“The ecotouring people, they are total fascists about leaving no trace but they have to be. We’d build these great fire pits and tell stories. Sing songs. In the morning all the rocks would be scattered, the ashes spread and no trace of us left as we moved on.”

“I can see that. Some day I think I’d like to try that sort of thing. Do you get really, really dirty?” Marissa’s expression was cautiously intrigued.

“Oh, yeah. As in some of the animals you run across smell better.” Linda pictured Marissa’s Pretty Boy Pink tipped toes in hiking boots. Boots led to legs to thighs and well, the image worked for her.

“It would take some getting used to because I suppose packing around baby wipes on an ecotour is right out.”

Linda laughed. “Baby wipes are not encouraged, no.”

In one of her lightning changes of subject, Marissa asked, in a low voice, “Was there really a woman in the airport in New Zealand? Did you . . . ?”

Sobering, Linda nodded. “There was. That was the way I used to be.”

“I don’t know how you could be with someone right after we . . . you know.”

Linda didn’t flinch. “I wasn’t with her. That was the whole point. I was never with her. I used sex, flirtation and mystery as walls to end any chance of her possibly touching any part of me that mattered.”

Marissa was frowning in concentration. “Say that another way.”

Though she’d said it any number of ways in all her talks with Dr. Kirkland, she still had to pick her words with care. “Since I was maybe ten, any time anyone said they thought I was beautiful I wanted to run and hide. But I couldn’t do that. So my mind ran away but my body stayed. When I was a little older and boys and girls alike would make sexual overtures, the same thing happened. I could have gone totally passive and let myself be used.”

Marissa nodded as tears swam in the corners of her lovely blue eyes. Linda was sorry all over again from bringing pain into Marissa’s life.

“But the teenaged me was pretty smart. She realized she had power she could use, which was the very thing that drew people to her. She learned to use the beauty, the schooled charm, eventually the flirtation, to immediately turn any kind of overture to a purely sexual one where she controlled everything. Men were left frustrated. Women were fuc—taken care of. Only rarely would I let someone touch me back and I still controlled it. Some women won’t leave until they think they made you . . . you know.”

“I’m sorry,” Marissa whispered. “To me, that’s not sex.”

“It isn’t,” Linda agreed. “It wasn’t. There was never a question of them having any piece of me. It was a highly dysfunctional, very successful strategy. And I never want to feel that way again.”

“What happens now if someone hits on you?”