Carrie must have orchestrated it so that she would be with my sister on the flight from Fort Lauderdale last night. No doubt she was sitting right next to her in first class, and that’s probably why the alarm is off in the house and Carrie is in my backyard. Dorothy probably let her in just like she would some other new friend she’s made, and my sister never meets a stranger.

She’ll bring anybody home and did all the time when we were growing up. She never asked. It’s always been her right to do whatever she wants, and this time it might cost her and all of us. My mind races crazily as I try to figure out what to do.

“I just can’t understand why you’re here being so awful, and after several drinks and our lovely conversation? I thought I had a new girlfriend, one who reminds me so much of my daughter, which is why we were so instantly taken with each other. And here I thought it was going to be such fun when I came north to see my grandson.” My sister is crying. “Desi? Come over here right now and let’s all go into the house like this never happened. And you just go on and leave us alone, do it now while you can,” she warns Carrie, whose answer is to take the flight controller out of Desi’s hands.

She moves the drone directly over my sister’s head, approximately six feet above her, and the flying blades stir her dyed blond hair, which is long and makes her look harsh.

“Just touch where it says enable,” Carrie says to Desi, and she holds the flight controller close to show him.

“Don’t do anything she says!” Dorothy cries.

“Shut up. Please,” Janet says to her while not taking her eyes off Carrie.

But Janet has no weapon. If she did, she’d know exactly how to use it, and even as I’m thinking this I don’t see a way out. Not in the usual sense of what one does in a dire emergency. It’s very hard to shoot a drone. They’re filled with empty spaces and even if you take out several rotor blades that doesn’t mean you’re going to stop it in time.

You’d need to take out the power source the same way you would an explosive device. But I don’t have a water cannon handy, and taking the lock off the pistol I keep out of reach on a top shelf of a kitchen cabinet isn’t going to help. Spraying bullets in a residential neighborhood is out of the question.