There’s a look Sandy Phillips came to know each time she arrived somewhere a gunman had made famous. Her road trip through mass shooting sites went on for a decade and always seemed to have a new stop. When she reached it, she’d lock eyes with someone and see the catatonia, as plain as the weight of every leaden step they’d taken since the news that upended their life.
She, too, had inched through days when all the world’s laughter went silent and its beauty was lost. In a morning fog, she’d question if it all was a nightmare, and in the black of night, when the grisly visions clawed her awake, she’d lie there wishing it was she who had died. Life became a torturous cycle punctuated by her own sobbing. She was sure she was creeping toward insanity.
