He doesn’t get a vote, and by the time he does, she’ll be seventy and it’ll be too late and he’ll ask me why, and I’ll have to say *I decided.* Which is the exact sentence I’ve been on the receiving end of my whole life.”

Then my sister said the thing that has stayed with me longest out of that whole afternoon, and she said it without any heat, which made it worse.

“You had a judge draw your line,” Chelsea said.

“I don’t get one.

There’s no order for me — I’m not the one she hit.

I have to draw mine with my hands, in the same town, where every woman I know buys her daughter’s dress from my mother.”