To say their faces were red was the understatement of the century.
Linda Carter sat at the kitchen island with both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she hadn't sipped in eleven minutes.
The ceramic had gone from scalding to lukewarm to approaching room temperature, and she hadn't moved. Hadn't blinked or done anything except stare at the marble countertop with the thousand-yard stare of a woman who had seen things.
Heard things.
Things that could not be unheard, no matter how aggressively she tried to lobotomize the memory out of her own skull.
Across from her — three stools away, because proximity felt dangerous this morning — Emma sat in identical paralysis.
Her cereal had gone soggy twenty minutes ago.
The spoon rested in the bowl at the exact angle she'd abandoned it, frozen mid-bite, when the first moan had drifted down the hallway from Peter's ground-floor bedroom like a ghost that refused to be exorcised.
