The Insiders Read Online Free PDF

here. Perhaps, she mused, it was because here, for the first time, she had been really free, and able to choose her own friends, make her own life. Thanks to contacts she had made through Mim, she had been lucky enough to land the legal secretary job at H. H.&B.
    Mim, whom she hadn't thought of in months, started a whole new train of memory. Mim led to Kevin, and the thought of Kevin, hateful even now, reminded her of herself as she had been just a few years ago—a naive, uncomplaining child-woman, Southern small-town style. Brought up to believe in church and marriage and a life just like her parents had led, raising lots of kids. Well, she'd been lucky that there had been no children. Some kind of trouble with her ovaries, the doctor had said. No children for her ever unless she wanted to stand some kind of operation that might even be risky for her. A good thing Kevin had wanted to wait.
    Kevin Maynard. She didn't like to remember now that she had once been Mrs. Kevin Maynard. Married to her high-school sweetheart, the only boy she had ever dated, because he had been the only one her parents approved of.
    He had been a quiet, ruggedly handsome man, and she had believed herself deeply in love with him. She had taken secretarial training while Kevin did his hitch in the Army, just so that she would be able to help him when he started back to college afterward.
    They had been married soon after Kevin got his discharge from the Army, and Stella settled down to the routine of a working wife while Kevin studied hard— he was ambitious and she had admired and encouraged his ambition. And she had even found keeping house kind of fun, at first.
    Being a conservatively brought-up Southern girl,
    Stella had never questioned the fact that she didn't really enjoy doing "that" with her husband. She wasn't supposed to, was she? It was something a woman submitted to, when the man was her husband. Kevin was kind enough to her, and this was what she had expected from marriage. She did not question the fact that he never tried to caress or arouse her—just rolled onto her and off her, and then they'd both fall asleep. The only time it had hurt was the very first time, and of course she had expected that.
    They might have gone on that way forever, except that Mim happened to them. Kevin's big sister, the one his family hardly ever talked about because she had run away from home to make herself a somebody; landing a job on TV, making herself a home somewhere on the West Coast. Mim had become something of a legend in their hometown.
    Mim just happened to be visiting the city where Kevin attended college, and what could be more natural than her staying with them? If Kevin's acceptance of Mim was a trifle stony-faced, Stella had thought nothing of it. Kevin had always been the quiet type, and of late he seemed to have become quieter than ever—in fact, she hardly ever saw him anymore. She worked all day, of course, and he was having to study very hard so he could get good grades—this was the only reason he spent so much time at the library. She must fight back that devil-instinct that suggested to her that the blonde assistant librarian might have something to do with it.
    Then—Mim. An invasion; perfumed, long swinging hair, pale face with big made-up eyes. Kevin became quieter than ever and stayed away more after Mim arrived, but Stella blossomed. Stella loved Mim, loved to hear of the life Mim led and the people she met in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
    Mim was beautiful, fascinating. Stella felt she could listen to Mim talk for hours, watching those expressive eyes and hands, loving it when Mim's soft fingers touched her arm or cheek fleetingly. Even when she was in bed with Kevin she was aware of Mim's presence on the living-room couch, wishing she could be out there talking to Mim or just listening —sitting on the rug as they sometimes did, with their shoulders touching.
    It was very hot that particular summer, a moist heat; and