She’d had plenty of chances to attend them in Texas, naturally. In the Lone Star State, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting some poor soul who was related to another sad sack whose dance card was already filled up for the Brownsville Boogie. She had never gone to that dreary little town, at least not so she could watch some product of crap parenting and stupid life choices breathe his (or, on occasion, her) last. She knew it was simply a stupid macho rite of passage the old typists who called themselves journalists were running on her. She refused to be drawn in. She’d taught herself a long time ago that when people were playing games, the only way to win was not to play. But in Texas, at least, she’d had a choice about whether or not to take part. Just one more thing she’d taken for granted, she realized: that whole “choice” thing. The Big Bang caught her in San Francisco, visiting her sister. It was a joyful reunion, as Molly had only a year before dodged her own death sentence: a bout of cancer that nearly killed her.
