The moment I saw the suitcase hit the water, I knew something was catastrophically wrong. The way it floated for just a moment before beginning its slow descent into the murky depths of Miller’s Lake, the way my daughter-in-law had swung it with such desperate force, the way she’d looked around with that particular combination of guilt and panic that I’d seen on the faces of cornered animals—everything about that October afternoon screamed that I was witnessing something terrible, something that would change everything.
But I couldn’t have imagined just how terrible. Not until I heard that muffled sound from inside the suitcase as I dragged it from the water, my hands trembling as I forced the zipper open, my heart stopping completely when I saw what was wrapped in that soaked blue blanket.
Let me explain how a quiet Saturday afternoon turned into the most terrifying scene I have ever witnessed, and how the six months following my son’s death had been building toward this moment without my knowing it.
It was 5:15 p.m. on October 14th, and I was sitting on the wraparound porch of the house where I’d raised Lewis, my only son, watching the autumn light paint the lake in shades of amber and gold. The house felt too big these days, too quiet, too full of memories and empty spaces since I’d buried Lewis six months earlier. At sixty-three years old, I’d expected to grow old watching my son raise his own children in this house, expected Sunday dinners and birthday parties and the comfortable chaos of grandchildren running through rooms that now echoed with silence.
I was drinking chamomile tea from the cup Lewis had given me for my sixtieth birthday—the one with “World’s Best Mom” painted in his childhood handwriting—and trying to convince myself that the emptiness would eventually feel less like drowning. That’s when I saw her.
Cynthia’s silver BMW appeared on the dirt road that led to the property, kicking up a plume of dust that caught the late afternoon light. My daughter-in-law. My son’s widow. The woman who’d walked away from the car accident that killed Lewis with nothing more than minor scratches, who’d been driving that night even though Lewis usually drove, who’d somehow survived what he couldn’t.
She was driving erratically, too fast for the narrow road, the car fishtailing slightly on the loose gravel. Something was wrong. Very wrong. In the six months since Lewis’s funeral, Cynthia had been distant but cordial, visiting occasionally with the stiff formality of someone performing an obligation rather than maintaining a relationship. But she’d never come unannounced, never come alone, and certainly never driven like this—like someone fleeing or desperate or both.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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