Seven Years Later We Found a Video of My Missing Husband, but Paul Lost Color When He Heard One of Lily’s Phrases

At the very first second of the video, I saw my husband’s face and realized that for seven years the whole town had been repeating the same lie.

Ryan was sitting at the small kitchen table. Behind him, drawings by our children hung on the wall, while between his fingers I could see the red plastic whistle that Jack and Caleb took with them onto the boat every summer. They were supposed to blow the whistle three times if they got separated from each other.

In the video, Ryan was looking directly at the camera, but his eyes no longer had the warmth that I always saw when he talked about the children.

“Lily, if you are watching this, ten years have not yet passed,” he said quietly. “Do not show it to Mother immediately. Please, promise me.”

Lily’s hands were trembling.

I was sitting on the bed and looking at the phone as if my husband was supposed to come out of the screen right now.

“Why did he say that?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Mom. I was six years old. I just remember that he told me it was a game.”

“Ryan did not start games like that.”

“I know.”

The video continued. Ryan tilted the camera slightly to the side. Quiet voices of the boys could be heard behind the door. Jack was laughing about something, while Caleb was asking whether it was possible to leave early in the morning.

Ryan put a finger to his lips.

“Tomorrow we are going to Lake Lukmonro. If everything goes as planned, we will be home in the evening. But if I do not return, Lily, remember: your father would never abandon you.”

The air stopped in my chest.

The video stopped then. There was neither an explanation nor a farewell.

“Was that everything?” I asked.

Lily shook her head.

“I did not watch it to the end. There is another file here.”

She put her finger on the screen, but before she opened the file, the phone rang.

It was two o’clock at night.

An unknown number.

I looked at Lily.

“Do not answer,” I told her.

The phone rang again. Then a message came: “If you have watched the video, come alone to the northern shore in the morning.”

A chill fell over my neck.

“Who is this?” Lily barely managed to say.

“I don’t know.”

“Dad knew that something would happen.”

“We do not yet know what he meant.”

“Mom, we waited seven years for the lake to give us an answer. Maybe the answer was never in the lake.”

I did not sleep all night. At six in the morning I opened the old wooden box in which I had kept Ryan’s things. There I found his small copper compass, with the words scratched on the back: “The way home.” For seven years I had not even been able to touch it.

I put the compass in my pocket and got into Lily’s car.

Fog stood at the northern shore. I saw Paul beside the old pier. He was holding a black folder.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

His gaze first noticed the compass resting in my hand, and then moved to Lily.

“Because I knew that one day this day would come too.”

“What did you know, Paul?”

He opened the folder and reached toward the first sheet, but at that very moment heavy footsteps sounded from the fog…

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A man came out of the fog. I could not see his face, but I recognized Ryan’s old fisherman’s knife in his hand.

“Paul, close the folder,” he said.

Paul stepped back.

“You should not have been here.”

“Neither should your friend have been alive for this long.”

Lily grabbed my hand. Her fingers were like ice.

“Mom, let’s go.”

The man came toward us, but Paul stepped in front of me.

“I kept silent for seven years,” he said. “I cannot bear one more day.”

He took a small memory card from the folder and placed it in my hand.

“Ryan left this for me. He said I should give it to you only if I found Lily’s phone.”

“And why are you afraid now?”

Paul looked at the man.

“Because he knows what is on the recording.”

The stranger took a phone out of his pocket.

“Go home, Anna. If you open this, your daughter will no longer be safe.”

Lily exhaled loudly.

But I clenched the memory card in my fist.

“Seven years ago my husband and two children disappeared. Today no one will force me to keep silent anymore.”

Paul pushed me toward the car.

“Go. I will buy time.”

When I returned home, I put the card into the old computer. Ryan’s voice sounded on the screen, and then the shadow of another man appeared beside him.

“Anna, if you are listening to this, Paul still has not told you the most important thing…”

And at that very moment a dark police car stopped at the door…

There was a pounding on the door. Lily was standing beside me, while I could no longer tear myself away from the computer screen.

“Police!” a voice shouted from outside.

Lily asked me in a whisper:

“Should we open?”

“Not yet.”

The recording continued on the screen. Ryan was sitting in the back seat of a car. Jack and Caleb were beside him. Both were wearing coats, but it still seemed far too early to leave for the boat. Behind them, in the shadows, stood the man we had seen on the shore in the morning.

Ryan looked at the camera.

“His name is Paul. If he tells you that the boat swallowed us, do not believe him. The boat was found empty because he planned it that way.”

My knees lost their strength.

“No,” Lily whispered. “Paul searched for them for eleven days.”

In the recording Ryan’s voice became lower.

“Paul owed me money from my business. He knew that I was investigating financial fraud. The money was passing through a warehouse located on the lakeshore. When Paul found out that I was exposing him, he took the boys so that I would hand over the documents.”

Jack was crying on the screen.

“Dad, are we going home?”

Ryan hugged his son to his chest.

“Yes, son. Absolutely.”

Then he came closer to the camera.

“They are alive. I am leaving them in the old shore warehouse. Paul thought that we were going to the lake in the morning, but I hid a small recorder in the boat’s engine. If anything happens to me, this recording will tell the truth.”

The recording stopped.

Such silence fell over the room that every tick of the wall clock sounded like a blow.

There was another knock on the door.

“Anna, open up!” Paul’s voice was heard.

I looked at Lily.

“He did not call the police. He came himself.”

A second file lit up on the computer. When I opened it, only Ryan’s voice could be heard.

“Anna, I have to tell you the most important thing at the end. The boys did not remain in that warehouse. I handed them over to another person, a person you know.”

Lily covered her mouth with her hand.

“To whom?”

There was noise in the file. Then Ryan pronounced the name that froze my blood.

“I took them to your sister, Miranda.”

Paul’s blows on the door became stronger.

But Miranda had died five years ago. And if Ryan was telling the truth, then my children might still be alive somewhere…

At that same moment, one photo arrived on my phone from an unknown number: two grown young men, with identical eyes, were standing in front of an old house…