At first I thought someone had dumped a mannequin into the river. You see all sorts of junk float by or wash up on the banks. It annoyed me that someone—probably teenagers—would pull such a prank. Small towns breed bored kids who do stuff like that. Maybe big towns do, too. But when I looked closer, I realized it was a girl.

I had just arrived at the Susquehanna River with my five-year-old daughter, Ellie, short for Eleanor. We planned to spend the Sunday morning fishing and bird watching. Beth and I had gotten Ellie decent binoculars and an Audubon bird guide for her birthday, and a break in the cool May weather finally gave us a chance to try them out. I had tossed out a line baited with chicken liver, hoping to hook a channel cat, and Ellie sat on an overturned milk crate. She had the binoculars strapped around her neck and the guide’s glossy pages spread open across her lap. I had been too occupied at first to notice what was snagged in the thick growth along the bank about forty feet upriver.

I scooped up Ellie, frantically inventing an excuse about needing to return to the truck to listen to the bird report on public radio. It was all I could come up with on the spot, desperate she not see the body.

I buckled Ellie into her car seat, dialed 911 on my cell, and ran back to the river, telling Ellie that I had forgotten something and would be right back. I looked up and down the banks, desperate for a dog walker or fishermen to help me, but I had chosen this spot for its seclusion. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing, leaving my daughter alone in the truck and checking the body, but in those panicky moments it seemed the only course of action.

I couldn’t enter the river upstream of the body because the bank was too overgrown, so I had to enter downstream and walk against the current. The water reached my knees after only two strides. I wore boots and jeans, and my legs felt like anvils as I lunged ahead, having to wrench each boot out of the muddy bottom with each step. I should’ve taken the boots off before getting in the water, but I wasn’t thinking.

I had to move out into the current to get around the tangled growth along the bank and approach the body straight on. After only a few strides, I could no longer see my truck because of the thick growth on the riverbank. Ellie was probably getting anxious. I had to hurry. As the water reached my waist, it stole my breath. It had been a snowy winter and cool spring so the river still ran high and cold with runoff.

I reached the clump of roots, vines, and bramble that held the body and slipped on a submerged rock and went under. I swallowed a mouthful and shot back up coughing and retching. I thought immediately of my daughter alone in the truck and what she’d do if I lost my footing again and the river dragged me away. It might be a while before I made my way back to her, if ever. The thought of it undercut my nerve.

The girl’s body was a few feet deep within the dense tangle. The current must’ve wedged her in. She had come to rest on her side, with half her face submerged and the other half out of the water, with a branch poking into her chin. Her long hair wavered in the current. She wore a black or dark blue sweatshirt. Her lower half was bent oddly and mostly submerged. Her right arm was extended in front of her, with her fingers curled over a branch. She was clearly gone, but I couldn’t discern any obvious injuries. She didn’t look like she had been in the water long.

I struggled to within arm’s reach of her, tearing at the branches and roots and snapping off deadwood. I strained my hand through the tangle as pickers lashed my knuckles. I knew she was dead, but I had to feel for a pulse. It seemed like the right thing to do. I reached out, but my hand stopped shy of her neck. I yanked my arm back. My heart began to race, and my breath came in rapid, shallow bursts. My guts felt loose and hot, as if my insides had liquefied. I’m not sure what came over me, but I had to get out of the water and back to shore. I had intended to check her pulse and carry her back to the mercy of dry land, but instead I managed only to abandon her. All I could think of was getting out of the water and back to my daughter.

Ellie was near tears when I got back to the truck and asked why I was all wet. I told her I fell in the river, which normally would’ve cracked her up, but she could tell by my tone and general shakiness that something was wrong. Before the first responders arrived I called Beth to come pick up Ellie and take her home while I stayed to answer questions and give a statement.

I stuck around even after I’d explained everything to the authorities ten times and answered a hundred questions. I felt like I needed to be the last person to leave, as if by finding the girl I had assumed some stewardship over the scene. I watched as the sheriff’s department, accompanied by Fish and Game, finally got a couple boats down from the launch. They photographed the scene and then used garden shears to cut a path to the body. Two officers in wetsuits freed her, placed her on a backboard, and covered her with an opaque sheet. They loaded her onto the boat and sped to the public launch, a half-mile upriver, where they transferred her to an ambulance. Then I went home.

