A Love, A Loss, and Peace XIII

It was nearly seven hours later that we were watching, while crouched down in the upstairs spare room, a robot come down our eerily quiet street with a group of officers just behind. This is it, they're going in, one way or another...that person's coming out. It felt like an instant from the team walking by my house to the ambulance being almost right in front of it. I held my breath, afraid to vomit.

Two minutes later and everyone was back to their regularly scheduled Christmas dinner, everything was cleaned up with little sign of disturbance, I almost wish I just stayed in the basement. I have no answers, I need answers...what happened? Karen called me out of my thoughts from the front door; the block was on lock down for the past eight hours so she wasn't able to get to her family Christmas after exchanging gifts with us. Dan, Karen and I stood at the front door staring at each other, trying to talk but still in shock. I hugged her after she got her coat on, she was heading to her daughter's house for the night, I was glad she wouldn't be alone. 

The magic of Christmas died for me that day. I called my father.