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Did I develop my own set of random assumptions by utilizing the very little information available to me? For example, Leo Vodnik had held a magazine titled Construction Engineering Australia. Men are ten times more likely than women to die at work. Is that all it took for me to predict a “workplace accident” as his cause of death? Ethan Chang had his arm in a cast. Was it his injury that made me choose “assault,” together with the fact that injury and violence is a leading cause of death for young adult men? I know I watched Kayla Halfpenny at the airport and saw her knock over her drink and then her phone. Was it my observation of the sweet girl’s clumsiness together with the fact that road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death among young adults that led me to say “car accident”? Did I simply make random choices? Is that what led me to pancreatic cancer, the most feared cancer, for the vibrant woman who reminded me of my friend Jill, and breast cancer for the pregnant woman? Did I temporarily believe I was Madame Mae? I must have been thinking of my mother, because I kept saying “fate won’t be fought.” Had I somehow become a strange alchemy of the two of us? Both of us, after all, specialized in predictions. There are certain events in my life that I believe may have had a profound effect on me. For example: the little boy who drowned at the blowhole when I was a child. I have never forgotten the sound of his mother screaming. That boy had brown eyes and dark hair. When I saw that dear little brown-eyed, dark-haired baby, did I think of that poor boy and therefore predict the baby would drown at the same age? Did I look at the young bride, Eve, and remember the charming woman who came to my mother for readings, who was so excited about her forthcoming wedding, the first wedding I ever attended? Did I think of the time I saw her at the shops, her inner light snuffed out, and remember how she died in a fire believed to have been lit by her husband? Why did I choose self-harm for Allegra, the beautiful flight attendant? Was it simply that I saw repressed pain in her eyes from the back injury I now know she suffered on that flight? Was it because I knew the rate of suicide in young females has been steadily increasing over recent years? Was I thinking of death as I boarded the plane and contemplating the fact that everyone on that plane would one day die, and wondering what their causes of death would ultimately be? Well. That’s the only one of my questions I can answer with certainty. Of course I was thinking of death. I had my husband’s ashes in my carry-on bag. I was missing my two best friends. I was thinking of every person I had ever lost throughout my life.
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