Neighbors now speak in hushed voices about the moment the music stopped. Some still remember the smell of barbecue in the air as the first shots rang out, the way children froze before instinct kicked in and adults threw themselves over tiny bodies. The decorations are still there: deflated balloons tangled in fences, paper plates scattered in the yard, a half-cut birthday cake abandoned on a table that became part of a crime scene.

In the days after, Stockton gathered at vigils, candles flickering where shell casings had fallen. Parents who survived now replay every second, wondering if a different choice, a different second, could have changed anything. Officials promise answers, arrests, justice. But for the families who carried their children away from a party under gunfire, justice will never sound as loud as the silence that followed the last shot.