My husband, Daniel, and I had six children.
Three boys.
Three girls.
Our house was never quiet.
There were shoes piled by the back door, cereal bowls abandoned in the sink, towels on bathroom floors, arguments over chargers, somebody laughing upstairs when they were supposed to be asleep.
Daniel used to say silence was something we would miss someday.
I always rolled my eyes.
I didn’t know how cruelly right he would be.
Every summer, Daniel took our sons fishing at Lake Mercer.
It was their tradition.
Michael was sixteen that final summer. Tall, serious, already beginning to carry himself like his father.
Evan was thirteen and incapable of walking past a body of water without throwing something into it.
Noah was ten.
My baby boy.
He still hugged me with both arms.
The girls stayed home with me. Sophie was eighteen, Claire was fourteen, and Lucy was seven.
On the Friday morning they left, the sky was painfully blue.
I remember that because for years afterward I hated beautiful weather.
Daniel loaded a cooler into the truck.
Michael carried the tackle boxes.
Evan complained that Noah had stolen his favorite baseball cap.
“I didn’t steal it,” Noah shouted. “Dad gave it to me.”
“I loaned it to you,” Evan snapped.
Daniel laughed.
“Boys.”
That one word.
Patient. Familiar. Warm.
I stood barefoot at the edge of the driveway holding my coffee.
“Weather still good?” I asked.
Daniel looked at me.
Something passed through his expression.
It was so small I didn’t understand it then.
A hesitation.
“Clear through Sunday,” he said.
Then he walked back to me and kissed my forehead.
Not my lips.
My forehead.
“You know I love you, right?”
I laughed.
“What did you break?”
“I’m serious, Rebecca.”
I looked up at him.
He smiled, but his eyes didn’t.
“I know.”
Behind him, Noah yelled, “Picture!”
So I grabbed my phone.
The four of them stood beside Daniel’s dark green pickup.
Daniel in the middle.
Michael trying not to smile.
Evan holding up two fingers behind Michael’s head.
Noah leaning against his father’s side.
I took the photograph at 7:16 that Friday morning.
For six years, it would sit framed on my mantel.
The last photograph.
Or so I believed.
They were supposed to come home Sunday before dinner.
At five-thirty, I put chicken in the oven.
At six, I texted Daniel.
Drive safe.
At six-thirty, I called him.
No answer.
Michael didn’t answer either.
At seven, I became annoyed.
At eight, annoyed became uneasy.
At nine, I called the marina.
At 9:43 p.m., I called the police.
I remember Sophie standing at the kitchen counter watching me.
“Mom?”
“It’s fine.”
My voice sounded false even to me.
“Dad probably lost service.”
At 1:12 in the morning, headlights swept across our living room.
Two deputies stood on my porch.
No one has to tell you what two police officers on a porch mean at one in the morning.
Your body understands before your mind does.
They hadn’t found them.
Not yet.
But Daniel’s truck was parked near the north dock.
The empty trailer was still attached.
His boat was gone.
By sunrise, there were search crews on the lake.
Boats.
Divers.
A helicopter.
Volunteers walking the shoreline.
I stood at the command area wearing yesterday’s clothes while someone kept putting coffee in my hands.
Around noon, they found the boat.
Damaged.
Half submerged.
Washed against the opposite shoreline nearly nine miles from the dock.
One fishing rod remained inside.
A torn life jacket floated nearby.
No bodies.
For twenty-three days they searched.
Twenty-three days of waking up every morning believing this might be the day someone called and said, “We found them alive.”
Eventually, the calls stopped.
The search boats disappeared.
The reporters left.
The sheriff came to my house one evening and sat across from me.
His hat rested on his knees.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Keller.”
I stared at him.
“You haven’t found them.”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know they’re dead.”
His eyes softened.
“The current below Mercer Dam is extremely strong.”
“You don’t know.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Say it.”
He swallowed.
“We don’t know with absolute certainty.”
I held on to those words for six years.
Daniel’s brother, Dean, became part of our household after the accident.
He fixed the kitchen faucet.
Changed the oil in Sophie’s car.
Attended Lucy’s school performances.
He sat at our Thanksgiving table in the chair beside Daniel’s empty one, though never in Daniel’s chair itself.
Dean and Daniel had been close as children.
Or that was what everyone said.
They had inherited their father’s small construction company together.
Daniel handled projects and clients.
Dean handled accounts.
In the months after the accident, Dean practically ran the business alone.
He also became the person who kept telling me the same thing.
“You have to move forward, Becca.”
Sometimes gently.
Sometimes almost impatiently.
Once, three years after the accident, I mentioned hiring a private investigator.
Dean put down his coffee too hard.
The cup clicked against the table.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll spend money you don’t have chasing ghosts.”
“They never found them.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s exactly why you need to stop.”
I remember staring at him.
Then his expression changed.
He reached across the table.
“I’m sorry.”
He covered my hand.
“I just hate seeing you hurt yourself.”
I believed him.
Grief makes you suspicious of everyone.
Then ashamed for being suspicious.
So you learn to doubt yourself.
Six years passed.
Sophie became twenty-four.
Claire was twenty.
Lucy, thirteen.
The boys’ rooms stayed almost exactly as they had left them.
Michael’s high school sweatshirt still hung behind his door.
Evan had three baseball trophies gathering dust on his shelf.
Noah’s stuffed brown bear sat against his pillow.
I cleaned around everything.
