Chapter 1: The Weight of Water
They thought I wouldn’t feel the shove. At seventy-eight, people assume your senses dull like old knives left too long in a damp drawer. They think the world softens around the edges for the elderly, becoming a blur of muted colors and muffled sounds. But I felt every callous on the hand that gripped the back of my wheelchair. I felt every tremor in the wooden boards of the pier as they rolled me toward the lake. I felt the vibration of their betrayal before they even made their move.
“Just a little closer,” one of them whispered. It was Grant, my son-in-law. His voice was tight, strained with the impatience of a man waiting for an inheritance he believed he had already earned.
And then, the hard, decisive push.
The splash was deafening, a chaotic rupture of the evening silence. Then came the sickening sound of their footsteps retreating—hurried, rhythmic thuds against the wood—as if I were already a ghost they couldn’t bear to look at.
Cold swallowed me whole. The water climbed over my shoulders, invaded my nose, and tangled into my hair. I did not scream. Panic is a luxury for the safe; I had no time for it. I let myself sink for a moment, suspending my breath, drifting just long enough to hear their voices floating above the surface.
