Page 108 of The Statistically Unlikely Reunion

ME: Can eye explain l8r? So tired.

DAISY: Of course

GWENDY: We love you

Even Aurora deigns to comment.

AURORA: Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth when posing for pictures.

AURORA: Vi and Khloe should have told you. It gets rid of the double chin effect.

36

THE TROLLEY PROBLEM

BEFORE

My father taught me his version of the Trolley Problem when I was ten.

“You’re walking by, thinking about an upcoming presentation you’ll be conducting on my behalf. You see a trolley that’s about to run over five people, as well as a button that would allow you to switch the tracks. If you press the button, the lone person on the second track dies. If you do nothing, five people die. What should you do?”

Thanks to YouTube, TEDx Talks, and Wikipedia, I already knew the various iterations of this story. Most people press the button, because they’d rather have five people live, one die. Successive iterations always challenge this: What if instead of pushing a button you had to push someone off a bridge? What if the one person who’s on the other tracks is your boyfriend? Your sibling? Your arch enemy?

I’ve always found the iterations a bit gruesome and twisted: What if you’re a doctor, harvesting organs? Then would you kill one healthy patient? If it meant saving five?

Luckily, at ten, I already knew the answer my father expected of me. Even if I hadn’t read about the philosophical conundrum ahead of time, given the choice between A or B, my father always expected me to come up with a C. And in this case, he’d been obvious about what he wanted from me. “I’m on my way to conduct a presentation on your behalf. I don’t have time to stop.”

My father smiled at me, and I ought to have let the moment go, ought to have stayed silent. But even then, my bad-luck mouth would sometimes run away with me. “If there was no presentation and you were the one confronted with this dilemma, what would you choose?”

His frown was instantaneous. “Math is never a choice, Peinan.”

I nodded, because everything could be tallied into columns. And in this case, “Simplify the problem until it becomes math. Five is always greater than one.”

Now, like then, as I walk home from the Langham Huntington, it’s simple.

Two homes: my family’s and Lucas’s. Two families’ worth of lives: my sisters, Lucas’s brothers and mother. Lucas’s business prospects.

All against my one to seoi gaa, ill-fortune-bringing, life.

It really isn’t a choice.

I call Brody anyway, because he’s always been our most creative thinker, but when even he stammers out an “I don’t know,” I search through my contacts to where I’ve saved Beatrice Huntington’s information.

“I’m considering asking your mother to represent me, help with negotiations.” She always said I could call anytime I wanted, had seemed genuinely grateful at the hospital.

“Amazing.” I can hear the little-boy relief in Brody’s voice, and this, more than anything, lets me know Brody is out of ideas.

And I am too.

Not a choice, ultimately.

Not even the illusion of control.

37

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN CONTROLLING

PRESENT