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In Dora’s living room her clan gathered every Sunday of every season, aunts and uncles smelling of talcum and bleach, assorted cousins bypassing both scents to sniff out power and align ourselves accordingly. Our loyalties toward any adult then were fragile and easily swayed. The fall afternoon Linda invaded their story swapping session with a tale of her own, I listened from the doorway. She described in detail the bullet’s trajectory: how it had whizzed past her ear, coming dangerously close to contact. Between two dirt clods we had uncovered this, she said, raising the shotgun casing.