150

Castile didn't want to shoot his co-pilot, but he had no choice.  Burnham had gotten sick, very sick, and now only a laser rifle to the head would cure him.

Burnham, however, had a very different opinion, based mostly on the fact that he knew he wasn't sick.

149

The trick to remaining active is to be active.

The trick to eating right is to eat right.

The trick to feeling well is to do the activities and consume the consumables that will make you feel well.

The trick is that there is no trick.

148

Fern had her hands draped with heavy plastic grocery bags, but she was determined to burn extra calories this year.  A car was slowing to a stop for her in the crosswalk, and Fern saw it was Patty at the wheel.  Their eyes grabbed and stuck for just a moment before Patty dragged hers away and suddenly stepped on the gas.  Fern was forced to pull up short, her can-filled bags swinging and smile disappearing.

147

"Promise me you won't leave me."  Her hands were cold and dry, her grip weak.

"I promise."  Martin's tears splashed down on Marta's arm, and he watched them instead of her face.

146

Clara had lost her Great Aunt Maggie.  To be fair, it was not only Clara who had lost the old woman, but her entire family.  It was Clara, however, who felt the most guilt.

"How does nobody know where Aunt Maggie is?" Clara asked her father, whose mother's sister Maggie was.  Her father promised he'd ask the family, but no word came back.  Clara suspected that the family didn't mourn the loss; the old woman could have been nicely described as "irritable" and "weird".

The best anyone could do was Clara's mother who remembered something about a nursing home in the area of Genesee Street and Butler Avenue.  Clara looked up a dozen various key words online and found a handful of possibilities.  Was Great Aunt Maggie even still alive?  The family, outside of Clara, agreed the ninety-something year old woman was probably dead, but contradicting that was the absence of a body in her grave.  Where was Great Aunt Maggie?