I am cleaning off the kitchen table when Todd arrives. He says, “Shouldn't the kids tidy their own messes?”
        “They will, later. At this stage of the game, I don't want to stymie creativity.”
        I flop into my kitchen rocker and hand over the superintendent's letter. He glances at it, crumples it, and shoots it into the wastebasket, spot on. He says, “What if we started scouting around?”
        “For what?” I say. “For land. In the country.” “'We' who?” “Us! You, Will, Marsha, me!” I stop rocking and stare at him. His face is flushed; his eyes gleam. “Why not?” he demands. “We could pull it off, we're both teachers. All we have to do is sell our houses and pool the proceeds.”
        I rock again. “Get real, Todd.”
        He plows his hair with both hands. “I'm serious! I'd love being in on Greentree.”
        “Maybe you would, but Marsha?”
        His fingers wave Marsha aside. “Trust me, she'd get into it. She envies you doing what you love while she wastes away on an office job she despises. She admires you. She wishes she could be more like you.”
        Does she? I'm flattered. Todd sinks to the footstool and clutches my ankles. “Oh, we'd have such fun! You could be President; I'd be Vice!”
        His hands burn my skin, but I shiver nonetheless. What would it be like living with Todd? We've become very good friends: we seek each other out to share bon mots. He doesn't just absently listen and nod, we truly converse. Wouldn't it be something to have a real partner, someone who comprehends and doesn't simply go along like Will does?
        Todd whips a piece of paper from his pants pocket. “I made a sketch. We could buy inexpensive farmland and put up something cheap, like this. Cement block maybe.”
        I see a lopsided square, awkward as a child's, but I embellish it mentally, and superimpose it against green hills far away from local jurisdiction.
        After a moment, I get up and start supper. Peeling carrots, I say, “It's a great fantasy, Todd, but the timing's off.” Will had been coerced a few Sundays to take me and the kids on rural drives. Each time he warned me not to get any funny ideas. He said buying land, building a school were some day ideas, for later, after Greentree brings in a healthy profit.

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