how apropos i would encounter the following passage in the book i took with me on a recent visit to my family:

she had said she was afraid of perry, and she was, but was it simply perry she feared, or was it a configuration of which he was part – the terrible destinies that seemed promised the four children of florence buckskin and tex john smith? the eldest, the brother she loved, had shot himself; fern had fallen out of a window, or jumped; and perry was committed to violence, a criminal. so, in a sense, she was the only survivor; and what tormented her was the thought that in time she, too, would be overwhelmed: go mad, or contract an incurable illness, or in a fire lost all she valued – home, husband, children.

- in cold blood, by truman capote