Birds were the first.
A sudden and eerie silence descended upon the olive tree, suffocating the chattering of finches and starlings. After that, there was a dramatic dispersal, with wings pounding wildly against the afternoon sky as they escaped an unseen danger that their ancestors had sensed long before ours.
It took some time for Lila's heart to sense anything was wrong before her brain could identify the precise warning signs. While she was still buzzing from the revolutionary idea of safety and the sunshine, she was about to raise her wineglass when her years of fleeing came crashing down in a unified scream.
The crystal glass, a wedding present from a long-dead ancestor of the Marceau family, slipped from her fingers as the explosion sounded.
Neither the controlled demolition
