Free Stabbing Stephanie by Evan Marshall

meetings, where she could really let down her hair. That was something she needed badly these days—that and her vacation.
    Louise had placed the platter of Florence’s Toll House cookies on the coffee table in the center of the group, and now removed the aluminum foil covering.
    Should I? Jane thought, recalling her visit to ShopRite this morning for her Stillkin foods. Oh, screw it! And she reached for a cookie.
    â€œAre you sure you want to do that, Jane?”
    Jane froze, her arm suspended in midair. Across the coffee table, little old Doris Conway peered at Jane over her knitting, her eyebrows raised.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Jane asked innocently, sounding to her own ears uncannily like Scarlett O’Hara.
    â€œAren’t you dieting?” Doris asked flatly, and cast her gaze up and down Jane’s seated figure.
    Jane felt herself blush. Quite deliberately, she resumed her reach to the cookie plate and took not one but two.
    Doris shrugged. “Suit yourself. Or should I say ‘Swimsuit yourself’?” And she broke into her characteristic low chuckle.
    Jane slumped her shoulders in exasperation. “Is my diet on a billboard or something? Why is everyone in the world making my weight their business?”
    â€œIt’s my fault.” Ginny, seated next to Jane on the sofa, winced guiltily. “I guess I mentioned it to a few people—but as a good thing. You know, how you’re so excited about your vacation that you’re trying to slim down to look great in your bathing suit.”
    â€œJane . . .” Penny Powell said in her whispery voice. She sat in an armchair at the end of the grouping, the yellow-and-green-striped scarf she was knitting trailing down onto the Oriental carpet. “Where are you going on your vacation? Have you decided?”
    â€œNo. I wanted Neptune’s Palace, but apparently I waited too long.”
    â€œNeptune’s Palace!” exclaimed Rhoda Kagan, directly opposite Ginny on the second sofa. “I went there with David, damn him, for our fifteenth anniversary. That place is pure heaven!”
    â€œThanks,” Jane said.
    Rhoda shrugged and resumed her knitting. “Sorry. You can always go another time.”
    Penny said, eyes downcast, “Alan and I are thinking of going there.”
    Everyone looked at Penny, silent. It was no secret that Penny’s husband, Alan, was domineering and chauvinistic, and that the only way Penny had succeeded in maintaining harmony in their marriage had been to consistently acquiesce to his wishes.
    Finally Doris spoke up. “Whose idea is that?”
    â€œAlan’s,” Penny replied.
    More silence. Penny raised her head and looked around the group. “I know what you’re all thinking. ‘Why would they go on a vacation together when their marriage is so bad?’”
    They all quickly refuted this.
    â€œNo, no, it’s okay,” Penny said. “But I’m happy to report that things are better for Alan and me now. I’ve”—she let out a nervous giggle—“been standing up to him lately . . . telling him what I want.”
    â€œPenny,” Jane breathed. “That’s marvelous.”
    Penny smiled shyly, tugging back one of the neck-length curtains of brown hair she usually hid behind. “Tonight at dinner he announced he was going bowling in Boonton with his friends. I reminded him that I have my knitting club meetings every Tuesday night. He said that was too bad, because he was going out, and I needed to stay home to watch Rebecca.”
    â€œWhat did you say?” Louise asked, her birdlike face pursed intensely.
    Penny smiled serenely. “I said that if he wanted to run the risk of leaving Rebecca alone, that was his choice, because I was going to this meeting whether he liked it or not. And I told him to mark his calendar so this would never happen again.”
    â€œWhoa!” Rhoda cried. “You go,