Sarah stopped responding to family messages. She went to work, came home, and did not explain herself to anyone because she barely had words for it herself. Tom held her hand in the evenings without requiring conversation. Sherry called periodically with updates that amounted, always, to the same two words: not yet.
A neighbor mentioned the car on a Monday morning, casually, over the fence—a dark sedan, two men, parked outside for several days running. That same afternoon, a colleague pulled Sarah aside to say someone had called the office asking questions about her. Sarah drove home knowing and feeling were very different things.