The news broke on a Sunday morning at 7:43 a.m.
Mia was on the couch with her first coffee, still in the soft gray half-wakefulness of a morning with nowhere to be, when Sarah walked out of her bedroom holding her phone with the expression of someone who has just stepped on something in the dark and is not yet sure what it was.
"You need to see this," Sarah said.
She handed the phone over. Mia read it.
Lila had posted a single photo — herself in a hospital bed, pale, no filter, one hand flat on her stomach in a gesture that was either private grief made public or public grief made to look private. Mia had known Lila long enough to know the difference and was not yet certain which this was.
The caption was long. Careful. Lila had always been a good writer.
*I have to share something t
