My family had forgotten something important about me.
Maybe they had never thought it mattered.
Maybe they remembered it as an old accomplishment that belonged to another part of my life.
But I remembered.
Before I became a mother, I had been a competitive swimmer.
I had competed for the University of Missouri.
My event was the 1,500 meters.
That distance had once been part of my routine.
I knew what it meant to keep moving when my body wanted to stop.
I knew how to control my breathing.
I knew how to look ahead, maintain direction, and keep working through exhaustion.
Swimming had been a serious part of my life.
It wasn't something I had simply tried once.
I had spent years developing those skills.
I had also taught lifeguard classes for six summers.
I understood water emergencies.
I understood how quickly an ordinary situation could become dangerous.
I understood why flotation devices mattered.
And I understood that being able to swim in a pool did not make a seven-year-old safe in the middle of a lake.
My mother had called the life jacket excessive.
I had refused to listen.
That decision had never seemed more important than it did at that moment.
I looked toward the water again.
I couldn't see Cassie.
I couldn't see her orange vest.
I couldn't see anything that told me she was safe.
I was frightened.
There was no point pretending otherwise.
I had spent years telling my daughter that I would come if she ever needed me.
Now she needed me.
And I was standing on a dock surrounded by adults who seemed more interested in protecting my brother than helping me find her.
I didn't have time to change their minds.
I kicked off my sandals.
I didn't carefully place them somewhere.
I didn't think about the rest of my belongings.
I just needed them off my feet.
Then I reached for the orange vest.
Trey was still holding it.
I took it from him.
I remember the feeling of the material in my hands.
It was such a familiar object.
I had put it on Cassie so many times.
I had checked that it was secure.
I had reminded her why she needed it.
Now I was holding it while she was somewhere in the lake without it.
I couldn't let myself think about that for long.
I needed to act.
My nephew was nearby.
He was sixteen.
I turned toward him and handed him my phone.
I told him to call emergency services.
I didn't give him a vague instruction.
I told him exactly what he needed to report.
A child was in the water.
She was near the dock.
She had no life jacket.
She had fallen from a jet ski.
The person operating it had been drinking.
I wanted him to use those details.
I didn't want anyone softening the situation.
I didn't want the call described as a family disagreement.
I didn't want the fact that Trey was related to us to change what was reported.
A child was missing.
A jet ski was involved.
The driver was drunk.
Those were the facts that mattered.
My father began shouting.
He was still trying to stop me.
He didn't want the police called.
He didn't want Trey facing another arrest.
But I was no longer listening to him.
I had already made my decision.
I turned toward the edge of the dock.
The water was in front of me.
Somewhere beyond the shore was the place where I had seen Cassie fall.
I had no exact measurement.
I only knew the approximate distance.
About three hundred yards.
Three hundred yards.
That number had never sounded particularly frightening before.
Now it felt enormous.
I knew I had to cover that distance.
I knew I had to search.
I knew I couldn't stand there waiting for someone else to decide what should happen.
So I went in.
The water closed over me.
For a moment, everything became movement and sound.
Then I came back to the surface.
I started swimming.
I swam the way I had trained years earlier.
Not casually.
Not as someone enjoying a summer afternoon.
I was moving because my daughter was somewhere ahead of me.
I lifted my head regularly.
I searched the surface.
I looked for orange.
I looked for a small head.
I looked for anything that could belong to Cassie.
Every time I raised my eyes, I hoped I would see her.
Every time I looked and found nothing, I forced myself to keep moving.
I couldn't allow panic to take over completely.
I had taught people how to respond to emergencies.
I had learned the importance of staying focused.
But knowing what to do and doing it while your child is missing are two very different things.
I was no longer thinking like a swimmer in a competition.
I was a mother trying to reach her daughter.
Behind me, the situation at the dock was changing.
People had heard my shouting.
Boats were beginning to move away from shore.
I could hear the activity behind me, although I couldn't stop to see exactly what everyone was doing.
I kept swimming.
The distance seemed longer than I expected.
I had covered three hundred yards many times in my life.
But never like this.
Never with the possibility that my daughter was beneath the surface.
Never while wondering whether the next time I lifted my head would be the moment I finally saw her.
I called her name.
I searched again.
Nothing.
I reached the general area where I had watched her fall.
I stopped long enough to look around.
There was no obvious sign of her.
The surface moved beneath me.
A passing boat had left a wake that rolled through the water.
I felt it lift and shift around my body.
For a second, I looked in every direction, hoping the movement would reveal something.
It didn't.
I called again.
This time, louder.
I turned in the water.
I searched one side, then the other.
I couldn't see her.
I couldn't see the orange vest.
I couldn't see the pink swimsuit.
Nothing.
My breathing was becoming harder.
But I kept looking.
I knew I had reached the place where I had seen her disappear.
I knew I had to search.
Then something caught my attention.
A small object was floating nearby.
It moved with the surface.
At first, I couldn't understand what I was looking at.
I moved closer.
Then I recognized it.
A pink hair tie.
Cassie's hair tie.
It had a little plastic strawberry attached to it.
I knew that tiny decoration.
I knew whose hair it belonged in.
I stared at the object.
It was bobbing gently a few feet away.
I looked around it.
I searched the water again.
I called my daughter's name.
But the hair tie was all I could find.
Cassie wasn't there.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: The Little Strawberry in the Water Was the First Thing I Recognized, and I Couldn’t Make Myself Look Away
The One Rule I Never Let My Daughter Forget, and the Family That Thought I Was Being Far Too Careful
Part 4 of 20
