My kids said their mom was lost to the ocean years ago. But our old dog — her favorite — never goes near the water. Instead, he always runs to the same cliff and barks. Today, I finally followed him… and what I found hidden in the rocks left me speechless.

For five years, I lived with ghosts. Not the kind that rattle chains or whisper in the attic, but the kind that sit with you at the dinner table, their silence a crushing weight. There was the ghost of my wife, Laura, her laughter a faded echo in the halls of our home. And then there was the ghost of the story of her death—a slick, polished narrative that my teenage children, Alex and Chloe, had repeated with wide, horrified eyes until it became a family truth. A rogue wave on a summer afternoon, a sudden, sharp scream, and then… nothing. They were the only witnesses. For five years, I had believed them.