Only hours earlier, she had been sitting at her kitchen table, scrolling through messages from people who planned to attend the next vigil. She had been thinking about candles, about permits, about whether the weather would hold. She had been thinking about Renee. Every plan she made, every breath she took, still revolved around the absence that had settled into her life like a second atmosphere.
Renee had left that morning like she always did. A routine drop-off. A brief goodbye. Nothing about it felt significant at the time. The kind of ordinary moment that never announces it will be the last. By nightfall, Renee was gone, and the days that followed fractured into police statements, hospital corridors, and a blur of condolences that felt unreal in their volume and emptiness.
Becca refused to disappear into private mourning. She filmed. She spoke. She returned again and again to the place where Renee had last been seen, where the questions still hung unanswered. She organized vigils not as performances, but as anchors—ways to keep memory alive in public space, where it could not be quietly buried.Continue reading…
