While rushing home, I caught my tiny children abandoned in the woods, injured and unrecognizable. I burst into my parents’ house yelling, “What did you do?!” My sister coldly replied, “You lost your rights.” Before I could react, my dad choked me out. Then, my phone rang with a call from the ICU…

of the garden swing, the television blaring from the screen door. Instead, the neighborhood was wrapped in an eerie, vacuum-sealed stillness.

I cut the engine, the sudden quiet roaring in my ears. I sat in the driver’s seat, my hands glued to the steering wheel. Maybe they walked down to the corner store, I reasoned, a desperate internal plea bargaining continue reading …