My thirteen-year-old son Owen drowned in a lake last month during a fishing trip with my husband.
His small body was never found.
A few weeks after his quiet funeral, my phone rang at home. It was his beloved math teacher. Her voice was visibly shaking through the receiver.
"Ma'am… I'm not sure how to explain this. But I just found an envelope hidden inside my desk drawer. It's from Owen. It's addressed to you. Please come to the school right away."
What I quietly read on those pages, written in my dead son's own messy little handwriting?
Made the entire classroom tilt sideways underneath my feet.
My son Owen died in what everyone kept calling a tragic accident at the lake.
My husband had taken him up to our family lake house with a few of his friends. It was something they did together every single year. A tradition.
But this time, everything went horribly wrong.
Owen fell into the deep water during a sudden summer storm. The powerful current swept him away from the shore before anyone could reach him.
