Montrose makes a note of that. “Was there anyone else?” he asks.

This isn’t Grand Central, I think. But I don’t say it.

“The old guy walking his dog,” I say. “Some kids from one of the houses up the beach were out this morning. No one else. Not that I could see. I mean, I wasn’t looking for people. I was here, you know, to be with Sophie and Aubrey.”

Sophie’s name causes another crack in my voice. I reel the emotion in.

I tell them that I made a fire when I got in. Sophie had stopped at a store and bought sandwiches and a couple of steaks. We had a glass of wine and watched one of the DVDs that the owners had provided, a collection that was mostly kid-friendly comedies. Aubrey fell asleep around nine, and Sophie put her down. Not long after that, an hour or so, we went to bed.

The next morning, I tell them, I made waffles.

“Aubrey’s favorite. Really about the only thing I’m good at making.”

I hear my daughter’s laugh, and I see Teresa’s oldest grandson doing his best imitation of Tarzan on a heavy rope swing that juts out over the beach from the limb of a massive western red cedar.

Montrose prods me. “Then what happened?”

“Aubrey and I took a skiff out to drop crab pots,” I say. Aubrey, ensconced in a bright orange life jacket, couldn’t wait to be out on the water, which was literally as smooth as glass. Not just like glass—like a flawless sheet of windowpane. We went back and forth all morning, I tell them. “There was nothing special or out of the ordinary about it.”

“Take your time,” Lee says. “We need to know everything.”

I tell them that while Aubrey and I rowed around and worked the pots, Sophie was reading a novel with a cup of coffee that later morphed into a glass or two of chardonnay.

I’d baited the pots with tins of cat food, and we checked them about every half hour. It wasn’t about catching crabs. It was about spending time with Aubrey and seeing it all through her eyes. Everything was a first for her. Her first time on the water. Her first encounter with a gull. A seal. I remembered times on the water with my own father. Not only connected with nature, but with each other. Shipwreck. Pirate. Captain Ahab.

Lee’s partner pushes. “And then it happened?”

He annoys me. I feel as if he’s trying to catch me in a lie or something. I know he’s doing his job, but my wife is missing. He could show some compassion.

“Yes,” Lee says. “What was the first thing you saw or heard that suggested something was wrong with Sophie?”

I’m surprised by the need to steady myself a little. I’m stronger than this. I pull myself together and tell them what happened.