Daughters of Eve (28 page)

"What do you mean?"

"When you girls were in Shelby's office axing up his furniture, your friend Miss Stark was right there with you. She had to have been or you'd never have been able to get into the building."

"I thought you didn't believe me," Jane said in a cracked voice.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. We'll see. If it really happened, it's all going to be in the papers. And let me tell you, if it did happen the way you said it did, that Stark woman isn't just going to be out a teaching job, she's going to find herself behind bars. We've got enough trouble with our lads today without having people like that around to influence them."

"You won't say anything?" Jane asked wretchedly. "Please, Dad, you can't! Irene's been so good to me!"

"Don't you try telling me what I can and can't do, chicken." He picked up the newspaper which had fallen to the floor beside his chair and opened it to the sports section. "Go fix us some dinner."

Jane stood, staring at him. "You want me to cook for you now?"

"Darned right, I do. With your mother out of commission, you're the lady of the house. You might as well start learning what woman's work is all about"

In the kitchen, her mother's heavy iron skillet stood in the drying rack. Jane picked it up and held it a moment, testing the weight of it. Then she went back into the living room, moving quietly, and stood behind her father's chair.

She lifted the skillet as high above her head as she was able. She closed her eyes. The smell of lemon-scented hair tonic filled her nostrils, and beneath it there was the faint, lingering odor of pipe tobacco. There was nothing of her mother. Nothing at all.

The left side of her face twitched violently.

With her eyes still closed, Jane braced herself and brought the skillet down with all her strength onto the top of her father's head.

FOR THE RECORD

(three years later)

Fran Schneider is a first-semester senior at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, working toward a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry.

Ann Whitten Brewer is a housewife in Modesta, Michigan. She is the mother of two sons, David Jr., 2+1/2 years, and John, 7 months.

Tammy Carncross is a junior, majoring in English at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan.

Kelly Johnson is a junior, pre-law, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Holly Underwood was killed in an automobile accident the summer following her high school graduation.

Paula Brummell is a saleswoman for the J. C. Penney Company in Adrian, Michigan.

Bambi Ellis is a fashion model for the Eileen Stanton Agency in New York City.

Ruth Grange Brummell is a housewife, and a secretary for an insurance agency in Modesta, Michigan.

Laura Snow Keller is a housewife in Cumberland, Rhode Island. She is the mother of a daughter, Mona Irene, 4 months.

Jane Rheardon is a patient at the State Mental Hospital at Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Irene Stark is assistant principal at Modesta High School. For the fourth consecutive year she is sponsor of the Modesta chapter of a national sorority called Daughters of Eve.

The End