Sainted Secrets

Disclaimer: Janet Evanovich created the Stephanie Plum series. I'm not making any money off of this stuff.

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Valerie sat at the table, staring down at her now empty plate. It seemed like only moments ago it had been overflowing with so much food… she reached out and grabbed another roll. She hated looking at the plate, so empty, clinging to the last crumbs and smears of gravy. All that empty white. All that blank space. It made her stomach rumble.

Next to her, Albert was babbling to Grandma Mazur about aliens or something. She tuned him out now, just as she tuned out Mary Alice's whinnies and Angie's barely audible humming.

Her mother was setting down the dessert- a delicious bundt cake. Distantly a part of her wished it was a pineapple upside down cake, but she pushed the thought away. There were no more pineapple upside down cakes. Not since Stephanie… Valerie bit into the roll, although she kept her eyes on the cake. She wouldn't think about Stephanie. Not just now. Maybe later.

Thinking about Stephanie always made her think about so much else. It made her think about the empty look in Dad's eyes. It made her think about the sadness that crept into Grandma Mazur's eyes every time there was the sound of a truck driving by, the knowledge that it wouldn't stop here, would never stop here. The only member of this family who drove a truck was long gone now.

And she took the possibility of pineapple upside down cake with her.

Valerie sighed as she swallowed the last of the roll and helped herself to a slice of cake. Her stomach was full, but she needed this. She needed the sugar, the rush of pleasure that came from that first bite of dessert. She could feel everyone glancing at her as she dug in, could feel what they were thinking. Oh yes, she could feel it, could feel the hidden disdain, and faintly even the disgust that they kept hidden even better than the disdain. She knew what she looked like. She knew all too well. Was reminded of it every time she saw her reflection, saw the sloppy tent-like clothes she had been reduced to wearing, the pudgy cheeks, the double chin.

It disgusted her too, especially when she could remember at time when she was thin, when she was serene and perfect and so thin. She could remember when her life was perfect, when she was a tanned, toned California homemaker. She still remembered what it was once like to wear sexy shoes without her foot overflowing it like a loaf of fresh baked bread or what it was like to turn around in front of a dressing room mirror in a new dress and have other people look at you with envy instead of pity.

But it was all right. This wasn't going to last forever, this ugly fat phase. It was going to go away, and she was going to be thin again. She was going to have a life again, because she was going to be serene and perfect again. She would be St. Valerie.

Stephanie would have been so proud.

She looked down at the plate, once more empty and glanced around the table. Mother was trying to shush Lisa. Angie was still eating her own slice of cake and Mary Alice was licking hers clean of icing. Albert had gravy down his shirt, and was bouncing in his seat as he and Grandma talked about a new case. Dad's head was down and he was on what had to be his second slice.

Good, it was a perfect time. She murmured and excuse and placed her napkin over her plate so she wouldn't have to look at the empty void of white again. No one made any remark and she gratefully took the escape and headed upstairs as fast as she could.

She didn't breathe again until the bathroom door locked behind her.

-

"Where's Valerie?" Ellen asked, once Lisa had given up fussing in favor of chewing contendedly on her teething biscuit.

"Oh, probably the bathroom. She's got a thing about brushing her teeth," Albert volunteered. "She can't stand not brushing her teeth after she eats. Flossing too. Says she doesn't like not having fresh breath."

"Good for her, she won't have to have to darned false teeth like I got. Of course, I like having them- means that if I want them cleaned, all I gotta do is send 'em to the dentist, no waiting around in that office."

"I keep meaning to tell her, she looks so much better, now she's dropped all that weight," Ellen said. "I wonder how she's doing it?"

"One of those new diet pills, probably. Have you see that ad on tv? Says if you got any problems losing weight, it'll take off one size a week…"

-

Valerie looked at herself in disgust. The scale had to be off, that was the only explanation. 118 didn't look like this, she looked more like 218. She sighed and measured out another cup of mouth wash.

No more gravy. She could do that. No one would care if she cut out gravy. Maybe bread, too. No more gravy or bread. That wasn't much, perfectly reasonable… She was just going to have to cut back, stop the midnight snack run, even. That wouldn't be so hard. She didn't used to have midnight snacks. St. Valerie never ate after 8 o'clock. She could do this.