Read Online The Hot Flash Club Chills Out by Nancy Thayer - Free Book Online

so trapped—she felt like an adolescent again, desperate to get away.
    Three more toots sounded. Marilyn could tell her mother couldn’t hear them. Faye had planned extra time into their schedule for the drive to Hyannis, in case the traffic was heavy; still they had to be there on time or they’d miss the ferry.
    “Faye’s here! She’s honking her horn! Gotta go!” She wrenched herself away.
    Just as Marilyn got to the door to the stairs, Ruth called, “Marilyn?”
    “Yes, Mother?” She forced brightness into her voice.
    “Remember, if you don’t fricassee, fry, fry a hen.”
    “Ha, ha, ha!” Was that a touch of hysteria in her dutiful laugh? “See you tomorrow night, Mother!”
    Marilyn raced up the stairs, grabbed her backpack and duffel bag, returned to the kitchen to double-check that all the burners were off on the stove, confirmed that her house keys were in the middle of the kitchen table with a note written in BIG letters telling Angus to use them if he needed to, ran down the hall and out the front door.
    Faye’s hunter green Mercedes idled gently in the driveway. Faye, Polly, and Shirley waved merrily from the windows. Marilyn waved back, tested the doorknob to be sure it was firmly closed, crossed the porch, skipped down the steps, tripped on the last step, and went sprawling on the front lawn.
    “Marilyn!” Unbuckling their seat belts, all three threw open the car doors and jumped out.
    Marilyn lay on her side. She’d caught herself with her hands and taken the brunt of the fall on her right hip. For a moment she couldn’t get her breath.
    Faye knelt next to Marilyn. “Are you all right?”
    “Fine,” Marilyn gasped. “Must…catch…breath.”
    “Take your time,” Shirley urged. “We’re in no hurry.”
    That, Marilyn knew, wasn’t precisely true. Gingerly, she sat up.
    “How do you feel?” Polly asked.
    “Like an idiot.”
    Faye grinned. “She meant, did you break anything?”
    Marilyn stretched, taking a mental inventory of her body. “Nope. Only my pride is hurt.” But when she pressed her hands on the ground to push herself up, she realized she’d abraded them during the fall.
    Faye helped Marilyn up. Shirley took Marilyn’s hands in hers and inspected her palms. “Oh, dear.”
    “Just little scrapes,” Marilyn said.
    Polly peered over Shirley’s shoulder. “Still, you’d better wash them and put some ointment on.”
    Marilyn turned to go back into the house. “I can’t get inside. I left my keys for Angus.”
    Polly said in a sensible tone, “Well, knock on the door, he’ll let you in.”
    Marilyn shook her head. “Uh-uh. Angus is up in the attic. Besides, he wouldn’t hear me if I yelled his name through a loudspeaker. He lives in his own little world.”
    “Well, isn’t Ruth home? Let’s go around back to her French doors—” Shirley set off walking.
    “Shirley, stop!” Marilyn’s voice took on a slightly desperate tone. “Trust me, if we go into Ruth’s place, she’ll take forever just to get to the door, and then she’ll want to cluck over my hands, and she’ll have to ask you all how you are, and we’ll miss the ferry—we’ll miss
all
the ferries.” To her surprise, she was on the verge of tears.
    “Right.” Faye picked up Marilyn’s duffel bag and tossed it in the trunk of her Mercedes. “Let’s go!”
    They all settled into the car, sinking into the luxurious leather seats. As they pulled away from her house, Marilyn felt as if she were on a spaceship, leaving a planet with exceptional gravitational pull. They went through Cambridge, along Memorial Drive, and were through the Big Dig area in Boston before the tug of responsibility finally thinned.
    “We didn’t pick up Alice,” Marilyn noticed suddenly.
    “She’s flying down to Nantucket,” Faye told her. “She’s not thrilled about this whole thing, doesn’t want to take the boat, thinks it’s a waste of time.”
    “I’m looking forward to it!” Shirley said