She remembers the warmth of Renee’s hand before the sirens, before the shouting, before the gunshot that turned a simple act of witness into a national argument. Rebecca never wanted to be anyone’s example, never imagined explaining to a small boy why his other mother would not be coming home. Their quiet decision to stop, to stand nearby and watch, was rooted in the belief that presence could calm fear, not trigger it.

In the aftermath, statements and press conferences have tried to flatten Renee into a headline or a hashtag. Rebecca refuses that. She tells their son about the way Renee sang loud and off-key, how she stayed late at church to stack chairs, how she carried granola bars in her bag for anyone who might be hungry. The shot ended a life, but not the conviction that every person deserves to be seen as fully human.