“Feast or famine,” the cop said again. “That’s been us this season. May and June were dry as a bone. Been driving the farmers crazy. Land’s hard as a rock. We get a storm like this, and all the water just runs off into the creek. The banks ain’t made for that much rain that fast.”

He was right. My grandfather grew up in the flatlands of North Dakota, where the waters rose every spring with the snowmelt, and he used to warn me about rivers. Never trust a river, Dylan. Give a river even half a chance, and it’ll try to kill you.

I should have listened.

“Sorry about all the paperwork at a time like this,” the cop continued. I thought his name was Warren, but I couldn’t even lift my head to study the nameplate on his shirt. “I know that’s the last thing on your mind, but somebody dies, we have to jump through a lot of hoops. That’s the law. Like I say, I’m really sorry.”

“Thank you.” I barely recognized my voice. It didn’t even sound like me.

“Can you tell me your wife’s name again?”

“Karly Chance.”

“You and she didn’t have the same last name?”

“No.”

“How old was she?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“And you?”

“I’m thirty-two.”

“The two of you live in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“What brought you down to this part of the state?”

Dylan, let’s go away for a few days. I know you’re upset and angry, and you have every right to be, but we need to start over.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said, why were you down in this part of the state?”

“We took a weekend away from the city,” I replied. “A friend of Karly’s has a place in Bigneck.”

“What do you do in Chicago, Mr. Moran?”

“I’m the events manager for the LaSalle Plaza Hotel.”

“And your wife?”

“She works for her mother. She’s a real estate agent.” I added a moment later, “She was.”

Warren popped the last bite of doughnut into his mouth and then rubbed his mustache clean with a napkin. He kept scribbling notes on the yellow pad in front of him, and he hummed to himself as he did. I looked around the police interview room, which had chipped cream-colored paint on the walls and no windows. Warren sat on one side of a rickety oak table that was old enough to still have cigarette burns in the wood. I sat on the other side, swaddled in the blanket like a newborn. I couldn’t trust any of my senses. When I breathed, all I smelled was the dankness of water in my nose. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back inside the car, as the river flipped us like a carnival ride.