Free Point of Origin by Patricia Cornwell

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