“Hello, Mr. Moran,” she said. “I’m Sheriff Sinclair. You have my deepest condolences on the death of your wife.”

“Thank you.”

I realize there’s nothing else for people to say in these circumstances, and it makes them feel better to say it. I’m sorry for your loss. But as the one who just lost everything, I can tell you, it doesn’t help at all.

“I wonder if you could take me through the details of the accident.”

“I’ve already done that, Sheriff.”

“Yes, I know you’ve been through it with my men, and I know how difficult this is, but it would be very helpful if you could tell me again.”

So I did.

I replayed it all like a horror movie that you can’t stop watching. How the two-lane road vanished, swallowed up by inky black water overflowing the banks of the river. How we plunged into the mud-thick current, which wriggled and surged like a sea creature. How we shimmied on the surface like a dancer struggling to do a pirouette, and then the front end lurched downward, and sludgy water filled the car.

“That’s a terrible thing,” Sheriff Sinclair said when I was finished. Her eyes never left me the entire time I was talking. Somehow I had the idea that I was strapped to a polygraph in her mind, with probes tracking my heartbeat with every breath I took. She reminded me of my mother, who’d also been a cop and who’d been able to tell when I was lying as a child just by looking at my face.

“Do you know how fast you were going when you went into the water?” the sheriff continued.

Dylan, slow down.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Do you know how fast you were going when you went into the water?”

Dylan, please. Slow down.

“No, I don’t know. Too fast, obviously. I didn’t see the flood in time to stop.”

“The car sank immediately?”

“Yes.”

“And you were both trapped?”

“Yes.”

“How is it that you managed to get out of the car but your wife didn’t?”

I twitched. In my head, the car jerked through a somersault under the water. Our bubble of air spilled away. The window near me broke into pieces, and something shot through the space like a javelin.

“A tree trunk came through the car,” I explained. “I was able to pull myself out. I was trying to get Karly out, too, but the car shifted and ripped her away from me.”

“Did you dive back down to find her?”

“Of course I did.”

“At what point did you give up?”

“I didn’t give up, Sheriff,” I snapped back at her. “I lost consciousness. At some point, the current must have thrown me clear. When I came to, I was on the riverbank, and the police were there.”