So the three of us we're hanging out at the house and Julie who was studying to be a bartender had made us some Long Island teas, while we were sittin... around bullshiting I reached over and grabbed an empty Coke bottle and started spinning it and after a few times Don had said are we playing spin the bottle or something? I said yeah it's strip spin the bottle and I spun it and it landed on Julie and I said okay do you have to take something off so she took off a sock and then the bottle landed. “She is,” Mother said with a soft smile. “Every child born here will be your sister.”“I like that.” I hugged my eldest daughter gently against my side.“Will you be staying with us, Grandma? For real?” Hotene asked hopefully. To both our children, but Hotene in particular, Mother had become an almost mythical figure, a woman who wielded power across the ship like a colossus.“I will, child. At least until Kirra weans.”So, for a time, things were as much as they had been when we were children.. I began using open tunings and lots of bar chords,taught myself to play the slide, and kept practicing fretting thestrings with my fingers held flat to get around the nails. And with myright hand I threw away the flat pick and began to use metal fingerpicks like the dobro players do, which protected my long nails. Andeventually I got pretty good and started playing again regularly,though just for myself.One night, though, I was out at a large TG social girl event and therewas a live band. Some of the younger men would send them drinks, others asked them to dance. It wasn't going to be a bad night, just not what she'd expected. Finally, Lillian came back to the table after dancing with one of the younger guys for the third time."Look, I invited this kid Chet and his buddy over to have a drink with us, hope you don't mind. They don't seem like bad guys."Carla had no objections; she just wished they were older. They arrived and Chet introduced his friend Ray as they sat down. They.