What happens when the man you love most in the world—who may be lying about everything—unexpectedly disappears and takes your small child with him? Emma Fedor's riveting and powerful debut explores the fierceness of first love and how far one woman will go to learn the painful truth.
When Cara and Brendan first meet, she's fresh out of college, recovering from the recent death of her mother and spending time on Martha’s Vineyard while trying to figure out her next steps. She's swept away by Brendan's humor and charm and intoxicated by his thrilling, dangerous secret: he can breathe underwater. Able to stay beneath the waves for longer than should be possible, Brendan reveals that he is part of a secret experimental unit of the US Special Forces. And Cara, struck by the force of his conviction, by his unstoppable charisma, and the apparent evidence,believes him.
Their summer romance quickly turns serious. And then Cara gets pregnant. When their son, Micah, is born, she is sure their happy ending is underway. Still, she is forced to contend with Brendan’s dramatic moods, and struggles to overlook his unexplained disappearances and the weight of his secrets. Cara is determined to stay strong for her young family, to heal Brendan's psychic wounds, to keep him safe. Until he and baby Micah unexpectedly vanish, leaving her desolate and alone making her question everything she once believed.
Five years later, Cara is still struggling to move forward, married to another man and trying to rebuild her life, when a local fisherman announces he's spotted two people – one of them a small child -- treading water in Nantucket Sound, far from any vessels and miles from shore. The news rekindles Cara’s never-abandoned hope that her little boy may still be alive. As she fights to untangle delusion from reality, and revisits a past she's worked hard to reconcile, she's determined to learn the truth about her lost love and finally find her son.