”, kind of talk. She wouldn’t dare let on the horror that she was living with under Charlie’s edict—the horror that would continue even after Dale’s return. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like putting on the charade with her fiancé around for the next five weeks. How would she explain her whereabouts on Friday afternoons? What if Charlie caned her and left marks? There’d be no way to keep her lover from finding out. Tell him about it? That was even more impossible. The perplexing problem simply had no solution.
For the third Friday in a row, Christina made plans to be go
