Without a word, Brit turned and walked down the hallway to her kitchen. From the fridge she pulled out a seltzer for me and set it on the counter before moving to a wine bar and uncorking a bottle of red. She poured a generous serving. “Dad said Richards was worried that the baby’s father could have killed her. But Kurt’s DNA didn’t match. Who was the father?”

Mama Brit didn’t have all the answers.

“Clare was with several guys, some she might not have remembered. I’m not judging. We all dealt with Mom’s death differently. For me it was booze, for her it was sex, and you control.”

“Control? I didn’t want the control. Dad needed me to look after you two. We were all in over our heads after Mom died. The last thing I wanted was to play mommy at age fifteen.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t fair. Dad wanted to forget about all three of us,” I said. “Our home was his physical address, but he checked out months before Mom died. All three of us felt orphaned. The lush, the slut, and the control freak. We were quite the trio.”

Brit’s lips thinned into a grim line. “You make us sound like monsters. We were kids, doing the best we could.”

“Did Mom poison us?”

“What?”

Richards’s theory still felt so far-fetched, but I hoped saying it out loud to Brit would give it credibility. “It’s called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. In our case, poison a kid to get Daddy’s attention.”

“Did you get that idea from Richards, too?”

“Is it true?”

“How would I know?”

“Because we kept getting sick after Mom died. Did you continue the tradition?”

“Richards is filling your head with shit. None of that is true. I took you to doctors. They all agreed the stomach pains were stress!”

As much as I wanted to press, that didn’t matter right now. Clare’s death topped all our family’s demented emotional problems. “Did you know seventy percent of women are murdered by someone they know and that the incidence of a woman being killed rises when she’s pregnant?”

“That factoid from one of your internet searches or Richards?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

She took several sips of wine. I smelled the fruity aroma and felt old cravings kicking in. I popped the seltzer, found the manufactured lemon flavor bland.

“It’ll always matter. Richards is filling your head with lies.”

“Why would he lie?”

She laughed. “Honey, he’s desperate to make an arrest in this case. Not solving Clare’s murder ruined his career. He’s lucky they let him ride a desk the last thirteen years.”

“I believe him.”

Brit shook her head. “I can’t do this right now. I’m supposed to meet David for drinks.”

“This is more important, don’t you think?”