“You’re sure I won’t look like a marsupial?” she asked.

The girls laughed. Then Bernard turned on the hair dryer, encasing Holly in a chamber of white noise. She shut her eyes again.

After the children were born, Holly had finally stopped worrying so much about Phoebe Lee. Whatever mythical role she’d played in the creation of Ted Stabler, she wasn’t the mother of his children. The two of them hadn’t stayed up all night with a feverish child, wondering when or if to take him to the emergency room. She hadn’t held his hand as her mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground. It had been a year or two, at least, since Holly last thought about Ted’s first wife. Until today.

Strands of hair blew into Holly’s face and stuck to her lips. She picked them out of the way, only for them to be blown back. Goddamn it, it was hot in here. In the mirror, she saw Erin and Zanne talking at the door behind her. Then they stepped aside and Jane, the publicist, popped her head in. Bernard turned the hair dryer to high. Someone else turned the music up so loud, Holly thought her brain might crack. She felt itchy and restless. She felt trapped. It was only going to get worse with the guests arriving. She had to get it together.

She waved her arms. “Stop, stop,” she said. Bernard shut the hair dryer off. Kelly lifted a contour brush into the air.

“What’s up, Mama?” Rio asked. “You look flushed. Here.”

He handed her a bottle of water and she accepted it. She took a sip.

“You’re so good to me,” she said.

“I got you.”

“Everyone, could I have the room for a minute? And Jane—”

Jane’s head sprang up like a meerkat’s.

“Could you please stay?” Holly asked.

“Sure.”

Jane came in the dressing room while the others left. Rio shut the door, giving the two of them the privacy of the confessional booth.

“Jane, is On Set going to be here tonight?” Holly asked, swiveling to face her. “Please, sit.”

Jane sat down in Zoe’s chair. She was the senior partner at her firm, but she had that eagerness and those sunny blond highlights that made her chronological age hard to pin down. She would’ve made an excellent contestant on The Bachelor, acceptable to any man from twenty-two to fifty.

“Yes! Serafina’s really excited to talk to you about Bump to Pump, and they’ll run it on tomorrow’s show.”

“Can I see the list of questions they sent over?”