I don’t think he’s going to let me come home, Mom. I don’t think the lake is an accident. If I disappear, please don’t believe the police. Look at the insurance policy in the study drawer. Look at his passport. Don’t let him win.
I love you, Mom. Be brave.
Owen.
The paper slipped from my limp fingers, fluttering down onto the linoleum floor. The breath left my lungs in a sharp, agonizing gasp. The tragic accident. The sudden storm. The current that washed him away. The fact that the search teams never found his body.
And my husband, Mark, who had been so eager to handle the funeral alone while I was hospitalized, who had insisted on a closed-coffin memorial service with an empty casket, telling me it was “too painful” to prolong the search.
“Mrs. Rhodes?” Mrs. Dilmore’s voice broke through the freezing fog in my mind. She stepped forward, kneeling to pick up the letter, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and fierce determination. “I read the first few lines before you got here just to make sure it was real. I’ve already called the county sheriff’s department. They are dispatching an investigative unit to your house right now.”
