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"It’s an order"

"I’ll take that as a yes"

"It is"

"Are you going to tellthis stick?"

"I told you why It’s an order"

"No other reason?"

Søren stroked his bottom lip with his thumb She never wanted to be a thumb so much in her life

"That list of questions you wish to ask me that I can’t answer yet …"

"Yeah, what about thele day without fail for six months, I’ll answer your questions"

"You will? All of them?"

"Any question you have for me, no matter how personal or intrusive, I will answer it in six le question? She couldn’t believe it If he’d offered her a million dollars or the answers to all her questions, she’d pick the answers, hands down

"So six ," Søren said "Rather fitting I’et the stick, I want answers"

"You’ll have them if you earn them," he said

"Hoill you know if I watered it or not?"

"I’ll know"

"When do you think you’ll, you knoant to hold up your end of the bargain?" Eleanor tried to keep the nervousness froe for her eternal obedience, Søren had pro" Two ht at the police station Did he remember what he’d proree the stick"

"Great I’ll water it right now"

"Iit … in sixat the stick as he walked back to the church

"Hey!" she shouted after him "Six months?"

"Do as you’re told and we’ll discuss it in six months"

Eleanor stared down at the stick and looked back up at Søren’s retreating form

"I hate you!" she yelled after him

"That stick won’t water itself," he called back

She looked back down at the stick in the ground

"I hate you, too," she said to the stick And for goodthe now slightly shorter stick, she returned to the church, where Søren put her to work in the fellowship hall annex scrubbing the kitchen and cleaning out the pantries He’d told her he would inspect her hen she’d finished She wanted to make him proud of her