LAUREN'S POV

I sat there in the pool of blood, still holding my sweet child’s body in my arms. My heart felt as though it had been ripped out of my chest and crushed into dust. I kept trying to convince myself that she wasn’t gone, that any moment now her little chest would rise and fall, that her warm brown eyes would flutter open, that she’d look at me and smile the way she always did. But reality was cruel, and it stared me right in the face.

My eyes had turned red and swollen from ...