“What happened?” I asked.
He swallowed.
“I saw her.”
The wrench slipped from my hand and struck the tile.
“Who?”
“Mom.”
For several seconds, I could hear nothing but the soft drip of water beneath the sink.
Claire had been gone for ten years.
She had disappeared from a crowded beach while I was buying drinks for her children. Search teams had combed the water for days. The police had called it a probable drowning.
We had held a memorial service.
Her children had grown up grieving her.
And now Noah was standing in front of me, claiming he had seen her alive.
I wanted to tell him he was mistaken.
I wanted to laugh, get angry, or demand that he stop playing with something so painful.
But the fear in his eyes told me this was no joke.
The Last Ordinary Afternoon
I was twenty-nine when Claire disappeared.
We had been engaged for almost a year, although we had not chosen a wedding date. Life with six children rarely left much time for flower arrangements and seating charts.
