The echo of her passage up the curving staircase didn’t drown out memories of recovery rooms and summer vacations swathed in bandages. She could easily hear the sadist who had perform most of the electrolysis saying over and over, “Just a little sting. Nothing to cry about.”

Abruptly she realized her mother was coming down the stairs. Their eyes met—the only feature they remotely had in common. I hope, Linda thought, my eyes are never that cold, that dead. I don’t care what made her hurt so much she had to fix it by turning me into a freak show.

Neither of them spoke. The only reason they were even in the same hemisphere was the past, Linda mused. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the past. She thinks I’m here for the money, though.

And maybe she was. She knew she could—and would—roll up her sleeves and do any job. She only resorted to her mother’s credit card for emergencies. Otherwise she’d washed dishes across Europe and volunteered to grunt supplies for ecotourism firms. She had tried to fill her life with so many experiences that the past went away and her mother’s control of money that was rightfully hers ceased to matter. But her mother keeping the money that had been left to Linda was just that—a form of control, and it kept alive a connection between them that Linda wanted to sever. One way or the other, she would not leave here with the issue unresolved. All ties would be broken because that was what Linda wished, not because it suited her mother.

Looking at herself in the bedroom mirror of one of the many guest rooms, she tried to scold herself out of her mulish expression. “You can’t let her turn you into a fourteen-year-old again. You’re your own woman now. You aren’t so afraid of the past that you have to run from it anymore.”

Brave words but recalling her ranting at the alligator lawyer shook her belief that she could maintain her resolve. She needed to get out of this house so she could think but she’d used her mother’s money for the last time. She felt as if she was held together with rubber bands of reality that were cracked and stretched so thin that one more thing—like finding a job and a place to live she could afford—would snap her in two. Not right now, she thought. I will be my own woman. Right now is just transition.

She went to bed early, exhausted as she had been every day since her arrival. She woke sweating, heart pounding and hands clenched over her stomach several hours later, uncertain of what she’d been dreaming then fell asleep again.

This time she heard the saw and smelled the chemicals and dreamed that she woke to find her arms had been swapped for her legs and everyone told her she looked beautiful.

She woke for real with her head throbbing, shaking with terrors of nameless monsters.