Part 2: My husband and our three sons d!ed during a storm on their guys’ trip — five years later, my youngest daughter came to me and said, “Mom, I know what really happened that day. The police officer lied to you.”

For five years, I’d lived with the terrible uncertainty of having nothing to bury.

And now my youngest son was speaking from behind a door.

***

“Mom, hurry.”

Owen’s voice trembled.

I reached for the handle.

Locked.

“There’s a bolt on your side,” he whispered. “I can’t reach it.”

Hannah grabbed a flashlight.

Lucy stood at the stairs, listening to Aaron approach.

I searched along the doorframe.

The wood was old and swollen.

Then I found it.

A rusted iron latch concealed beneath a strip of trim.

I pulled.

Nothing.

I pulled harder.

The metal scraped.

The latch released.

The door swung inward.

And there he was.

My Owen.

Not the nine-year-old boy I’d last seen waving from Ben’s truck.

A taller, thinner boy with dark hair falling across his forehead.

Fourteen now.

His cheeks were hollow.

His clothes looked too big.

There was a scar above his left eyebrow that I didn’t remember.