“I can’t fathom why you and Benton would be talking about her in the context of everything else.” I feel a flutter of uneasiness as I wait for the rest of the story.

“Remember the fights you and Mom used to have when you were kids?” Lucy adds to my confusion. “Remember what you nicknamed her after you got really pissed off?”

“SISTER TWISTER. BECAUSE OF her wicked pinching in addition to her other ambushes. Twisting and yanking your hair or cutting it off in your sleep or who the hell knows. Although to hear her tell the story it was you who was the nasty fighter.” Lucy reminds me of what I’ve not thought about in years.

“Dorothy’s always been quite the fiction writer.” That’s as much as I’m going to say.

I’ve spent most of my adult life being extraordinarily circumspect about what I tell Lucy about her mother.

“We’ve got to figure out who might know what went on in your house when the two of you were growing up in Miami.” Lucy plugs her phone into the charger on the countertop she’s perched on.

“Who besides my mother and Dorothy? And me obviously? No one comes to mind but I’ll give it some thought.” I open a closet and find a dark blue CFC windbreaker to put over my scrubs because I’m getting chilled.

“I suspect that certain things are connected and have been for a lot longer than we’ve realized,” Lucy says. “Going back to summer before last when Natalie was dying, and longer ago than that.”

“Such as?” I zip up the windbreaker, and it’s so big it hangs midthigh. “What things?” I open the stainless-steel refrigerator reserved for beverages and edibles, no evidence allowed. “Water or Gatorade?”

“Starting with I no longer believe her death was the private family matter we thought it was. Gatorade would be good. In a bottle, not a can.”

“Cool blue or lemon-lime?”

“There should be orange.”

“Natalie’s death wasn’t private?” I question as I root around for orange Gatorade. “As in someone was spying on her? I’ve not heard you mention this before as if it’s a certainty. I know only that Natalie was very paranoid. She worried she was being monitored.”

“She should have been worried. That’s what I’m getting at. I think someone was attempting to spy during her most intimate final weeks, days, hours, moments with all of us.” Lucy’s green eyes blaze. “I can’t say for sure how far it went because none of us were expecting surveillance or looking for it. So things could have been missed.”

“Because we didn’t take Natalie’s fears seriously enough,” I say.

“No we didn’t. And what I can’t swear to now is whether there were any other devices in her house or later in hospice. I wasn’t looking for them.”