TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
Living in the After BY RACHAEL CHERRY W hen tragedy strikes, it can feel like a bomb exploding—sudden and without mercy. Life moves forward at its normal pace until the blast arrives. Shockwaves shatter, derail, and topple. Sounds become muffled. Time slows. For those at the epicenter, everything has changed. The victims find a new normal, but no one is the same living in the after. On October 9, 2020, the quiet northeast Texas town of New Boston felt those shockwaves when news spread about the brutal murder of a young wife and mother, Reagan Michelle Hancock, and her unborn daughter, Braxlynn Sage. The basic story is easy to find in headlines, true crime episodes, and court records. The date, the address, the charges, and the verdict are all there. But nothing in those lines tells you who Reagan was. Those records don’t show the way her mother’s voice lifts as she says, “She was the best mama I’ve ever known,” or the way it catches when she talks about finding her daughter on that day. Those records don’t hold the memories her Granny has of the curly-headed spitfire who brought so much excitement into the family, nor do they capture the loss her siblings feel about not growing old with their sister.
Jessica Brookes, Reagan Hancock's mother
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LIFE & STYLE
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