“Kay, hers will not be an easy road,” she then stated. “No matter what I do.”

She swirled the coffee in her mug, as if about to taste the first sip of fine wine.

“I’m her supervisor, not her mother,” McGovern said.

This irked me considerably, and it showed when I abruptly picked up the phone and instructed Rose to hold all calls. I got up and shut my door.

“I would hope she’s not transferring to your field office because she needs a mother,” I coolly replied as I returned to my desk, which served as a barrier between us. “Above all else, Lucy is a consummate professional.”

McGovern held up her hand to stop me.

“Whoa,” she protested. “Of course she is. I’m just not promising anything. She’s a big girl, but she’s also got a lot of big obstacles. Her FBI background will be held against her by some, who will assume right off the bat that she has an attitude and has never really worked cases.”

“That stereotype shouldn’t last long,” I said, and I was finding it very difficult to objectively discuss my niece with her.

“Oh, about as long as it takes for them to see her land a helicopter or program a robot to remove a bomb from a scene,” she quipped. “Or zip through Q-dot calculations in her head while the rest of us can’t even figure them out on a calculator.”

Q-dot was slang for the mathematical equations, or scientific evaluations, used to estimate the physics and chemistry of a fire as it related to what the investigator observed at the scene or was told by witnesses. I wasn’t sure Lucy would make many friends by being able to work such esoteric formulas in her head.

“Teun,” I said, softening my tone. “Lucy’s different, and that isn’t always good. In fact, in many ways it is just as much a handicap to be a genius as it is to be retarded.”

“Absolutely. I am more aware of this than you might imagine.”

“As long as you understand,” I said as if I were reluctantly handing her the baton in the relay race of Lucy’s difficult development.

“And as long as you understand that she has and will continue to be treated like everybody else. Which includes the other agents’ reactions to her baggage, which includes rumors about why she left the FBI and about her alleged personal life,” she frankly stated.