What the River Keeps

David has lived beside the Grand River his whole life. He has crossed it twice a day for years and never once, in thirty-seven years, wondered why. The river has been wondering about him for much longer.

David is good at staying. He stayed through his father walking out and his mother’s cancers, and he stays in a marriage that leaves marks he hides from everyone but his ten-year-old daughter. Then V, the woman he has loved for years, tells him she loves him, and that tonight she is leaving the man she’s with. After that, her house stays dark.

For a week the news reports people missing near the river, with stars chalked on the ground nearby. Before dawn, an old man in a parking garage presses a rabbit button into David’s hand. Then a text arrives from V’s phone. I need you. Please come if you can.

David drives downtown, into a Grand Rapids with no one left in it.