The woman was openly crying now, but Temple continued to berate her. It was painful to watch. Even more painful to imagine what kind of desperation would drive someone to let herself be subjected to this kind of abuse.

The woman’s tears only fueled Temple’s scorn. “Boo hoo. This is what you’ve done all your life. Cry about your problems instead of fixing them. Go on! Get off the island! There are thousands of people waiting to take your place.”

“No!” the woman cried. “I can do it. I can do this.”

“Then do it!”

Temple hit the pause button as the woman began frantically pummeling a punching bag. Lucy didn’t believe self-loathing was the best form of motivation, but Temple thought differently. “Irene ran her first half marathon four months after we taped that episode,” she said proudly. “By the time I was done with her, she’d lost over a hundred pounds.”

Lucy wondered how many of those hundred pounds Irene had been able to keep off without Temple around to scream in her face.

“God, she looked amazing.” Temple turned off the television and stood, wincing slightly as she straightened. “The critics are always putting me down. They’ll compare me to trainers like Jillian Michaels—say she has a heart and I don’t. I have a heart. A big one. But you don’t help people by coddling them, and I’ll match my results against hers any day.” She jerked her head toward the stairs. “I’m going to do some upper body work. From the looks of those arms, you should join me.”

The face of the sobbing woman flashed through Lucy’s mind. “It’s not a good time for me.”

Temple’s lip curled. “There’s never a good time for you, is there, Lucy? You can always find a reason not to take care of yourself.”

“I take care of myself.” Maybe it was Temple’s intimidating glare, or it could have been the second chili dog, but she didn’t sound convincing. “I exercise,” she said in a firmer voice. “I don’t love to, but I do it.”

Temple crossed her arms over her chest like a prison warden. “What kind of exercise?”

“Push-ups. Some crunches. I walk a lot. Sometimes I run.”

“Sometimes doesn’t cut it.”

“In the winter, I go to the gym.” Three times a week, if she was lucky. More often twice. But hardly a week went by that she didn’t get there at least once.

Temple flicked her hand toward Lucy’s body as if it were spoiled meat. “Are you really satisfied with the results you’re getting?”

Lucy thought about it. “I sort of am.”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

“I don’t think so. Would I like to be a little firmer? What woman wouldn’t? But I keep at it. A little here, a little there. Do I obsess about it? Not really.”