“We’re in this together, Lucy,” I quietly went on. “We’re all that’s left, really. Just you and me. Benton would want us united in this. He wouldn’t want you giving up. Then what will I do, huh? If you give up, you’ll be giving up on me, too.”

She began to sob.

“I need you.” I could barely talk. “More than ever.”

She turned around and clung to me the way she used to when she was a frightened child starved for someone who cared. Her tears wet my neck, and for a while we stood in the middle of a room still packed with computer equipment and school books, and plastered with posters of her adolescent heros.

“It’s my fault, Aunt Kay. It’s all my fault. I killed him!” she cried out.

“No,” I said, holding her tight as my own tears flowed.

“How can you ever forgive me? I took him away from you!”

“That’s not the way it is. You did nothing, Lucy.”

“I can’t live with this.”

“You can and you will. We need to help each other live with this.”

“I loved him, too. Everything he did for me. Getting me started with the Bureau, giving me a chance. Being supportive. About everything.”

“It’s going to be all right,” I said.

She pulled away from me and collapsed on the edge of the bed, wiping her face with the tail of her sooty blue shirt. She rested her elbows on her knees and hung her head, staring at her own tears falling like rain on the hardwood floor.

“I’m telling you, and you’ve got to listen,” she said in a low, hard voice. “I’m not sure I can go on, Aunt Kay. Everybody has a point. Where it begins and ends.” Her breath shook. “Where they can’t go on. I wish she had killed me instead. Maybe she would have done me a favor.”

I watched her with gathering resolve as she willed herself to die before my eyes.

“If I don’t go on, Aunt Kay, you’ve got to understand and not blame yourself or anything,” she muttered, wiping her face with her sleeve.

I went over to her and lifted her chin. She was hot and smoky, her breath and body odor bad.

“You listen to me,” I said with an intensity that would have frightened her in the past. “You get this goddamn notion out of your head right now. You are glad you didn’t die, and you aren’t committing suicide, if that’s what you’re implying, and I believe it is. You know what suicide is all about, Lucy? It’s about anger, about pay-back. It’s the final fuck-you. You will do that to Benton? You will do that to Marino? You will do that to me?”

I held her face in my hands until she looked at me.