Small towns on large rivers share a history of tragedy: floods, capsized vessels, drownings. Rivers can often assume an inflated—almost mythic—stature in the town’s identity and life, and it was no different in our town. The river was the town’s heart and soul. The high school’s mascot was the River Rats. Every Fourth of July the town held a Water Carnival, where scores of boats paraded past the public launch at the community park, done up with streamers, crepe paper, and patriotic colors. Everyone not on the water watched from land. The town motto was “Come Float Away With Us.”

My grandfather used to say that “the town was too much river.” It was an odd expression he used whenever the Susquehanna overflowed its banks, every time the current washed away a fly fisherman, or some accident occurred on the water, usually involving alcohol and speed boats. But it wasn’t just the Susquehanna he held a grudge against. He despised all bodies of water, whether rivers, oceans, lakes, or even swimming pools. He wouldn’t dip a toe in one. In the only time he discussed his WWII experiences with me, he described having to salvage bodies of overboard seamen from the Pacific after their vessels sank or capsized. Many bodies, he explained at my prodding, were ravaged by fire, exposure, and sharks. I never heard him utter an ill word against the Japanese like so many vets did; he reserved the full load of his hatred and hurt for the water itself. I couldn’t stop thinking of that expression of his all that day I found the body and for the next several.

The Tribune called me that night. I don’t know how they got my name and number, but I guess it wasn’t hard to figure it out. I didn’t want to talk. What could I say that I hadn’t already told the police? I also didn’t want my name to appear in the article. Like I said, it’s a small town, and folks would come out of left field to badger me about finding the girl or somehow fault me for one thing or another. These people are decent and hard-working but easily scandalized. I work as a home inspector and depend on my reputation for my livelihood and didn’t want to put myself out there. My wife says it’s because I’m closed off. She’s right about most things.
It was always big news in town when someone got swept away in the spring runoff while fishing or a drunk boater caused a deadly accident, but this was different. When the news reported the drowned girl, the town seemed to collectively suck in a horrified breath and refused to release it. Her name was Mary de Francesca, a popular graduating senior at the high school. She was valedictorian, the paper said, of a class of sixty-three, and planned to matriculate to the University of Scranton in the fall. School was canceled the following Monday.

Word spreads fast in a small town, and I found out that Mary had been partying with friends at a house on the river about a half-mile from where I found her. They were drinking. Mary had argued with a girlfriend, said she wanted to be left alone, and was last seen sitting on the dock at 2 a.m. The next morning Mary’s friends couldn’t find her, but her car was still in the driveway. Her friends looked around the property and in the house, called all over, and then dialed the sheriff’s office. No one knows whether Mary fell into the river or went in intentionally. A lot of folks in town speculated on it, but it was irrelevant to me. Same outcome.

When I got home that afternoon, I tossed my sodden clothes in the garage and took a hot shower. I reeked of river. Also, the shower is a good place to shed a tear or two if you don’t want anyone to see or hear.

When I got out, I found Ellie working on a puzzle. She hadn’t seen the body. I was sure of it. Still, Beth and I paid extra close attention to her, trying to be receptive to any sign of disturbance, confusion, or fear, but she was her same old self. She asked again why I had returned to the truck all wet, and I repeated my lie that I had fallen in the river. She asked why the police and an ambulance came which she’d seen before my wife could get there, and I said I didn’t know, that they were just making sure everything was okay. It was a paltry excuse, and I knew that if she pursued the matter, I’d eventually have to do better.

As I played with Ellie that afternoon, sprawled on the family room rug, I studied her face, her pudgy cheeks, and button nose. I was still shaken up, but I suddenly had the awful sensation of being afraid of her, of my own daughter. Well, not of her exactly, but of her potential to devastate me with one bad step, foolish decision, or wrong acquaintance. I felt helpless to save her. All parents have the same nightmare, I suppose. I realized then I was in possession of two lives and not merely my own. Maybe I always knew it on some level, but the truth finally got its hooks in me.

