That’s not a hypothetical. It was exactly what unfolded before me, a scene so vicious and surreal that the air inside St. Matthew’s Cathedral, in the heart of Georgetown, felt thick and unbreathable.
The polished walnut casket glowed under soft candlelight—far too elegant for the body it held: my best friend, Sofia Alvarez. She was thirty-two. Eight months pregnant when she died.
Everyone believed she had taken her unborn daughter, Hope, with her. Sofia, my constant since childhood, my chosen family, the girl who shared dollar-store cupcakes with me during recess while we dreamed of escaping the lives we were born into.
Nearly two hundred people filled the pews. Washington’s elite—or those desperate to appear so—sat draped in designer black, their grief rehearsed, their sympathy temporary.
White lilies mixed with expensive perfume, creating a suffocating sweetness. Beneath the solemn silence buzzed a question no one dared ask aloud: how does a healthy young woman die overnight? “Multiple organ failure,” the doctors said, as if that explained anything.