Four people saw her veer off the road, drive through the parking lot beside the bay, and then accelerate as she hit the pier. Later, the investigators found nothing wrong with the van. Neither the steering wheel nor the gas pedal had jammed; the brakes were working fine. The trip off the pier was no accident.
Rachel had survived impact. There was water in her lungs, which meant she’d been breathing when the minivan filled with water. The air bag had inflated and there were no cracks spiderwebbing across the windshield, no contusions on her head that would’ve indicated that she was knocked unconscious.
Still, I hope that somehow she was. I can hardly imagine her just sitting there conscious and aware, waiting for our two sons to drown, but by all indications that’s exactly what she did.
The boys were strapped into their car seats and had never been good at getting them unbuckled on their own, so even if they’d known how to swim, they wouldn’t have been able to get out of the van.
Though it chills me to think about it, I can’t help but wonder what it was like for Drew and Tony in those final moments — feeling the minivan speed up, experiencing the momentary weightlessness as the vehicle left the pier, then the jarring impact as it hit the surface of the water.
And then.
Sinking. Slowly at first, but then more rapidly as water began to fill the van. And the questions a five-year-old might ask: What’s happening? When is Mommy gonna help me? Or perhaps even a thrill of curiosity as the water passed the windows: Is this what it’s like for a fish?!
But then, of course, the troubling realization that this was scary and bad. And, as the instinct for survival took over, struggling uselessly to get free, crying, then screaming as the water rose.
The boys’ lungs were filled with water too.
They were breathing as the water rose to their lips, passed their mouths, swallowed their cries for help. I’ve done hundreds of underwater escapes over the years, and I know all too well how terrifying it can be when your breath is running out and you can’t find a way to free yourself from your bonds. You try to remain calm, but there comes a moment when sheer terror eclipses everything. Six times I’ve passed out and had to be revived.
At least my sons only had to drown once.
And now.
Over and over I’ve searched through my conversation with Rachel earlier that day for any hint of what she was planning to do, any warning, however slight, of her dark intentions.
Everything had been so suburbally normal for a Saturday morning — I was slipping off to work for a few hours, then I’d be back to mow the lawn; Rachel was heading out with the boys to grab a few things at the grocery store for our dinner that night with the Andersons. Before I’d left, she’d seemed a little tired, but that was all.
I’d offered to ask her parents if they could watch the kids next weekend so we could sneak away — just the two of us — find a bed-and-breakfast in the country, somewhere outside of Atlantic City where we lived, take a little time to reconnect. To relax. Before the new season began.
“It’d be a good break for both of us before the new show opens,” I told her.
“That would be nice,” she said softly.
“That would be nice,” not, “Sorry, I’ll be dead by then. And so will the boys. I’m going to drown them as soon as you leave the house.”
My friends, my family, the media, law enforcement — everyone who was touched by the case — searched for a reason why she did what she did: Did she show any signs of depression? Was she noticeably upset that morning when you left? Were you having marital problems? Can you think of anything at all that would have caused her to do this?
No, no, no.
No, I could not.
It was as if all of us were desperate to compartmentalize her actions under a specific heading — anger, loneliness, depression, despair — as if naming the motive, channeling all the terrible confusion and pain into one word, would have softened the blow, brought some sort of closure.
But we found no motive, no cause, no explanation.
A mother had inexplicably murdered her sons and committed suicide for reasons only she knew. Reasons that had drowned with her in Heron Bay.
I’ve tried to hate her for what she did, tried my hardest to despise her, to slice all the positive feelings I ever had for her out of my heart, but I can’t make the love go away. Even after she killed my sons, even after that, I haven’t been able to find a way to hate her. Part of me feels wretchedly guilty for still loving her, as if it’s a failure on my part, as if it cheapens my love for the boys.
No reasons.
We found no reasons.
But something motivated Rachel to accelerate off that pier, and to make any sense of it I felt compelled to find a person to blame for not stopping her.
In the end I did. I found him. A man who’d missed a warning sign, some subtle indicator, some tiny clue as to her intentions — or possibly he’d said something, did something, without even knowing it, that’d pushed her over the edge.
He needed to be punished for his failure, and so I’ve reminded him of it every day for the last thirteen months.
And he has suffered acutely, just as he should, for letting his wife and his two sons die.
Sleight of Hand
The highway snakes along the Oregon coastline like a great eel, twisting around the foothills that skirt the wild sea.
Surprisingly, the sky above us shines clear and bright and starkly blue. In the Pacific Northwest, this is a rare and welcome sight, and the Monday afternoon traffic is heavier than I would’ve expected. By the number of backpacks inside the cars and surfboards on top of them, I can tell that many of the drivers are outdoor enthusiasts heading home after a long weekend of enjoying the clear weather here on the coast or hiking in the nearby mountains.
I’m at the wheel of the van, and my friend Xavier Wray sits beside me. At fifty-two, he’s nineteen years older than I am, but he still has a closetful of tie-dyed clothes and still uses the word “groovy.”
He shaved his head last year because he didn’t think the ponytail went well with his receding hairline, and, as he said, he only had control over one of the two factors in the equation: “Start losing your hair and you look old; get rid of it all and you look timeless.”
I can tell he’s been watching me but trying not to be too obvious about it. Figuring he would say something soon enough, I wait him out, and just as I start thinking about the television exposé we’re working on, he breaks the silence: “It reminds you of that day, doesn’t it? The ocean? The shore over there?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“You want some advice, Jev?”
“Xavier, we’ve been through this before.”
“Sure, but do you want some advice now?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, here it is.” He brushes some lint from his faded season-one X-Files T-shirt imprinted with a picture of David Duchovny (looking quintessentially cool) and Gillian Anderson (looking urgently concerned), and the words “The truth is out there.”
“Stop trying to move on.”
I look at him quizzically. “That’s your advice?”
“Yup.”
“Stop trying to move on.”
“You got it.”
“That’s what’s going to help?”
“Yup.”
“Well”—I give my attention back to the road—“thanks, Xav. I’ll keep that in mind.”