Lindsay Grace Sullivan is 
11 years old and lives in Chelsea. She has never been to Paris and does not speak French, but as the death toll in last night’s Parisian massacre climbed, she felt compelled to do something.

Lindsay had her parents drive her into Boston so she could place one red rose at the front door of the French consulate. Why?

“Because I was thinking, these were all regular people like me and my family who were just living their lives,” Lindsay said. “And they died.”

Kara Sullivan, Lindsay’s mom, said her daughter processed yesterday’s nightmarish news with the grim acceptance of someone twice her age.

“I think she’s come to understand that things like this are going to be part of the world she knows,” Kara said.

“The news is, unfortunately, filled with things like this. But Lindsay felt it was important to pay her respects.”

Think about that for a moment: Lindsay Grace Sullivan has already come to understand that “regular people,” whether they are in Paris, or Charleston, or Denver, or some other city, could be massacred in the middle of just living their lives.

Gabrielle Larnaudie Eiffel and Nina Goldstein, both 20-year-old French students studying in Montreal, did not expect that their visit to Boston would prompt them to lay flowers outside the French consulate last night.

“It cannot be possible,” Nina Goldstein said. “After Charlie Hebdo, it cannot happen again in France. With Charlie Hebdo, it was about freedom of expression. Now it’s happened to other people and we don’t know how far it will go.”

Unfortunately, it looks as if yesterday’s bloodshed will go much further than freedom of expression. Slaughtering Parisians in those very places that celebrate Paris to the larger world is precisely what this band of killers set out to do. Annihilate the romance of the world’s most romantic city.

“If it could be them, it could be us … our families,” said Goldstein. “We often go to the Bataclan to see shows. It’s a place where I have enjoyed so much time with my family and friends. We often go out to bars and nightclubs in this area.”

What the terrorists clearly understood is that their slaughter was sure to reverberate around the globe. Were you thinking of spending Thanksgiving in Paris? Maybe you contacted the travel agent and ate your deposit on a Parisian escape.

“They were just regular people,” Lindsay Grace Sullivan said. At 11 years of age, Lindsay knew this wasn’t a TV show, or a movie. The people killed in Paris yesterday were just like her parents, Kara and Barney. They were enjoying their lives one minute and they were gone the next.

That’s what yesterday’s terror did. It forced a child like Lindsay Grace Sullivan to be so much older before her time.

Marie Szaniszlo contributed to this report.