The sharp crack of plastic and glass still vibrated through the high ceilings of the kitchen, but Lydia barely heard it over the rushing of her own blood. Something had snapped inside her the moment she'd read the headline, and now the wreckage of her phone lay scattered across the marble floor like evidence of a crime she refused to acknowledge.
She stood frozen, her chest heaving, staring at the scattered pieces of her smartphone lying dead against the baseboard. Her knuckles were bone-white, her breath coming in ragged, ugly hitches. The article was still burned into her mind, every damning word of it, even though the screen that had displayed it now lay in fragments at her feet.
