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.