I stare at her as if she’s a ghost from the past. I was just watching her teenaged self inside her FBI Academy dorm room, and I almost wonder if my eyes are deceiving me. But the way she’s dressed stays the same, and she could pass for being that young again. It’s as if the Lucy in the videos is walking toward me in real time, a Lucy in her midthirties now. But she doesn’t look it. I doubt she’ll ever look her age.

Her energy is fiercely childlike, her body really hasn’t changed, and her discipline about being fit and vital isn’t vanity. Lucy lives like an endangered creature that twitches at the slightest movement or sound and hardly sleeps. She may be volatile but she’s sensible. She’s steely logical and rational, and as I step up my pace to meet her, the searing pain reminds me that I’m not dead.

“Your limping is worse.” Her rose gold hair flares in the sun, and she’s tan after a recent trip to Bermuda.

“I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

The expression on her chiseled pretty face is difficult to read but I recognize tension in the firm set of her lips. I sense her dark mood. It sucks up the bright light around her. When I hug her, she’s clammy.

“Are you all right? Are you really?” I hold on to her a second longer, relieved she’s not injured or in handcuffs.

“What are you doing here, Aunt Kay?”

I smell her hair, her skin and detect the swampy salty odor of stress. I sense her state of high alert in the pressure of her fingers and her constant scan, her eyes moving everywhere. She’s looking for Carrie. I know it. But we aren’t going to discuss it. I can’t ask if she’s aware of the video link sent to my phone or tell her that it appears she was the one who sent it. I can’t let on that I watched a film clip secretly recorded by Carrie. In other words, I’m now an accessory to Carrie Grethen’s spying and who knows what else.

“Why is the FBI here?” I ask Lucy instead.

“Why are you?” She’s going to push for an answer. “Did Benton drop a hint that this was going to happen? Nice of him. How the fuck does he look at himself in the mirror?”

“He didn’t tell me anything at all. Not even by omission. And why all the swearing? Why must you and Marino swear so much?”

“What?”

“I’m just mindful of all the profanity. Every other word is fuck,” I reply as an emotional surge rolls over me.