The silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating. Her phone buzzed in her bag, flashing with calls and messages she couldn’t bring herself to answer. She pressed her palms to her ears, trying to drown it all out—the whispers, the gasps, Liam’s voice choosing Stephanie.
Images looped in her mind: her bouquet falling, her parents rising in protest, Liam’s hands tightening around her sister’s. Too vivid, too real. When her mother’s name appeared on the screen, then her father’s, then Phoebe’s, Clara switched it to silent and shoved it aside.