Carmen Rodriguez never believed the warnings of her family that New York City was not safe. She constantly ignored the pleas of her son and daughter-in-law, begging her to come live in New Jersey with them and their children. Carmen completely disregarded the stories her friends told of robbery and murder going on in New York City when they tried to sway her opinions in favor of living in a home in suburban Pennsylvania like them. Everyone in her life was persistent in telling her, Carmen, move away. Living by yourself in an apartment in New York City with no one to watch over you is no good. Come home to us.

But Carmen was a stubborn woman. She'd spent nearly her entire life in New York City. She'd raised two children in a much smaller apartment, which had been located in a much worse part of town. She was a survivor. She was strong. She could handle New York City, thank you very much.

It also didn't hurt that she had one of New York's finest (in her opinion, one of New York's very best) living in the apartment across the hall. In fact, the Detective was arguably one of the reasons she stayed in her apartment. Not the detective himself, mind you (though no one could argue he wasn't an attractive man, she had never quite recovered from the death of her husband seven years ago, may John rest in peace.). No, it was his niece, who had come to spend every summer with him since she was five. Carmen loved Sophia as if she were her own, and enjoyed watching her while her Uncle was on the job, workaholic he was. Granted, little Sophie was now fifteen and a young woman, but Carmen loved her too much to leave and so she stayed.

In many ways, fate is funny and works oddly. Carmen always believed in this. The night before Sophie came, Carmen had another fight with her son. She insisted, yet again, that she was perfectly safe where she was, and yet again, Andrew would not listen. She went to bed mad, as she always did after such fights, and in her anger, forgot to set her alarm clock.

If Carmen had set her alarm clock, she might have been at the market buying her paper for the day. She might have been talking to the man who lived in the apartment below, having tea, or walking in the park. She would not have been in her apartment, she would not looked out the window at that very moment. .

But as it was, she did not set the alarm and so she was there when it happened.

Even then, if she had not cared for Sophia so very much, if she had not rushed downstairs to see why Sofia stood so very still on the pavement instead of bounding up the stairs (two at a time) as she always did, Carmen might have been saved. But that was not what happened.

Monday morning, Carmen Rodriguez looked down from her second story window and saw Sophia, frozen with fear, standing on the sidewalk, as if completely paralyzed. She yelled down but Sophia just shook her head and turned, as if to run, trying to avoid some force that Carmen could not see or hear. Terrified, Carmen ran down the steps, and burst out the doorway, desperate to see what held the girl so spellbound.

It was only then that she saw, them, clothed in black, advancing on the fifteen-year-old, each with a gun in their hand.

She barely had time to think at all as they breezed right past her, grabbing the girl.

But in the seconds between the time she spun around and the time the very front man turned and put a bullet in her head, Carmen thought of two things.
The first was if she could turn back time, she'd tell Andrew he was right, and how much she loved him. She'd leave New York.

The second was that Bobby would never forgive her.