Point of Origin

He got out his lighter, the cigarette moving with his lips.

'The last thing I feel like doing right now. You know how many people that asshole's probably got in his pocket?' Marino would not stop. 'Judges, sheriffs, fire marshals…'

'Marino,' I interrupted him because he was making everything worse. 'You're jumping to conclusions. In fact, you're jumping to Mars.'

He pointed his unlit cigarette at me. 'Just wait,' he said on his way out. 'Everywhere you turn on this one, you're going to run into a briar patch.'

'I'm used to it,' I said.

'You just think you are.'

He shut the door too hard.

'Hey, don't wreck the joint,' Lucy called out after him.

'Are you going to work on that laptop all night?' I asked her.

'Not all night.'

'It's getting late, and there's something you and I need to discuss,' I said, and Carrie Grethen was back in my mind.

'What if I told you I don't feel like it?' Lucy wasn't kidding.

'It wouldn't matter,' I replied. 'We have to talk.'

'You know, Aunt Kay, if you're going to start in on Teun and Philly…'

'What?' I said, baffled. 'What does Teun have to do with anything?'

'I can tell you don't like her.'

'That's utterly ridiculous.'

'I can see through you,' she went on.

'I have nothing against Teun, and she is not relevant to this conversation.'

My niece got silent. She began taking off her boots.

'Lucy, I got a letter from Carrie.'

I waited to see a response and was rewarded with none.

'It's a bizarre note. Threatening, harassing, from Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center in New York.'

I paused again as Lucy dropped a boot to the shag carpeting.

'She's basically making sure we know that she intends to cause a lot of trouble during her trial,' I explained. 'Not that this should come as any great surprise. But, well, I…' I stumbled as she tugged off wet socks and massaged her pale feet. 'We just need to be prepared, that's all.'

Lucy unbuckled her belt and unzipped her pants as if she had not heard a word I'd said. She pulled her filthy shirt over her head and threw it on the floor, stripping down to sports bra and cotton panties. She stalked toward the bathroom, her body beautiful and fluid, and I sat staring after her, stunned, until I heard water run.

It was as if I had never really noticed her full lips and breasts and her arms and legs curved and strong like a hunter's bow. Or maybe I simply had refused to see her as someone apart from me and sexual, because I chose not to understand her or the way she lived. I felt shamed and confused, when for an electric instant, I envisioned her as Carrie's supple, hungry lover. It did not seem so foreign that a woman would want to touch my niece.

Lucy took her time in the shower, and I knew this was deliberate because of the discussion we were about to have. She was thinking. I suspected she was furious. I anticipated she would vent her rage on me. But when she emerged a little later, she was wearing a Philadelphia fire marshal T-shirt that did nothing but darken my mood. She was cool and smelled like lemons.

'Not that it's any of my business,' I said, staring at the logo on her chest.

'Teun gave it to me,' she answered.

'Ah.'

'And you're right, Aunt Kay, it's none of your business.'

'I just wonder why you don't learn…' I started in as my own temper flared.

'Learn?'

She feigned a clueless expression that was meant to irritate, eliminate, and make one feel vapid.

'About sleeping with people you work with.'

My emotions hurled down their own treacherous track. I was being unfair, jumping to conclusions with little evidence. But I was scared for Lucy in every way imaginable.

'Someone gives me a T-shirt and suddenly I'm sleeping with this person? Hmmm. Quite a deduction, Dr Scarpetta,' Lucy said with gathering fury. 'And by the way, you're one to talk about sleeping with people you work with. Look who you practically live with, hello?'

I was certain Lucy would have stormed out into the night if she had been dressed. Instead, she stood with her back to me, staring at a curtained window. She wiped outraged tears from her face as I tried to salvage what was left of a moment that I had never intended to turn out like this.

'We're both tired,' I said softly. 'It's been an awful day, and now Carrie has gotten just what she wanted. She has turned us on each other.'

My niece did not move or utter a sound as she wiped her face again, her back solidly to me like a wall.

'I am not at all implying that you are sleeping with Teun,' I went on. 'I'm only warning you of the heartbreak and chaos… Well, I can see how it could happen.'

She turned around and stared at me with a challenge in her eyes.

'What do you mean, you can see how it could happen?' she demanded to know. 'She's gay? I don't remember her telling me that.'

'Maybe things aren't so good with Janet right now,' I went on. 'And people are people.'

She sat on the foot of my bed, and it was clear she intended to hold me to this conversation.

'Meaning?' she asked.

'Just that. I wasn't born in a cave. Teun's gender makes no difference to me. I do not know a thing about her proclivities. But if you are attracted to each other? Why wouldn't anyone be attracted to either of you? Both of you are striking and compelling and brilliant and heroic. I'm just reminding you that she's your supervisor, Lucy.'

My blood pounded as my voice got more intense.

'And then what?' I asked. 'Will you move from one federal agency to another until you've screwed yourself out of a career? That's my point, like it or not. And that's the last I will ever bring it up.'

My niece just stared at me as her eyes filled again. She did not wipe them this time, and tears rolled down her face and splashed the shirt Teun McGovern had given to her.

'I'm sorry, Lucy,' I said gently. 'I know your life isn't easy.'

We were silent as she looked away and wept. She took a deep, long breath that trembled in her chest.

'Have you ever loved a woman?' she asked me.

'I love you.'

'You know what I mean.'

'Not in love with one,' I said. 'Not to my knowledge.'

'That's rather evasive.'

'I didn't mean it to be.'

'Could you?'

'Could I what?'

'Love a woman,' she persisted.

'I don't know. I'm beginning to think I don't know anything.' I was as honest as I knew how to be. 'Probably that part of my brain is shut.'

'It has nothing to do with your brain.'

I wasn't sure what to say.

'I've slept with two men,' she said. 'So I know the difference, for your information.'

'Lucy, you don't need to plead your case to me.'

'My personal life should not be a case.'

'But it's about to become one,' I went back to that subject. 'What do you think will be Carrie's next move?'

Lucy opened another beer and glanced to see that I still had plenty.

'Send letters to the media?' I speculated for her. 'Lie under oath? Take the stand and go into gory detail about everything the two of you ever said and did and dreamed?'

'How the hell can I know?' Lucy retorted. 'She's had five years to do nothing but think and scheme while the rest of us have been rather busy.'

'What else might she know that could come out?' I had to ask.

Lucy got up and began to pace.

'You trusted her once,' I went on. 'You confided in her, and all the while she was an accomplice to Gault. You were their pipeline, Lucy. Right into the heart of all of us.'

'I'm really too tired to talk about this,' she said.

But she was going to talk about it. I was determined about that. I got up and turned off the overhead light, because I had always found it easier to talk in an atmosphere soft and full of shadows. Then I plumped pillows on her bed and mine and turned down the spreads. At first she did not take me up on my invitation, and she paced some more like a wild thing as I silently watched. Then she reluctantly sat on her bed and settled back.