“You going to tell me what happened?” Lindsay said quietly, not taking her eyes off Meredith’s face.

She threw herself into a large wing chair opposite Lindsay. “It all started with Penny deciding it was time she got out of the closet on her own terms before some smartass decided to out her.”

“Was that likely?”

“You better believe it. There are a lot of militants out there who think that people like Penny owe it to the lesbian sisterhood to be out and proud. No compromises accepted. Never mind that Penny’s been doing more good by keeping her sexuality to herself and providing positive images in her books. The politically correct know there’s only one way to be and that’s in people’s faces.” Meredith shook her head angrily. “Don’t they understand that when you out somebody like Penny, all it means is that every right-wing parent in the country stops buying her books? As long as she looks as straight as a Midwest momma, they’re never going to look inside the covers to see what their kids are reading. Soon as she’s out, they’ll be burning her books regardless, because she’s a dangerous dyke poisoning the minds of their children.”

Meredith’s tirade left Lindsay momentarily without words. Compulsory outing was one of the few subjects on which she didn’t have definite and strong views. She was for it when it came to hypocrites who abused their power over the lives of others, like politicians who failed to support gay rights issues and churchmen who preached one thing and practiced another. But when it came to people who merely happened to have become celebrities, she was considerably less certain. She’d heard all the arguments about role models, but what message was being sent by a role model who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight? Clearly not one Meredith relished. “Mmm,” Lindsay eventually muttered. “And Penny thought it was going to happen to her?”

“She’d already been threatened. We were at a party about three months back at Samoa Brand’s house. Samoa has this new baby dyke lover, just graduated from college. And since she’s twenty years younger than Samoa, she gets indulged all she wants. So this moron comes up to Penny and starts in on her with, ‘My kid sister’s read all your books. Don’t you think it’s time to pay back? People like you should be outed, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we show the world we’ve got a middle class too?’”

Lindsay raised her eyebrows. “That’s just one motor-mouth kid, though,” she said. “Surely Penny wasn’t getting herself in a state over that?”

“She didn’t think the kid was going to do anything, but it made her start to wonder how long it would be before somebody did. So she decided the best way to deal with the fallout was to take control and out herself. She knew there would be a lot of publicity round the new book, with it being her first adult novel. She figured that would be a good time to spread the word.” Meredith rubbed the palms of her hands over her face.