Daniel’s brother was around constantly after the accident.
He changed a tire in the rain because I had forgotten cars still needed ordinary things after your life ended.
He fixed a leaking faucet.
He brought groceries when I forgot to buy them.
But whenever I mentioned the lake, something closed in his face.
“Andrea, you have to stop.”
“I just want to understand…”
“You can’t.”
“What if they missed something?”
“They searched for weeks.”
“What if Daniel turned around because something happened?”
Dean would rub both hands over his face.
Then say some version of the same thing.
“You have three daughters who still need you.”
I hated him for saying that.
Not because he was wrong.
Because it sounded too much like:
Forget the other four.
I never did.
Six years passed.
The girls grew up around absence.
One daughter started college.
Another learned to drive.
Birthdays came.
Christmases came.
School pictures changed.
The bedrooms at the end of the hall barely did.
Sophie became the person who finally said what everyone else had apparently been thinking.
“Mom, we need to go through their things.”
I looked at her.
She was standing in the doorway of her brothers’ room holding an empty cardboard box.
“No.”
“Mom…”
“I said no, Sophie.”
“We’re not throwing anything away, Mom.”
“Then why are you holding a box?”
“To donate what somebody could use.”
I stared past her.
That room wasn’t a shrine.
At least I told myself it wasn’t.
But too many things remained exactly where they’d been.
A baseball cap still hung from one bedpost.
A stack of comic books sat beside another.
One sneaker had been under a desk for six years because I couldn’t bring myself to move it.
Some stupid part of me had never stopped expecting footsteps in the hall.
Sophie lowered her voice.
“They’re not coming back for these.”
That hurt.
She knew it immediately.
Her eyes filled.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked away.
Then reached for another box.
“Fine.”
She nodded.
We started packing.
Old shirts.
Books.
School supplies.
Things outgrow when they’re allowed to keep growing.
After a while, I stepped away to cook.
Dinner was still hours off, but I needed an excuse to leave.
I couldn’t stay in that room any longer.
That afternoon, Sophie found the phone.
She came into the kitchen holding a black rectangle with a cracked corner.
“Mom?”
I looked up from the pile of old charging cables.
“Yes?”
“Wasn’t this Dad’s?”
My heart started pounding.
I took it from her.
It was Daniel’s old phone.
The one he’d told me he’d lost nearly a year before the fishing trip.
We’d searched the car.
The garage.
The couch.
The junk drawers.
Eventually, we bought him another.
“Where was this?”
“Bottom of the electronics bin,” Sophie said.
I flipped the phone over.
It was completely dead.
Sophie found a matching charger and plugged it in.
She sat beside it like she was waiting for a pulse.
“Mom, what if there are pictures?”
I froze.
“Probably old ones.”
“What if there are videos? Voice notes?”
I didn’t answer.
The phone finally powered on.
It automatically connected to our home Wi-Fi.
A few minutes later, old photos began filling the gallery.
Then Sophie opened it.
I couldn’t watch.
Not yet.
So I left her at the table and went upstairs.
A few minutes later, I heard her running.
“Mom…”
Something in her voice made me turn.
Sophie stood in my bedroom doorway holding the phone with both hands.
Her face had gone pale.
“What happened?”
She swallowed.
“There’s a video that synced from Dad’s account.”
My heart started racing.
“What kind of video?”
“It’s from the day before thetrip.”
I stepped toward her.
Sophie looked down at the screen.
Then back at me.
“Mom, I know what really happened back then.”
I just stared at her.
“What?”
“Dad wasn’t alone in it,” she whispered. “Uncle Dean was there.”
She pressed play.
Daniel appeared on the screen.
He’d propped his phone on the workbench while checking fishing gear.
He was alive.
Laughing.
Moving around the garage like nothing terrible could possibly be waiting for him.
I reached for the bedpost.
Then someone walked into the frame behind him.
Dean.
I stared.
“What is he doing there?”
Sophie didn’t answer.
On the video, Dean said, “I’m not going, man.”
Daniel looked up sharply.
“What do you mean you’re not going?”
I turned toward Sophie.
“Going where?”
She whispered, “Fishing, I think.”
My pulse spiked.
Dean had been invited.
In six years, he had never told me.
The video kept playing.
Daniel threw a life jacket onto the workbench.
“You need this weekend.”
Dean laughed bitterly.
“My girlfriend walked out three months ago, Dan.isn’t going to fix that.”
Daniel looked at him.
“No. But sitting alone won’t either.”
Dean looked away.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“Come with us.”
“No.”
“Fine.”
Then Daniel picked up another life jacket.
Checked the straps.
And said something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“Kids don’t remember every expensive thing you buy them, Dean.”
He pulled hard on the buckle.
“They remember whether you came back.”
My breath stopped.
Daniel had said that the day before he never came back.
The video froze for half a second.
But that wasn’t the part Sophie had been trying to show me.
She reached over and dragged the video forward.
“Mom, listen to what Dad says next.”
Daniel was still talking to Dean.
“Fine. Don’t come fishing.”
Dean looked away.
Daniel tightened another life-jacket strap.
“But come over Sunday night.”
“For what?”
“The boys are going to talk your ear off whether you like it or not.”
Dean almost smiled.
Then the video ended.
