Because if this was real, if that was actually her, then Claire hadn't drowned.
She'd left.
I felt something cold and sickening settle into my stomach.
***
We drove to Cresthollow the next morning, leaving the younger kids with my friend Marcus and his wife.
Noah and I barely spoke for the first two hours. I stared at the highway and ran the same awful math over and over in my head.
Ten years.
She'd been alive for ten years, and somewhere in that time she'd chosen a new dress and a new man and a new life that belonged to nobody but herself.
She'd been alive for ten years.
I want to be honest about what I felt in that car: it wasn't just grief. It was a rage so clean and complete that it frightened me. I thought about every nightmare I'd sat through, every bill I'd juggled, and every time I'd pulled one of her kids close when they cried for her.