After work the next day I drove back to the Susquehanna and parked where I had the morning before, in a gravel berm between the river and the unpaved county road. The ground was torn up from the parade of emergency vehicles. The swollen river ran dirty and fast. It had rained in the night, and the overcast sky threatened more. The river gave off a strong smell after the rain, like something alive and yet decaying at the same time.

I don’t know why I came. Maybe I needed to reassemble the experience, to make better sense of it. I had intended to stand at the crescent-shaped opening along the riverbank where I had been with Ellie and force myself to look at the spot where Mary’s body had been, but when I turned off the engine I couldn’t leave the safety of the truck. I sat there with the engine off and my window down, staring at the river, trying to steady my breathing.

I thought some not very profound thoughts about how the river flows on indifferently, how time piles up like riffles ahead of half-submerged boulders, and how the sky and water can assume a different complexion from one day to the next so that you can almost never be sure you’re in the same place. Only the smokestack of the old paper mill on the far shore told me for sure this was the right spot. My thoughts were bouncing around like that, without direction or form. I couldn’t help it.

I thought about how I had struggled toward Mary’s body, how I had reached out to feel her pulse and then pulled my hand back. I was afraid of her, whether or not I realized it at the time. I feared the nearly translucent skin of her waxen face, the delicacy of her limp fingers dangled over that branch, and the way her hair wavered in the current like corn tallows in the breeze. I felt flushed and sick with shame. I told myself it was wise not to touch her; she was obviously dead, and I could’ve contaminated a potential crime scene. But I was lying to myself. I saw my daughter’s face in hers. I saw my own. And I just left her there.

I was terrified in that moment for everyone I had ever loved and held in my hands. I had always thought of myself as a capable protector of my loved ones, but I knew I didn’t have it in me to save anyone. It was out of my control. I balled my hands into fists and choked back my shame and sorrow that I had abandoned that poor girl, that her lifeless flesh had horrified me and made me see my own death and that of my child’s. I desperately prayed and begged that no one would deny my own child the grace of human touch if she came to harm.

I don’t know how long I stayed at the river. Dusk comes slowly that time of year, and when I finally made it home it was after dark. Beth didn’t ask where I had been. I checked on my sleeping daughter, lingering a long time in her doorway, and went downstairs to pick at a cold supper. I’m not much of a drinker anymore, but on the way home I picked up a bottle and nursed it for a few hours alone at the table.

I attended the viewing later that week. Beth stayed home with Ellie, but the rest of the town came to say goodbye—seemed like the whole town anyway. I had to park at the Burger King and walk three blocks in a drizzle to the funeral home.

I weaved through a crowded anteroom, nodded at a few familiar faces, and shook some hands. A lot of folks knew by now that I was the one who found Mary. Some commented on it and even commended me, though I don’t know why. Others looked at me strangely, like they were embarrassed, as if they wanted to mention it but found it uncouth. Rarely do people know how to act in these situations. Maybe it was just my imagination.

I passed an auxiliary parlor adjacent to the main room where dozens of Mary’s classmates were gathered. Some were seated, but the rest huddled in small groups or milled about. They looked directionless and adrift. The girls were crying and hugging, and the boys, most of whose suits were ill-fitting, shuffled their feet, uncertain of how to act or what to say, exhibiting none of the usual attitude, defiance, or cool disregard so on display in town or at Friday night football games. They were children again.

I joined the line to enter the overcrowded main parlor. Most everyone knew each other, whether intimately or vaguely, but there was no conversation. Only bowed heads, sobs, and shuffling feet. It was quiet enough that even across the room I could hear the hushed words of condolence to the family. I kept my head down, staring at the toes of my loafers that I so rarely had occasion to wear and that blistered my heels. I wasn’t sure I could bear seeing Mary again, and a wave of nausea rose up and drew back.

The parlor was stifling and bright, with brass sconces arranged along the salmon-colored walls. The room’s brightness seemed cruel somehow; dimness seemed better suited for grief and heartbreak of this magnitude. The room smelled of lilies and of the perfume and cologne from the scores of people shuffling in and out of that windowless space.

The coffin was ivory-colored with brass handles. Mary wore a yellow dress. Her dirty-blonde hair was lighter than it had appeared when I found her, and the image returned of her hair rippling in the current. Her face looked rouged and healthy, almost alive. Beside the casket was Mary’s blown-up senior portrait on a stand, in which she appeared to be wearing the same yellow dress she now wore in her casket. She had been lovely.

