Married people are always complaining, "We just don’t talk anymore." Women seem to have more of a problem with this than men. Well, fear not — the loving husband has come to your rescue with a solution to this universal dilemma.As you may know, he has to travel for his job. He usually goes for a few days at a time, and during that time we call each other every night and talk for a half hour or more. On Monday night he calls me, at which time he gives me his hotel phone and room number. On Tuesday night I call him on my cell phone. Then we rotate. Sometimes we may talk for an hour or more. I don’t know why we have so much to discuss when he’s gone, because when he’s home, conversation is minimal. During a normal week when he works in Sioux Falls, he usually gets back to the old homestead around 6 p.m. I roll in about 7 p.m. because I visit my mother after work. By the time I get home, he’s already finished eating supper and I’m starving. (We only eat the same things on the weekend. If I ate what he ate every day, I’d weigh 300 pounds.) So, I get home and I’m trying to prepare my supper and he’s moved on to the newspaper or TV or a project. I yell downstairs the traditional, "Honey, I’m home." He yells back, "Hi." And that’s about it. Later on one of us may inquire, "How was your day?" And we talk about that for a couple minutes. And that’s it, again. One night, the loving husband was downstairs in the family room. I was upstairs washing clothes, reading, and playing with Barkley (the bird). The phone rang and I answered it. To my surprise, it was the loving husband calling from downstairs on his cell phone. We talked for a half hour — on the phone — while we were both at home. There is some wisdom to be gleaned from this experience. We are accustomed to verbal communication via the phone. The phone, by its own nature, makes people talk. And it’s obviously an excellent tool for marital communication. Next week I’m going to break out the walkie-talkies and see how that goes. One word of warning, spousal communication should never interfere with reading time. Take a moment to check out the new books we have on the shelf this week. Memory in Death, by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Eve Dallas is one tough cop. But when Trudy Lombard shows up, it's all Eve can do to hold it together. Instantly, she's thrown back into the past, to the days when she was a vulnerable, traumatized girl — trapped in foster care with the twisted woman who now sits in front of her, smiling. Trudy claims she just wanted to see how Eve was doing. But Eve's husband, Roarke, suspects otherwise. His suspicions prove correct when Trudy arrives at his office, demanding money in exchange for keeping the ugly details of his wife's childhood a secret. Barely restraining himself, Roarke shows her the door and makes it clear that she'd be wise to get out of New York and never bother him or his wife again. But just a few days later, Trudy's found on the floor of her hotel room, a mess of bruises and blood. A cop to the core, Eve is determined to solve the case, if only for the sake of Trudy's bereaved son. Unfortunately, Eve is not the only one to have suffered at this woman's hands, and she and Roarke will follow a circuitous, dangerous path to find out who turned this victimizer into a victim.