But as she spent the next several hours sorting through questionnaire feedback in preparation for their next update, she found herself occasionally musing on the role of Oreos in her life.

***

“She didn’t say a word, not one word, and I was like you said— like a teenager. Deep down I think that if I talk enough, it’ll make her angry and she’ll break. She doesn’t want me to talk. She didn’t like me talking to other contestants and certainly not to my teachers about what it was like to be in a pageant. I wrote a paper in high school about it and she had a fit.” Curled in one corner of the large chair, Linda couldn’t stop one leg from fidgeting as she talked.

Dr. Kirkland was listening intently and nodding. “What do you think she’s afraid you’ll say?”

“That’s worse than all the stuff she had done to me when I was a kid? I don’t know.”

“But teenage Linda knows, doesn’t she?”

Raking one hand through her hair, Linda said, “I think so. When my mother treats me like I’m not there I think, you know, I don’t have to take that from her. I don’t have to clean my plate. She can’t treat me—”

“Back up. Why did you say that?”

“What?” Linda tried to rewind her last few sentences. “That I don’t have to take that from her?”

“No, after that.”

“She can’t treat me that way.”

“No.” Dr. Kirkland leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You said you didn’t have to clean your plate.”

“I did?” Linda winced at the throb that pulsed right below her left cheekbone. “I mentioned a plate?”

“Yes, you did. Last session you said ‘clean plate’ when you meant ‘clean slate.’”

“Slip of the tongue.”

Dr. Kirkland didn’t say anything at all, just kept that thoughtful, supportive gaze trained on Linda’s face.

“It’s just a random memory.”

“I’ve always been surprised that you don’t have an eating disorder, given how much your mother pushed you about how you looked.”

“She never withheld food.”

“Encouraged you to eat, even?”

“She was strict about nutrition but sometimes she’d make me a favorite meal. Especially the one time with the plate I keep remembering. The time that . . . oh.”

Linda didn’t think that Dr. Kirkland was breathing. She wasn’t sure she was either. She said again, slowly, “The time that . . . she gave me a plate of food. It wasn’t lunch. It wasn’t dinner. Just a lot of food. Things I liked. She told me to clean my plate.”

In a low voice, Dr. Kirkland prompted her with, “Describe every action, everything you remember. If you don’t remember just skip to what you do.”

“She tidied up the counter. Threw stuff away, that sort of thing. Then she turned to me with the food. It was on a white plate. She handed it to me and I took it. I don’t remember after that.”

“How old were you?”