“To have legs that feel smooth as a baby’s bottom for three days.”

“But I had to endure not shaving for nearly two weeks.”

“Ideally, we’d be going to the Oscars tonight.”

“Now I know how Jack Lemmon felt preparing for Some Like it Hot.” Marissa braced herself for the next strip removal. She hissed after it was done. “Tell me that mud soak thing we do next isn’t painful.”

“It’s not. So why were you asking about electrolysis?”

“I know someone who was taken in at twelve and everything that a skimpy bikini wouldn’t cover was removed.”

“Ouch. What for?”

“Beauty pageants.”

“Well, someone had some skewed priorities.”

Marissa swallowed back tears, thinking about the chapters of Linda’s life she’d absorbed during two nearly sleepless nights. “Plastic surgery. Nose. Eyelids. That started when she was nine. Her ears were pinned when she was six.” She hissed again and heard a similar sound from her mother as her specialist began removal.

“Goodness, what were her parents thinking?”

“Dad wasn’t around. Mom was crazy. That’s why she didn’t get in touch with me, Mom. Linda. She went home to confront her mother.”

“Oh. Okay, well, that took a day. What did she do with the other three-hundred and sixty-four days?”

Marissa’s rueful smile was wiped off by the next wax strip, this time from over her knee. “Sshhhh-sugar that hurts. Well, it took more like two months. Lawyers were involved.”

Her mother nodded understandingly. “And after that?”

“She got a job, figured out how to keep her head straight then went to Montana for a while. She wrote a memoir so there would be a record somewhere that her mother was bonkers. Then she went back to Yale to finish a degree she’d given up when she had emergency surgery.”

Marissa found herself telling her mother everything, from the rib removal to the suicide attempts. Hot wax hurt coming off but it was nothing to the pain Linda had endured and as a reward Linda’s mother had called her a failure and tried to throw her away.

She was so wrapped up in the telling that she didn’t initially realize what the wax specialist wanted when she moved from her legs to her midsection. “What—Oh no. No way. I am not getting waxed there. It’s winter. I won’t be in a swimsuit for months.”

“Some women think it feels cathartic,” her mother said.

“Are you doing it?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Me neither.” Marissa found a smile for the spa worker, who looked understanding. “Thanks, but no thanks. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be doing any of this again.” Sure, she was eager to look better and feel good but masochism just didn’t work for her.

“Your friend,” the small Asian woman said. “The one you were talking about. Is she okay now?”

Marissa wasn’t about to explain that Linda’s healing had begun the night they had gone to bed in Tahiti. It awed her, in a very deep place that believed in miracles, that her arms had been safe enough for Linda to stay. She’d relived that night and now when she heard Linda’s whispered, “I’m here,” she knew it hadn’t been for Marissa’s benefit, but for both of them.