When my turn came to pay respects, I saw that her loved ones and friends had placed several objects into the casket with her: a silver necklace, a concert ticket stub, a piece of quartz, and several folded notes, with the shadow of ink showing through the notebook paper. The artifacts of an interrupted life. I asked her to forgive me for my revulsion and for leaving her. I then made the sign of the cross and gave way to the next person in line.

As I approached Mary’s family, lined up along the opposite wall, my throat seized. Mary’s mother, Eveline, never rose from her chair as she accepted condolences. Her face was ashen, her makeup carelessly applied. Those ahead of me crouched down or took a knee to speak to her and held her folded hands. Eveline nodded vacantly as if unwilling or unable to grasp what she was hearing. I did the same, telling her how sorry I was for her loss, but when I shook her hand, she squeezed firmly, as if holding on for rescue, for someone to slow her plummet.

Mary’s father, Joseph, owned a hardware store in town that also rented construction equipment and delivered mulch. I was a frequent customer, though we spoke maybe three times in a dozen years. He had a reputation as an honest but humorless man; what at first I read as a stoic expression on his face was likely sedation. His eyes were heavy and unfocused, and his cheeks and mouth drooped. He had the build of a bricklayer, but now his upper body slouched, making him look much older. His tie was cinched tightly against his throat, and the excess flesh bulged around his collar. His face was flushed. When he shook my hand, his fingers were dead. He seemed to look through me for an instant, and then his eyes swam into focus.

“You found Mary,” he said, barely parting his lips. I didn’t know if it was a statement or a question. “You’re Grady Holland.”

“Yes,” I said. “I was at the river that morning… with my daughter.”

My having found her was part of the official incident record, which he must’ve examined. He would’ve insisted on it. I would’ve done the same.

His face looked ready to collapse, as if the bones and muscles under the skin had melted. He was unable to continue looking me in the eye. I knew him as a man who looked people in the eye, so it made me ache to see him that way. He looked like he meant to say something else and then gave up. I tried to imagine being in his position, of greeting mourners at my own daughter’s funeral, and wondered what I might have to say or what I might need to hear. Could I look anyone in the eye or even have the strength to be present under such circumstances?

As I thought about it over the next days and weeks, I guessed he couldn’t look me in the eye because I had seen what he could barely acknowledge or comprehend in his unimaginable grief. He must despise me in some unspeakable way, I thought, as we stood before each other in the same room as his dead child. Part of him must’ve wanted to pluck out my eyes that saw his only child in that unimaginable state in that filthy river.

I left right away, opting not to remain for the prayer from Monsignor Angelo, from Our Lady of Sorrow, which would conclude the evening’s viewing. On the way to my car, I nearly turned back. Something felt undone or unsaid by me. I wanted to tell Mary’s parents they need not be afraid ever again, that the worst thing that could ever happen had already come to pass. But that wasn’t quite right. I wanted them to forgive me for leaving Mary, for failing to deliver her from the river. I should’ve placed her down on the dry bank and covered her face. It gnawed at me, this need to say something better, to help set things right. But not everything can be said.

For the one-year anniversary of Mary’s death, her friends and family organized a final farewell at the riverside community park, just up from where she went in. They planned a few speeches in remembrance and a prayer led by Monsignor Angelo. Then all those gathered would toss lilies—Mary’s favorite flower—into the Susquehanna River.

I didn’t attend. I dressed to go but at the last minute changed my mind. That’s not the exact truth. I went so far as to drive to the public boat launch, but when I saw all the people gathered, I kept going and just drove around for a while. I couldn’t shake the notion I had already been too involved in this young woman’s life, though we had never met or spoken. Our paths were never supposed to cross until fate, chance, or bad luck intervened. We don’t always get to choose the role we play in the lives of others, and Mary and I would be forever linked by tragedy. I wanted to leave it at that and play no further role.

I said goodbye in my own way and imagined those hundreds of lily petals twirling in the Susquehanna’s current and how maybe a few of them, if the current and wind were fair, might reach the Chesapeake Bay and maybe beyond to the open ocean. It was a nice thought.