Those Empty Eyes

by Charlie Donlea

Instead of help, what Alexandra Quinlan got were weeks and weeks of headlines accusing her of killing her family—because we all know that in the news media, if it bleeds, it leads. We also know that the twenty-four-hour news cycle is quick to cast judgment, but slow to repent.

It shouldn’t have surprised Annette that Larry Chadwick’s political ambitions blinded him to the fact that a girl was missing. Or that he considered the potential derailment of his Supreme Court nomination more a tragedy than the disappearance of a twenty-two-year-old college student. He was, after all, a politician.