I dropped the laundry basket before I even saw his face.
He stood there soaked, gray, shaking so hard his keys hit the floor.
“What happened?”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“Mark.”
“Sophie’s gone.”
The world stopped.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“She slipped,” he gasped. “By the rocks. I turned around to untangle the line, and she was gone.”
I grabbed his shirt. “Mark, where is she?”
“I looked everywhere…”
“Where is my daughter?!”
His knees hit the floor.
“The current took her.”
That was the beginning of the search.
Police came. Divers went into the water. Dogs traced the shoreline. Volunteers called her name until midnight swallowed every sound.
A detective finally approached us by the lake.
“The current is strong there,” he said gently.
“But you haven’t found her,” I said.
“No, ma’am.”
“Then you don’t know.”
Mark stood staring at the water.
“It’s my fault,” he whispered. “I turned my back.”
For illustrative purposes only
For weeks, we searched.
Denise stayed beside me when I couldn’t speak. She helped me mark maps, made calls, forced me to drink water when I forgot to.
But eventually, police called it an accident.
Wet rocks. Fast water. A tragic loss.
I refused to accept it.
“I’ll sleep when they find my baby,” I told Denise one night.
But Mark… accepted it too quickly.
Too cleanly.
He sold the boat. Avoided the lake. Packed away Sophie’s fishing vest.
But the red tackle box stayed.
And then he moved it into our bedroom closet.
One night, I found him sitting on the closet floor, holding it.
“It still smells like her sunscreen, Dani.”
His voice broke.
I should have asked more questions then.
I didn’t.
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