But their bodies were never found, and while everyone else went on with their lives, I couldn’t stop thinking about that massive detail.
Today, seven years later, it’s just the two of us, my thirteen year old daughter, Lily, and I. Lily may be very mature for her age, but she knows what a tragedy feels like. In so many ways we have grown up together since Ryan’s disappearance. She learned how to deal with the burdens no child should ever have to bear.
To this day, every now and then I find myself looking towards the front door hoping to see them walking through it.
I may have been their stepmother in terms of paperwork because by the time I had met Jack and Caleb they were already toddlers, but in all other aspects I was their mother. I packed their lunches, I helped them study for tests, I sat proudly through all their plays and sporting games. It was obvious to me that I would always consider those twins mine and that Ryan and even the children themselves knew this.
Each summer, Ryan would take the boys fishing out at Lake Monroe. This was their tradition. They’d all leave early in the morning and return much later with a scent of sun cream, fish oil, and Lake Monroe’s water. Each and every time Lily asked to join them, and each and every time Ryan smiled, patted her head, and said, “Next year, Peanut.”
Next year never came.
That day, nothing spoke trouble. Ryan was brewing coffee in the kitchen, while the twins were frantically gathering everything they needed. Jack had lost one boot, and Caleb was boasting about catching the biggest fish. Lily stood right by the door wearing her pajamas, making her final attempt to join them.
“Dad, please let me come with you,” she pleaded.
Ryan kneeled beside her and whispered, “You’re still too little, Peanut. Next year.” And then he gave her a kiss on her forehead and after some minutes, they took off. This is the last memory of my whole family being together.
Well, at first I wasn’t even concerned about it, since fishing expeditions usually take quite a bit of time. However, once it reached early evening, I began to check the clock once every several minutes. By evening, I tried Ryan’s phone around ten times. The first couple of calls did not get through, but after some time his cell phone just went straight to voicemail. An enormous knot began forming inside me. Once it became dark, I took Lily with a friend and headed for the lake alone.
I managed to gather quite a group of friends who joined me in searching for Ryan and the boys. All we found was Ryan’s boat floating near the shore, completely abandoned. Neither Ryan nor the boys were anywhere to be found, however, their vests were left in the boat. I screamed their names from the top of my lungs, but the lake answered with total silence.
The search continued for several days as boats searched the water, divers went under, and volunteers scoured many miles of shoreline, but nothing was ever discovered. It became clear that there was no longer any use for the word “missing,” and “they” simply were not around anymore. At some point during the process, Ryan’s best friend Paul came to speak to me, and voiced out loud what everyone else felt in their hearts: “They drowned, Anna.”
Perhaps they had, perhaps they hadn’t. But one thing was certain: No one knew. And yet, not knowing made things infinitely harder than before. For many months, I would go to the lake every single day following Lily’s walk to school, parked up in my car watching the water in hopes that looking harder would bring about a revelation. Eventually, I stopped making the trek entirely not out of peace of mind, but rather, exhaustion.
Life keeps moving whether you’re ready for it or not. The bills still need to get paid, the homework needs checking, laundry piling up in a heap, birthdays come around. Lily became tall, years passed by, and finally, I figured out a way of coping with those giant empty holes that Ryan and the boys dug.
But then, last weekend happened.
It was a regular Saturday evening. I was doing my laundry while watching some show on TV when Lily suddenly came in the room carrying a small pink flip phone. It took me a second to realize that this was that same cell phone she received when she was only six.
“It was inside one of the boxes that we kept in the closet,” she mumbled.
“Hey, I totally forgot about it!” I responded.
“Yeah, me too,” came another reply. But judging by her face, I realized right away that something was definitely wrong.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” I asked, laying the clothes aside.
Lily gulped hard. “Mom… there’s a video…”
“What video?”
“Dad sent it to me the day before the fishing trip and warned me not to show it to you. I was just six years old when all that happened. He told me to keep it secret and show it to you after ten years.”
She could barely hold that phone. I opened the video and Ryan’s face appeared on the screen. It seemed to me that he was seated in our garage.
“Anna…” he began in a low tone. Hearing his familiar voice erased seven years of absence almost instantly. However, hearing what he was going to say next was a real shock to me.
He explained he wasn’t taking the kids fishing. He was taking them to their birth mother, Andrea. Permanently. I became physically ill, feeling the contents of my stomach trying to force its way back up my throat. Ryan stated that he believed the children needed to spend some time getting to know their mother again since he was losing control completely and said sorry for everything. Then he turned to Lily and said that he loves her before the video cut to black.
And I simply sat there in front of the black screen without being able to breathe properly. It had been seven years spent mourning their death while asking myself endless questions, all just so I can discover that it was one big lie.
In the morning, Lily and I headed towards the address of Ryan’s ex-wife, Andrea.
She let us into the house, and before she could say a word, the photos of Ryan, Andrea, Jack, and Caleb – all smiling and alive – completed her story for her. It nearly took me down to my knees. I spent seven years mourning the deaths of children who had been very much alive. I didn’t know if I should scream, vomit, or pass out.
Finally, I looked at Andrea, and I managed to force out one question, “Why?”
Andrea’s eyes welled with tears. What happened next wasn’t anything that would have crossed my mind. Ryan had been diagnosed with stage-four, terminal cancer several months prior to disappearing, and he made sure that no one knew about it. According to Andrea, he freaked out when he thought that he was dying and he was desperate to make sure that his sons were with their biological mother before he died. He thought it was the right thing to do.
I sat there in utter and total shock. On one hand, I could somewhat comprehend the fear he had for himself because he knew he was going to die. On the other hand, I was furious! He did not trust me enough to be honest with me. He decided to make his own decision that would destroy several lives by making me believe that my family was dead and by raising Lily without her father and brothers.
Andrea eventually led us to a small cemetery where Ryan was buried underneath a small tombstone. It turned out that he died shortly after disappearing with the boys. There in front of Ryan’s grave, I experienced a completely new grief—not my old grief, but a totally different kind. The grief that came from finding out the horrible truth.
Back at the house, Andrea told me that Jack and Caleb were now studying abroad. They’re not children anymore, they’re grown men. They passed around a couple of photos and both of them are so alike to Ryan that it hurts. On the way out of the door, she gave me an envelope with a letter Ryan had written to me just before his death. I haven’t opened it yet.
The whole way to Ohio, Lily just stared at the picture of her brothers. At some point, she finally posed the question we’ve been wondering about. “Will I be able to meet them someday?”
I held onto the steering wheel tightly, took a deep breath and said, “I think there’s still a chance.”
I still can’t force myself to forgive Ryan for what he did, although I try to understand his reasons. At least, after seven years, I finally got the closure I needed.