Around noon, the line at the drink stand by the pier had grown long, so Claire told me she would stay with the kids while I went. She kissed my cheek and said, “Go before it gets worse.”
I went because I had no idea those would be the last ordinary words she would ever say to me.
I was gone maybe twelve minutes.
When I returned, the kids were still digging through the sand. Claire’s beach towel sat exactly where she had left it, her sunglasses folded on top of her book beside the cooler.
But Claire was gone.
I told myself she must have gone into the water. I searched the waves, shading my eyes from the glare, waiting for her to surface with a laugh.
That was when I saw Noah standing at the waterline, completely still, his face as pale as chalk.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked.
He said nothing. He only kept staring at the ocean.
By sunset, half the beach was looking for her.
By midnight, the police were treating it as a possible drowning. They searched those waters for four days. They never found her body, and eventually the world decided that meant she was dead.
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