My heartbeat instantly stopped or spiked—I couldn’t tell which. All I knew was that my body felt cold. “What news?”

“The kids,” Oliver interjected. “Can we speak in the kitchen? I don’t want the kids to hear something they shouldn’t.”

“Of course,” Detective Montgomery said.

The walk toward the kitchen was a countdown to some unimaginable fate. As we collected around the island where I prepped brownies earlier that day, the detective’s eyes settled first on Oliver, then swerved toward me.

“I’m just going to lay it all out. We found a teen girl’s body in the Allegheny River, and her description matches Vera’s.”

My hand involuntarily flew to cover my mouth. A scream sat deep in my throat, coming out as a gasp.

“This doesn’t mean it’s Vera.” Detective Montgomery rested her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

A couple days into the initial investigation, the first time they found a body that matched Vera’s description, I broke down in the detective’s arms, breaking all personal space boundaries with it. Since then, I’d come to realize Detective Courtney Montgomery was a toucher. A hugger. An arm-squeezer.

The detective continued, “Remember, we’ve been through this before in April and it wasn’t Vera. Plus, this time the remains are pretty decomposed, so we don’t know anything for certain yet. We don’t have an ID, but I wanted you to be prepared in case you saw the news tonight. There’s a good chance it’s not Vera, but in case it is, I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“What makes you say that the description matches Vera’s…if it’s…decomposed?” Oliver’s question stumbled awkwardly from his mouth.

“Based on the height and gender, and hair color. But that’s about all we have right now. So like I said, it might not be her.”

I felt my heart crack in half. I parted my lips to speak, but the words dropped. I tried to scoop them up, but instead my voice poured out a sob. It physically hurt to imagine my daughter’s body rotting at the bottom of a dirty brown river.

The butcher block tilted; the room trembled. I tried to seize the walls, the floor, but they slip, slip, slipped from my grip. I fell downward, barely caught by Oliver’s strong arms. They had held me more in the past six months than in twenty years of marriage. It was a shame that our closeness deepened at the cost of our daughter.

I had been so certain Vera was still alive; I could feel her lifeblood pulsing through me. She couldn’t possibly be gone. Forever. Dead. Hope that she was hiding out somewhere was the only thing keeping me sane, breathing, waking up each morning. Without that hope…what else did I have?