'What am I going to do while you're gone tomorrow?' Wesley got back to that subject.
'Drive to Hilton Head and get groceries,' I replied. 'Make sure there's plenty of Black Bush and Scotch. More than usual. And sunblock SPF 35 and 50, and South Carolina pecans, tomatoes, and Vidalia onions.'
Tears filled my eyes again, and I cleared my throat.
'As soon as I can, I'll get on a plane and meet you, but I don't know where this case in Warrenton is going to go. And we've already been over this. We've done it before. Half the time you can't go, the rest of the time it's me.'
'I guess our lives suck,' he said into my ear.
'Somehow we ask for it,' I replied, and most of all I felt an uncontrollable urge to sleep.
'Maybe.'
He bent down to my lips and slid his hands to favorite places.
'Before soup, we could go to bed.'
'Something very bad is going to happen during this trial,' I said, and I wanted my body to respond to him but didn't think it could.
'All of us in New York again. The Bureau, you, Lucy, at her trial. Yes, I'm sure for the past five years she has thought of nothing else and will cause all the trouble she can.'
I pulled away as Carrie's sharp, drawn face suddenly jumped out of a dark place in my mind. I remembered her when she was strikingly pretty and smoking with Lucy on a picnic table at night near the firing ranges of the FBI Academy at Quantico. I could still hear them teasing in low playful voices and saw their erotic kisses on the mouth, deep and long, and hands tangled in hair. I remembered the strange sensation running through my blood as I silently hurried away, without them knowing what I had seen. Carrie had begun the ruination of my only niece's life, and now the grotesque coda had come.