Behind the removable closet walls in my bedroom as a child there was a whole other magnificent world, one with endless amounts of ice cream and a pool that had a slide—at least that’s what I told myself when I lay in bed at night. It’s funny what the mind can do to make life different than how it is, how you want it to be.

I wanted it to be just as it was on Christmas day 2004—when I hadn’t yet boarded the plane in Phuket to head to Manhattan for an “emergency” meeting with my editor the following morning, back when my husband and seven-year-old daughter hadn’t yet been swallowed up by the towering “black wave” that decimated the west coast of northern Sumatra in the wake of a 9.1 magnitude earthquake.

They never found their bodies—like 4500 other poor souls. So, when I moved to the high mountains in Colorado a few months later, it was easy to say to people what I told myself: that Brian and Holly were still in Thailand; that he was finishing up his year-long sabbatical and planning to move our family back stateside because of a fantastic job opportunity for him; that I was there in the mountains only for a few months and only because I had inherited a house, one that I was going to fix up and sell, and then go back to the East Coast to join my family.  —At least the inheritance part was real.

During the day when it’s light, it is easier to keep up a delusion; you can distract yourself with all the hustle and bustle. In darkness you can’t escape the truth. It’s everywhere, showering you with its tentacles. The nights alone were the worst. If I started to shake or cry or remember, I’d reach for my cellphone and dial Brian’s number and leave a message about something annoyingly mundane, just as I always had. When the voicemail was filled, I set up his email on my computer, and I’d email myself as if it was coming from him. Then I’d hit reply and answer it. I got construction paper and made cards for myself that Holly would have made in school and hung them all over the house. On her birthday I went to the small toy store downtown and bought gifts. I even went to the post office and explained to the clerk what the special occasion was.

And everything could have stayed fucking okay, if only I hadn’t lost my mind and broken my marriage vows one night with the young Argentinian construction worker who was fixing up my inherited mountain house—and with one orgasm, all the guilt and disgust and rage and despair I had about leaving my family to die on that beautiful white, sandy beach came crashing down over me, swallowing me up like the ugly, black water did to them.

I’m tired of living in that awful black murk. But finding the light feels like a knife in the heart of their memories. Am I destined to darkness forever?