She stood up at the base of the hill, brushing off her jeans and tee shirt, then began stumbling blindly up the beach. Tears of abject hurt and humiliation rolled silently down her cheeks, stinging against her skin that was sensitive from all the crying she had been doing that night. She trudged up the sloping sand and into the tall grass that bordered a gravel road with no sense of destination in mind. One thing was sure, and that was that she couldn't go back to the beach party in this state of mind. She needed time to think, and she might as well walk the five miles back to her house to save herself the tortuous explanations she would have to give Bob about how she had gotten into her condition. Bob could think what he liked, for all she cared. What she had seen a moment ago was enough to make up for all the tidbits of gossip Bob had told her about her sister, and Ellen had no intention of confirming his suspicions and letting him gloat about it for the next few months.

Yes, she would keep on walking, the exercise would do her some good and would help clear her head after all she had been through this evening. As she moved up onto the road she thought she heard one last moan of gurgling passion coming from below the sand dunes on the beach. They were probably still at it, she thought, and she felt the shock return as the obscenely lewd image of her sister's widespread, upraised thighs and Phil's nakedly pounding buttocks between them flickered momentarily through her mind. She had trusted and admired her sister for so many years and now her idol of strength and womanly virtue had turned to a soiled and tattered rag doll that would submit to any man that was immediately available! Well, it was Jennifer's life and Ellen certainly was not going to live it for her. She knew that she could not bear to live in the same house any more with her sister and her mother, who had grown increasingly remote and morose since the divorce.